She slid off the counter. She walked toward him until she was close enough to see the fine tremor in his hands.

Six months in, Rosa got sick. It was nothing dramatic—a winter flu that settled in her chest and refused to leave. She spent three days in the east wing, wrapped in blankets, reading the same page of a novel over and over because she couldn’t remember what came next.

The Clause of Small Mercies

In the car on the way home, Rosa said, “You didn’t have to do that.”