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“I know.” He cleared his throat a second time, as if he was struggling to keep his voice steady too. “It feels that way to me too.”

“Maybe—” She cut herself off abruptly.

“Maybe what?”

She sniffed and turned her hand over so she could hold his hand. “I know you get to make your own choices about yourhealth. I want that for you, and I’ll support you in your choices even if I don’t agree with them. But… But…”

Jude’s silence felt full. Speaking. His hand grew still in her grip.

“But…” She tried to finish the thought but couldn’t. She was so afraid of hurting him, of causing him to throw up his old walls again and shut her out.

“You think I should ask about treatment?”

“No!” She gulped. “I mean, if there was something that had a hope of working, I would want that, yes. But that’s not what I’m suggesting.” She turned in her chair so she was facing him. Couldn’t stop herself from babbling on. “It just feels like we’re flying blind here. I know that according to the original timeline you were given, you only have a couple of weeks left. But those were just general estimates. It’s not written in stone. And despite a few terrible episodes, you still don’t seem to be… to be declining the way I would have expected.”

He sat quietly for a minute, breathing thickly and staring at her. “What would you have expected?”

“I don’t know. But if a tumor is progressing, wouldn’t it start to affect your brain in ways other than headaches? Maybe your speech or your thinking abilities or your behavior or something? The only time you’ve seemed even confused is when you’ve had the headaches, and that was probably from the combination of the pain and the medication. So maybe… maybe it’s progressing slower than they thought. Maybe we have more time. If you at least go in for them to do another scan, we could… we could have an updated timeline.”

He was thinking. She could see it in his expression. He was taking her seriously. He murmured, “You think the updated timeline would help me?”

“Maybe? I think it could. But I know for sure that it would help me.” Her voice broke. She turned her head, twisted her features, and breathed.

He made a soft, guttural sound.

When she turned back to him, he was visibly struggling with emotion too.

“If you really don’t want it, if you think it would make things worse for you, I understand.” She quickly swiped a tear away, hoping he wouldn’t see it.

He did. Of course. He ran his thumb down the trail of her tear on her cheek. “Okay,” he rasped.

She blinked. “Okay?”

“Okay. I’ll go in. I still don’t want treatments that are going to make me sick and have little hope for success, but I’ll go in to get an updated prognosis.”

“You will?” she asked with an embarrassing squeak in her voice.

“Yes. I’ll do it for you.”

“But I don’t want you to?—”

“It’s okay. I think…” He sucked in air through his nose and glanced away for a few seconds before he met her gaze again. “I think I’m still learning how to be a husband. I was set on dying this way. Doing it exactly the way I want because that’s what I chose. But I was wrong. I’m not the only one going through this. You are too.”

Eve was crying for real now. She reached over to put a hand on Jude’s face.

“And I want to do what’s best for you.”

“But you’re the one who’s dying, Jude. If you really don’t want to?—”

“I’ve made my decision, angel. When we get home, I’ll make an appointment and we’ll go in to talk to the doctor and get an updated scan of the tumor. Because the thing that I’m learningis this. No matter what I’ve always thought about my own self-sufficiency, what’s best for you is usually what’s best for me too.”

Two days later, they were sitting in Jude’s doctor’s office, waiting for him to come in.

They were side by side in the two chairs across from the desk, and they hadn’t said a word since the nurse had shown them in.

As soon as they landed, while his father’s hired car was driving them home, Jude had found the number to the doctor’s office and called it right then—she suspected so he wouldn’t lose his nerve by delaying. He’d said the receptionist sounded relieved that he was calling, gave him orders for bloodwork and an MRI the following day, and scheduled him for an appointment with the doctor at seven a.m. the day after that.

The speedy appointment times were clearly outside the regular pacing for medical tests and appointments, so the office must have squeezed him in for both the MRI and the appointment.