He moved his chair closer.

We talked until the sky darkened, not about test results or bills but about the lives we’d both imagined and the life we still might build.

PART 16

Several weeks later, Callum took the three sealed letters from our dresser drawer.

He’d kept them after the procedure, unwilling to open them and unwilling to throw them away.

He placed them on the kitchen table between us.

“I wrote these like I was already gone,” he said.