If this goes sideways.

I know it won’t.

But if it does.” And I said, “It’s not going to go sideways, you stubborn old fool.” And he said, “I know.

But you’ll look after her.” And I said yes.

I said yes, Del, of course, always, and I meant it with everything I had, and we never mentioned it again, and that was the most either of us had ever said out loud about what we’d come to be to each other.

There is a particular terror in nearly losing a friend you made late, and it caught me off guard, because I’d thought — foolishly — that the friendships of old age would be somehow lighter, lower-stakes, that a bond made at sixty couldn’t run as deep as one made at twenty and so couldn’t hurt as much to lose.