“I’m catching up.”
“And your instructors don’t mind?”
She glanced at Daniel. He was asleep. Then she said, very quietly, “They mind.”
Something in the way she said it stuck with me. But I didn’t ask.
I should have.
Instead, I wrapped my arms around her. “You’re so good to him.”
For half a second, she went rigid in my arms. Then she hugged me back.
“He’s had a hard time,” she said.
At the time, I thought that was devotion.
Now I know it was something else entirely. And I was about to find out exactly what.
Part 2: The Night Nobody Told Me About
By the second month, Daniel had been moved from the hospital to an inpatient rehabilitation unit. That’s where everything fell apart.
I remember that morning so clearly because it felt, for once, like a good day. Daniel had managed ten minutes with his physical therapist without swearing at her. Emma had brought him a breakfast burrito from the place near campus he loved. The two of them were watching some cooking show together when I left, and I remember thinking, We’re going to get through this. All of us.
