Not only about the illness.
About the secrecy.
About the fact that my first instinct had been suspicion.
About how quickly we had both become people who thought silence was protective.
One night, after Sonia was asleep and Elena was too weak to pretend she was not angry anymore, she asked me the question I had been dreading.
— If you had known sooner, would you have handled it well?
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to redeem myself with a clean answer.
But truth had already cost us too much for another lie.
— I don’t know, I said.
— I think I would have been terrified.
I think I would have tried to control everything and failed.
But you still should have let me be scared with you.
She stared at me for a long time.
Then she nodded once.
— I know.
That was the night we stopped trying to be noble and started trying to be honest.
Treatment ended in the first week of spring.
The final scan came three weeks later.
We sat in the parking lot afterward, neither of us speaking because neither of us trusted our voices.
When the doctor came back into the room smiling before she spoke, Elena grabbed my hand so hard it hurt.
Remission.
Not magic.
Not a promise.
Not the end of fear forever.
