“I can stay here.”
I put the phone down.
Miriam came and sat beside me on the sofa — not across from me, beside me — and for a while neither of us spoke.
The photographs on the wall looked back at us.
Frank young and smiling.
Frank holding a small girl up toward the camera.
Frank looking at the little girl the way people look at things they are afraid of losing.
“Did he know?” I finally asked.
“When he sent me here tonight — did he know he wasn’t going to make it through?”
“Yes,” Miriam said.
“I think he did.”
“Then why didn’t he just tell me himself?
In the room, before—”
“Because Gerald was coming back.” She said it quietly, like a fact she had been carrying for hours.
“Gerald called the hospital that afternoon.
Frank heard the nurse confirm he was on his way.
That’s why Frank sent you out.
