جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 26

Wednesday morning there were more clumps on my pillow than the morning before. I lay there for a minute looking at them, then got up and video-called Chandler.He answered on the second ring, still in his room, faux hawk not yet done, and I didn’t say anything for a second and neither did he. He looked at my face on his screen and said, “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”He was there before I’d finished putting the clippers on the counter.I’d gotten the clippers from under the bathroom sink, the ones Dad used for his edges, and I’d set them on the counter and then stood there not touching them until I heard the front door. Chandler came upstairs. I was sitting on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub, the same position I’d been in the last time he’d found me here, which felt like something but I wasn’t going to name it.He looked at the clippers. Then at me.“You sure,” he said.“I’m losing it anyway.”He didn’t say anything else. He picked up the clippers, and I sat on the

Grief didn’t compress the way I’d expected it to. I’d thought it would arrive all at once and then diminish, the way a fever did, breaking cleanly and leaving you on the other side. Instead it came in layers, some days thin and close to the surface, some days heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the treatment fatigue and everything to do with the silence that Wednesday had now.The funeral had been Tuesday. A church in Aurora I’d never been to, full of people who had known Lylah longer and better. Her older sister spoke. She had Lylah’s same direct way of looking at a room. Two little brothers in the front row who were too young to be sitting that still. I sat in the back with Noelle, her sapphire eyes red-rimmed the whole service, and didn’t cry until the drive home, which was when it was finally private enough.I went back to Happy Paws on Thursday. Not because I was ready. Because Cove needed the session and nobody else knew his training history the way I did.Cove was a three

The text took three drafts.Not because I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I’d known since the Suburban ride home, the phone in my bag and the city going past and Stetson’s shoulder warm against mine. I’d known it the way I knew things that had been true for a while before I let myself name them. The three drafts were about finding the version that didn’t make it bigger than it was.Monday afternoon. Cycle 9 started Wednesday. It had been snowing since morning, the slow February kind that stuck, and I was on my bed with Bernard across my feet, and I typed the third version and sent it before I could make a fourth.I think we should talk. Not over text if that’s okay.He called within two minutes. That was Evan, always prompt, always prepared. I sat up and Bernard relocated, indignant, and I answered.He was kind about it and so was I and neither of us performed anything, which was maybe the best version of how this could go. He said he’d sensed it. I said I had too, for a while. He s