Ayana asked me in the hospital, near the end, when we both knew what was coming and had stopped pretending otherwise.

She was not afraid, or if she was she hid it from me the way she hid every hard thing, to spare the people she loved.

What she wanted to talk about, in those last weeks, was not herself.

It was Nia, always Nia — who would braid her hair, who would explain things to her, who would make sure she grew up knowing she was loved.

And one evening, with the machines humming and the light going gray outside the window, she took my hand and asked me to take our daughter to the ocean someday.

To the beach where we had met.