Chapter 15

Nathan came most evenings.

The hospice was a forty-minute drive from his apartment and an hour from his office at the worst of the traffic. He had taken the route so many times in the past eleven months that he no longer thought about which exit to take. The car drove itself there. He listened to the radio sometimes, market wrap, public radio, occasionally nothing. The drives were the only hour of his day that was not divided between the office and the room.

He came after work. He came on the weekends. He had stopped working the late hours at the office sometime in the spring and had not started again. Some of the younger associates probably resented the way he closed his laptop at five thirty. He did not care. The market would be there in the morning. He had stopped being the kind of man who let the market be the reason for anything.

The hospice staff knew him by name. The night nurses, the day nurses, the woman at the front desk who never looked up from the computer but always said good evening, Mr. Barrett without looking up. Caroline, whom he had known longest, who had been Stephanie’s day nurse since the move from the hospital in August.

He parked in the same spot most evenings. He took the elevator to the third floor. He walked the hallway. He knocked on the door of room 314 even though it was his wife’s room, because she had asked him to knock, in the early weeks, and he had not stopped.

On Tuesday he had a light day at the office. The market closed quietly. He left at four.

In the elevator going up he checked his phone. Nothing. He put the phone away. The doors opened on the third floor and he stepped out and he started down the hall toward Stephanie’s room.

He passed the elevator going down. A woman his cousin-in-law’s age was standing in front of it with her daughter, both of them with bags on their shoulders, the older woman in a dark coat and the younger woman in a wool sweater the color of bricks. The older woman looked up as he passed.

Mara, he thought. He had seen her at three or four family events across the years. He nodded. She nodded back. The daughter did not look at him. He did not look at her. He kept walking.

He registered, half a step later, that Mara was leaving. She has been here. She has been visiting. Steph has not mentioned it. Steph has been mentioning Mara’s daughter, the girl who reads aloud. The daughter must have been there with her. He filed it. He did not turn around.

He came to room 314. He knocked.

“Come in.”

He went in. Stephanie was propped up. The deep red scarf was on. There was a tiredness in her face that was not new but that was deeper than it had been on Saturday.

“You’re early.”

“Quiet day. I came when I could.”

“Good.”

He took off his coat. He laid it over the back of the chair by the window. He came to the side of the bed. He leaned down and he kissed her forehead, the way he had been kissing her forehead for months, in the place where her scarf met her skin. Her skin was cool.

“I just passed Mara at the elevator.”

“She just left.”

“Her daughter was with her.”

“Kiya.”

“Kiya.”

“She has been reading to me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I told you.”