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her to think about the decision she had made and what the ricochet effect of that would be. Gabe would left alone when it was all said and done, for the first time in nearly twenty-two years, he’d be on his own. But not alone or carefree or able to move on, he’d be solely responsible for the nurturing of a child. He would have to have all the answers and make all the choices, which would either lead or deter Mia. She tried to comprehend the weight of that and what it must feel like for him to know all the was coming, hanging over his head like a sharp guillotine ready to sever him free from the comfortable rhythm of their life, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to change things. She couldn’t picture it, simply could not understand how that would feel. If the situations were reversed, and this was Gabe making the choice to take himself away from her and Mia, she would have mourned and been devastated under the weight of that. Jenna knew that, but that’s all she knew. She didn’t know how she’d cope or rebound or carry on. She understood the unfairness of the situation. Nothing was fair anymore. Someone had to say ‘enough,’ the fact that it had to be Jenna was just another ounce of inequality heaped onto the pile.
    For so many years she and Gabe had been a unit, a tied pair, twined together through marriage and choice. They had deferred to each other, finished the other’s sentences and presented, always, a united front. That would all vanish when she did.
    Jenna sunk to the floor and hefted her knees to her chest, crying heavy, thick, silent sobs into her robe.
    Determined, she had been so determined. Mia, Mia, Mia. Her only concern, her only reason. Gabe, somewhere along the way, got lost. Not a literal sense, but in the ever after that was coming, he had managed to become lost.
    His loss failed to resonate with her like Mia’s loss did. He’d be a widower at forty-six. Alone with his young daughter. He’d bear the teenage years without a comrade in arms, someone to understand and lessen the load. He’d host the sleepovers, correct the papers, mull over the impending decisions of which college or car or fair curfew. The passage of time would come to mean different and new things in the challenges and triumphs he’d embrace and endure all alone. Or maybe not alone, but with someone new, someone who was not her.
    As Jenna pealed back the layers of her choice and the end and the grief, life shifted beneath her with a gravitational pull all its own.
    Once, right after Jenna had first been diagnosed, she had attended the local support group. It was held in the basement of the old Methodist Church in the heart of town, open to everyone twice a month. It hadn’t been her thing, to sit in a circle discussing the weight of breast cancer and the fall out. She still believed she didn’t belong there. These ghostly women, with their terry cloth turbans and oversized T-shirts scared her, specters of the future and the less fortunate. She had sat quietly respectful, listening and watching, without ever saying a single word.
    There was a woman. Jenna had watched her climb from the passenger seat of an ancient car when she was walking up the steps of the old building; she had wanted to turn around and offer her a hand, but the woman’s husband rushed around from the driver’s seat and carefully escorted her up the stairs, where she stood patiently, holding herself up against the chipped handrail, waiting for him to park and help her the rest of the way. Now, she sat there with everyone else, small and sick, her bald head swaddled in a turban, a sweater hung loose from her fading shape; her bones looked sharp and knobby under the tattered material, a faded and cracked leather pocketbook clutched between two frail, translucent hands resting on her lap. Her skin was a pallid yellow, visible blue veins ran circuits under her skin, and her eyes were watery pools of grey, pale and glassy. Her breath came in low