All Chapters of Six Months Of You: Chapter 1 - Chapter 6

# LENAI arrive eight minutes early and choose the table in the far corner near the window. Pen on the table. Bag on the floor. Outside the glass the campus is still mostly empty, a few people cutting across the lawn with their heads down against the cold. I watch them for a moment and then I stop watching them and I wait.Landon Cross walks in at exactly eight. No jacket today, just a dark sweater, a folder under his arm. He scans the room once before he finds me, which means he did not already know where I would sit. Small thing. I file it away.He sits across from me and opens the folder. Clean copy of the contract and a second handwritten page beside it."Amendments," he says.His handwriting is small and even, the same as yesterday. I read each line carefully. Minimum two appearances per week. No social posts without approval from both sides. Full confidentiality from both parties. Two weeks notice for early termination. And at the bottom, pressed a little harder into the page th

# LENAI am at St. Catherine's by six thirty.My mother is already there in yesterday's scrubs, a cold coffee in her hand, the particular stillness of someone running on no sleep and sheer will. I sit beside her. I swap the cold cup for the one I brought. We look at each other and say nothing because we have built a whole language out of not saying things in hard places.Leo goes into prep at six forty five. He makes a joke about the hospital gown. He always makes a joke about the hospital gown. He is twelve years old and the funniest person in any room he walks into and I press my thumbnail into my palm to keep from crying in front of him because he needs me steady.My mother and I sit in the waiting area. Time moves the way it does in hospitals, thick and slow. Around us the morning shifts over, staff changing, a PA announcement somewhere down the hall, a family in the corner praying quietly. I count the ceiling tiles. I count the chairs. I count the minutes.At seven fifteen the ma

# LENALandon texts Sunday morning with the details.Dinner. Tuesday. His father's usual restaurant downtown. Dress like you belong there. I will pick you up at seven.I spend Sunday with Leo. He is home, propped on the couch, running through a video game with more focus than he has ever given anything medical. His color is good. He complains about the pain medication making him slow. He beats three levels in the time it takes me to eat lunch.I do not tell him about Tuesday. I do not tell my mother either. I sit with them the whole day and let it be what it is, ordinary and quiet, the one day the contract cannot touch.Monday I go to the library and research Richard Cross.He is not difficult to find. His name is on the Westbrook gymnasium. His firm manages assets for fourteen companies in the region. He sits on three school boards. There is a profile in a regional business journal from two years ago, a photograph of him at his desk looking like a man who has never been told no and h