But you won’t be raising her for long. She’s only sixteen, and you’re almost done being a mom. You’ll never see her graduate from high school or head off to college. You won’t watch her get married. You’ll never hold a grandchild in your arms.

And Pat. You finally found a man who treats you right, a man you could grow old loving, and you won’t get to do that either.

The oncologist hadn’t wanted to give her a time frame. “I’ve found that it’s not helpful,” he told her. “At least not this early.”

“But you said we weren’t catching it as early as you would’ve liked.”

“I just mean, listing a time frame can cause unrealistic expectations.”

“I don’t want unrealistic ones, I want realistic ones. That’s why I’m asking. That’s what I want to know. Tell me the truth,” she pressed him. “How much time do I have left?”

At first, he’d couched his answer in phrases like “aggressive treatment strategies” and “promising new drugs,” and she’d listened, she had, but when he was done, she repeated her question again. “How long do I have, Doctor? Be honest.”

“With this type of cancer, at this stage . . .”

She waited him out.

“Three to six months,” he said at last, but his voice faltered a little. “But we can never tell for sure. Some people beat it and live a long and happy life.”

“And some don’t make it three months.”

A long pause. “That’s right. Some don’t.”

She hadn’t told her husband yet, hadn’t told her daughter. And now, as she looked at the statue of Christ carrying his cross, this man of God, this Savior, this one who she believed was both risen and here by her side, she did not feel his presence at all.

Christie believed in miracles, or at least she said that she did, she thought that she did, and so now, unless there was a miracle here, unless God healed her, she would die from this cancer that he had allowed to have free rein in her body.

How could he be so present and yet seem so distant? How could he be both so strikingly real and so glaringly absent? My God, my God, she thought, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus’s words from the cross—

My God.

Cried out into the lonely day—

My God.

Uttered by a brutalized and dying man.

Why have you forsaken me?

And the Father refused to reply. There was no miracle that day, only death. Only grief. Only the power of the grave.

Sunday would see a resurrection, but Friday would leave a corpse in its wake.

Three to six months.

A corpse in its wake.