People weep over that woman.

They put her in stories.

And what almost no one says is that she is not being brave; she is being erased, and often, as with me, she is the one erasing herself, performing her own disappearance one last time because it is the only role she was ever applauded for.

I chose not to tell Gregor I was dying, and I dressed that choice up, in my own mind, as consideration, as not wanting to complicate his transplant with my troubles.

But underneath the pretty word was the same old machinery: the woman who does not count her own pieces, who holds even her own death off to one side so it will not inconvenience the people she has spent her life serving.

If Marva had not come, I think I would have gone through with the whole beautiful terrible thing — nursed him through his recovery, kept my secret, faded out in a spare room, a saint, a fool, furniture to the last.