The whole drive there, I kept my hands folded so tightly in my lap that my knuckles turned white. My daughter was at the wheel, staring straight ahead, her face calm in the way people look when they are trying very hard not to fall apart.
I had asked her three times where we were going, and three times she had answered with some soft version of, “You’ll see soon.” By the fourth mile, that answer had started to sound less like a surprise and more like mercy.
Outside the passenger window, the city slowly thinned into quieter streets. Storefronts gave way to church lawns, then to stretches of open road lined with young trees that looked freshly planted, as if even the land out there was still trying to become something.
I knew that road. Not exactly, but enough to understand what it meant. It was the kind of road people took when they were bringing someone somewhere permanent.
I tried not to let my imagination run ahead of me, but fear has a way of sprinting when hope can barely stand. Every terrible thought I had managed to avoid for months now came crowding to the front of my mind.
My doctor had been using that tone lately. The gentle one. The voice people use when they are telling you that your body is still technically yours, but not for much longer.
My knees had gotten worse that winter. My left hand sometimes trembled when I lifted a teacup, and I had started pretending I preferred the downstairs couch because the stairs “felt silly at my age,” when the truth was that they frightened me.
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