Page 61 of What You left in Me

“She won’t let you,” I say. “She’ll insist on reading the label out loud as if we’re trying to trick her.”

He smiles a little. “We can be tricksters later.”

If I weren’t busy pretending my heart hadn’t slid to the floor, I would make a joke about him choosing tonight to discover mischief. I watch his profile in the streetlights instead and think of a winky face I want to crush under my heel.

“You’re very quiet,” he says.

“I’m collecting myself,” I say. It’s true. It also hides a galaxy.

“Do you want to talk about anything?”

I look at his mouth and hear:Don’t ask questions. It’s easier that way.I look at his hands and see:You’re lucky I can make time.He has a gift for tenderness. I used to trust it with my whole spine. Tonight, I can’t stop wondering what’s costume and what’s skin.

“I will,” I say, and the words scrape. “After we get my mother home.”

He accepts that like a man who believes schedules can save families. “All right.”

We pass a bus stop where a kid leans into a girl’s shoulder and she laughs into her scarf. A man in a neon vest pushes a broom across a storefront stoop, slow and methodical. A woman carries a bag of oranges against her chest like something warm and valuable. I stare at all of them as if they have answers.

I think of Finn. I don’t want to but he arrives anyway. I tell my brain we don’t have the bandwidth for that man’s mouth tonight. My brain tells me he doesn’t ask permission.

Julian fills the quiet with logistics. Flights. Donors. A board member who wants to move a dinner because his alma mater is in playoffs. If I didn’t know him, I would find it soothing, the tidy way he stacks complications and calls it planning. I nod at the right places. He says he’ll miss me. I say I’ll miss him. The words bounce off my teeth, but they don’t stick.

We turn onto our street. The trees along the median are lit from below and look like they’re whispering. The porch light is already on and I know who’s home.

Finn.

“Here we are,” Julian says, soft. He parks, kills the engine, and the jazz slides away like it knows better than to try for a big exit.

We sit.

He turns to me in the quiet. “You were brave today,” he says. “You kept your mother calm. You kept me from arguing with the discharge nurse about the price of a blood pressure cuff. You were… you.”

I nod. Compliments usually pat my hair. Today, they land and roll to the floor.

He reaches for his phone, pauses, pockets it instead, and opens his door. He comes around to my side because that’s who he is even if everything else is crossed out. He helps me up, one palm light on my elbow, and for a second, I want to fold into his chest and let the whole day spill out. The urge knocks the wind out of me. Then I see a sticky note in my head with a number on it and the urge dies.

“Go on,” I say. “I’ll bring the bag.”

He hesitates, eyes searching my face. If he’s hiding something, he’s a professional. If he’s sorry, it doesn’t show. If he’s oblivious…Well? I guess that’s a talent too. He kisses my temple like a benediction I don’t deserve and carries the hospital folder inside.

I stand by the car and wrap my arms around myself until the tremor in my fingers eases. The night on our street is alive with ordinary life. Someone reversing too carefully, dogs throwing barks back and forth, a neighbor laughing into a phone behind a half-open curtain. I let myself feel all of it because I’m about to wreak havoc.

I go inside.

Julian is at the low table, sleeves rolled to his forearms, sorting my mother’s pill bottles into a straight little army. Two mugs steam on cork coasters. The blood-pressure cuff sits on a folded towel. He looks up when the gallery swallows the last ofmy steps. That soft, careful face, the one that used to make my spine unclench, finds me.

“There you are,” he says, gentle. “Peppermint. Sit.”

“Put it down,” I say.

He sets the mug back like he’s handling a fragile bird. His eyes stay on me. “Okay.”

“Take my phone.”

A flicker crosses his face. confusion first, then the polite caution he uses with skittish donors. He reaches out to where my phone is on the counter, and unlocks it automatically. His thumb hesitates like it’s asking for permission from his brain; habit wins.

“What am I checking for?” he asks, and he really sounds puzzled. Almost affronted by the idea that there’s a quiz.