Healthy.
Annoyingly energetic before coffee.
There was nothing I could have done.
Everyone told me that.
The doctor.
My parents.
The grief counselor.
Nora.
Martin, while standing three feet inside my office and looking terrified of touching anything.
I knew it was true.
Knowing and believing were apparently managed by different departments.
Now I stood in the women’s bathroom on the thirty-first floor of Johnson & Calder, gripping the edge of a marble sink while laughter escaped me in small, broken bursts.
The door opened.
Nora came in.
She locked it behind her.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
It was the first time I had answered the question honestly in weeks.
She approached slowly.
Nora was twenty-six too.
I tried not to think about that.
She was relentlessly competent, capable of locating any document in under thirty seconds, and kept emergency granola bars in her desk. She had quietly cancelled three meetings the day I returned from bereavement leave without asking anyone’s permission.
She leaned against the sink beside me.
“I can reschedule the presentation.”
“I don’t think Modern Trust can wait.”
“Modern Trust has waited this long.”
I laughed again.
This one sounded almost normal.
Then I started crying.
Nora opened her arms.
