The Third Line

Everly calls at half past nine.

"He's gone," she says. "Officially. Last night. I told him his mother could have him."

Aitana stands at the kitchen island with the phone against her ear and the billing statement, printed from the hospital's email, folded on the counter in front of her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fantastic. I'm so fantastic I'm going to make you spend money." A pause. "Salon. Today. You owe me a salon day from two years ago and I am cashing it in."

"Everly—"

"I'll pick you up at eleven. Wear something you don't care about."

She hangs up before Aitana can say no.

_

The salon is white and loud, and Everly has picked two stylists because she always picks two of everything.

Aitana sits in the chair and looks at her own reflection. The woman in the mirror is pale, and there are shadows under her eyes, and her hair falls past her shoulders the way it has since she was a girl.

"Cut it," she says. "As short as possible."

The stylist hesitates, comb in the air. "Short-short? That's a big change. You'd be limited with outfits. I'd take it to the shoulder, give you something soft—"

"As short as possible."

"Ma'am, it's beautiful hair. Years of it. It's a pity to—"

"It's fine."

Everly stops talking mid-sentence and looks at her.

The scissors come out. The first section is lifted and cut, and it makes a small clean sound, and a length of dark hair slides off the cape and lands on the white tile. Then another. Then another.

Aitana watches the floor fill up and does not say anything.

When she was seven, her father used to brush her hair at night. He would sit on the edge of her bed with the brush in his hand and work through every knot slowly, starting at the ends and moving up, the way you are supposed to. He never pulled. He would hold the top of the strand in one fist so it wouldn't pull. He did it for years, long after she could have done it herself.

She has not thought about that in a long time.

The stylist turns the chair. She looks at herself with short hair, and the woman in the mirror looks older and thinner and more like someone who has been ill.

Two weeks, she thinks. Maybe three. It will come out in the shower in handfuls, and I would rather decide how it goes.

"Are you okay?" Everly says, from the next chair. "You're very quiet."

"I like it."

"It's stunning. It's actually stunning. You look like a different person." Everly's voice wobbles on the last word and she turns her face away and pretends to look for something in her bag.

Aitana watches her in the mirror, and the sentence sits on her tongue. Everly. I have cancer.

She does not say it.

The stylist brushes the last of the loose hair off her neck. Her skin feels cold and open to the air, and she keeps touching it with the back of her hand, the way you touch a place that has just been numbed.

_

She goes to him that afternoon.

She walks into the study with the short hair and the printed statement, and she lays the page on the desk in front of him, and she sees his eyes go to her neck and stay there.

He does not say anything about it. He looks for one full second too long, and then his hand goes flat on the desk, and then he picks up the page.

"Why did you pay it and not tell me?" she says.

"It was your father's life. Not a gift."

"You told me no."

"I told you I wouldn't write you a check." He sets the page down. "I didn't say I wouldn't pay the hospital."

She takes the chair across from the desk and sits. It is the first time she has ever sat in this room.

"I'm not leaving until you answer me properly," she says.

He stands and reaches for his coat on the back of the chair.

"Go ahead," she says. "You'll be back in an hour. I'll still be in this chair."

He stops with his hand on the coat and looks at her.

She looks back.

He sits down.

"That's better," she says.

"Don't enjoy this."

"I'm not enjoying anything." She folds her hands in her lap.

"Why do you want to know?" he says.

She opens her mouth and finds there is nothing she can say out loud. The true answer is that she wants to know whether he is capable of love, and saying it would hand him something she is not ready to give.

He reaches for a pen and sets it down again.

"There's a question you want to ask," he says, "and you keep asking other ones instead."

"Then answer this one." She takes the folded change order out of her pocket and lays it on top of the statement. She flattens it with two fingers and turns it toward him, and puts her finger on the bottom of the page, on the line under the two signatures.

The line with a label and no name.

"Who was supposed to sign this?"

He does not answer. The clock on the shelf ticks. He looks at the empty line, and she watches his jaw set, and his eyes do not leave it. The quiet goes on long enough that she can hear the traffic far below, thin as a hum through the glass.

He goes white. Not pale. White, the way paper is white, all at once.

"That isn't a question for tonight."

"I've had three days of nights."

"Aitana—"

"I'm tired, Pedri." Her voice does not rise. "I have chemo tomorrow. I'm tired of asking questions you won't answer. I'm tired of finding things out from strangers. I'm tired of sitting in your rooms and waiting for you to decide whether I'm allowed to know my own life."

He looks at the empty line. He does not touch it. He keeps his hands on the desk, both of them, and the tendons stand out in his wrists.

"Then when?" she says.

He lifts his eyes. For a moment there is nothing arranged in his face at all.

"When I can answer it without losing you," he says.

The room goes very quiet.

"That isn't a date," she says.

"No," he says. "It's a condition."

She stands and picks up her bag and crosses to the door, and his eyes follow her.

"Stay," he says.

One word. He does not move from the chair. His hands stay flat on the desk like a man holding a table down.

She stops with her hand on the door.

She does not turn around. Behind her he does not breathe, and the word is still in the room. She thinks of the boxes by the elevator, and the long cold hallway, and the chair she has just stood up from. If I turn, she thinks, I will have to know what I want.

Neither of them moves.