“Did he have hair?”
She looked at me sharply. “Yes.”
“So before chemotherapy.”
Wade shifted his weight.
I noticed.
“You know when this was.”
He nodded once. “Before his first palliative cycle.”
I turned back to Elise. “What happened?”
She stared at the wristband in my hand. “I knocked until he opened the door. He tried to shut it when he saw me.”
That sounded like Randall.
Even dead, that sounded like him so perfectly that my chest hurt.
“What did you say?”
“What do you think?” Her eyes finally met mine. “I said he was a coward. I said you were vomiting so hard the blood vessels had broken around your eyes. I said you kept apologizing to me for needing help, and meanwhile he was hiding in a rental house like some man who’d been married six months instead of thirty-five years.”
Jonah whispered, “Jesus.”
“I wasn’t polite.”
