Chapter 11: Thursdays

"Say something," I said.

"I will. Don't interrupt me."

Lena opened the stove door, put in two split logs, and watched them catch.

The light moved up her face and the loose strands of her knot.

The cotton ball was still taped inside her elbow, and she picked at one corner while she talked.

"I canceled the treatments the same week I found it," she said. "I called the clinic from the courthouse parking lot and told them I was done."

"You never told me that."

"No. I kept going every Thursday."

I stared at her.

"What for?"

"Bloodwork, mostly. So I'd have a cotton ball on my arm when I came home. Some weeks I just sat in the lot for two hours with the heater on."

She closed the stove door with her foot.

"I wanted you to see me leave on Thursday mornings and ask yourself why I was still going."

"I thought you were still trying."

"I know what you thought." She sat on the hearth again and folded her hands.

"Every Thursday I came home and stood in the kitchen and asked you one thing."

"What?"

"Is there anything you want to tell me."

I remembered it.

She said it so lightly, with her keys in her hand, that I'd taken it for kindness.

"You always said no. You asked about my day."

"I thought it was concern."

"It was a door," Lena said. "I left it open, week after week, and you never walked through it."

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