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The parental X-ray.
“We thought you might sleep in.” Elsie started to get up. “How about some breakfast?”
“Mom, sit. I mean it. I’m going to put some coffee in a go-cup and take a walk—doctor’s orders on the walking. Don’t the two of you have to get to work?”
“I’m about to head out,” Dean told her. “How’d you sleep?”
“Like a rock.”
“I thought I’d stay home today,” Elsie began. “There’s a lot of prep for Thursday, and I can get started.”
Sloan detoured from the coffee, sat. She took her mother’s hands.
“I need you to go. I need you to do whatever you’d do today. I know you’d take off half on Wednesday to make the pies and all that, but you need to go to work. I need to feel capable of spending a day on my own. I know I’m not a hundred percent. Not even close. But I have to start. I know my limits. Trust me, my body doesn’t let me forget them.”
Elsie shifted her gaze to her husband. “I can hear you thinkingI told you so. Knock it off.”
He just smiled, shrugged.
“You’ll keep your phone with you?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And call or text if you need anything?”
“Yes, Mom.”
Elsie’s lips twitched at the tone. “And you’ll eat something. Then the One Bite More.”
Sloan had to laugh at the old childhood refrain. And as she had as a child, rolled her eyes.
“Yes, Mom.”
Dean rose, took the empty cups to the sink. “Mop’s staying. He’ll walk with you—that’s the deal.”
“I accept. Now go, add to my inheritance.”
In the end, she walked out with them, Mop at her side. She waved the humans off, then laid a hand on the dog’s head.
“Let’s get started.”
Though the sun beamed, the air snapped with cold, edged by a rising wind that rippled over the lake and sloughed through the trees. She watched a heron glide and swans sail. Focused on them, she made it to where she’d stopped the day before. Breath labored, she stopped to let her system recalibrate. Mop left her side long enough to leap into the snow and roll.
Ten steps more, she told herself, and took them.
Not pushing, she thought. Improving.
“That’s all I’ve got,” she said to the dog. “We’ll do it again later, and again. Ten steps more.”
Despite the cold, she felt sweat slide down her back as she walked back to the house. Her legs trembled some as she let herself back in, and her head felt light enough she just sat without taking off her coat.
“Just need some fuel.”
She added some to the living room fire before tucking away her outdoor gear.
In the kitchen she made herself a bowl of cereal, added half a banana and blueberries.
She managed half of it before even the idea of eating exhausted her. She took a breath, then one bite more.