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sitting here if things hadn’t gone the way they did.”
    Bryan tilted his head. “What do you mean?”
    “My father’s illness sort of shone a light on some of the things that were going wrong in my marriage. Opened my eyes to some problems I’d been ignoring.”
    “What sort of things?”
    Laura blew out a long breath. “God. Everything. When we were at the hospital, waiting to find out if the tumor was cancerous, the doctor came out after surgery and gave us the bad news. The cancer was stage four and spreading. He told us Dad was looking at maybe six more months to live.”
    Bryan leaned closer. “You must have been devastated.”
    “I was. But at that point, it was mostly shock, disbelief. I looked around the waiting room. My sister was crying as her husband held her. My brother had his arms around his wife and my mom, the three of them clinging to each other. And I was alone.”
    Bryan frowned. “Where was Mason?”
    “At work. He’d asked me that morning if I wanted him to come. I said no.”
    “Why did you say that?”
    Laura had considered that conversation many, many times. “He’d been complaining about how busy work was, how the flu had left them down two salesmen and how he really needed to work the floor. You know his family owns Sanders’s Auto, right?”
    Bryan nodded. “I remember that from high school.”
    “Yeah. Well. He made that long speech about how rough things were at work, and then he hit me with the question about coming with me. At the time, I thought I was being an understanding, patient wife. Saying no because it seemed selfish of me to ask him to be there when things were so tough at work.”
    “That wasn’t a selfish request, Laura.”
    She grinned, though there was no humor in the expression. “I know. But I also realize that’s not why I said no. I was angry with him for asking if he had to come. Shouldn’t he have wanted to be there? Why would he fucking ask me that? My dad was dying.”
    Bryan grasped her hand and squeezed it, offering her the comfort she hadn’t received that day at the hospital. “I’m sorry he wasn’t there for you.”
    Laura shook her head, trying to shake loose the bitter thoughts. “I didn’t mean to dump that on you. Ancient history.”
    Mercifully, Bryan let the subject drop. “Is your mom doing okay?”
    Laura nodded, grateful for the reprieve. “Yeah. She still has good days and bad. In the end, I sort of saw his death as a blessing. He was suffering so much and I hated seeing him in pain. No one should ever have to live like that.”
    “Was he sick long?”
    “It seemed like a long time when we were going through it, but actually it was only a few months. He was lucid almost until the end. Knowing he was going to die gave him the chance to make peace with it and to say all the things he’d ever wanted to say. Those last few weeks we spent together were some of the best of our relationship.”
    “I’m glad you had that time with him. Sometimes death isn’t quite that kind. It sort of sneaks in and steals someone away in the blink of an eye.”
    Laura suspected Bryan was speaking from experience. “Is that what happened to your wife?”
    It occurred to Laura that while she and Bryan had been talking for nearly a month, they hadn’t really said much. Usually their conversation involved a discussion of their daily lives, memories of the past, funny little jokes or stories. They hadn’t shared anything along the lines of personal information.
    “Corinne had type one diabetes. She’d been diagnosed as a child and had learned to live with her condition, but it took its toll on her. She was quite thin, weak. I’m not sure she ever got a handle on her insulin levels. Hypoglycemia was always there, looming in the background.”
    “I’m surprised she had Trina. I thought it was dangerous for women with diabetes to have babies.”
    “Not all women, but for Corinne, yes. I tried to talk her out of getting pregnant, fought her for