And Julian, I would learn, had lived inside that exact solitude for twenty years, far more completely than I ever had, because he had chosen it deliberately, had built it around himself like a wall, and had endured it for my sake without my ever knowing he existed.

Two unclaimed people, each convinced they belonged to no one, sitting together in a small sunlit room.

Neither of us knew, in those first weeks, that we belonged, in fact, entirely to each other, and always had.

Chapter 4 — One Last Wish

One evening, near the end of a long quiet visit, Julian reached over and gripped my hand, and there was an urgency in it that I had not felt from him before.

“I have one last wish,” he said.