“She was in love with me,” he says, seemingly out of nowhere, gripping the handles of two coffee mugs. “Not Decker or—” he looks at my wall chart “—whoever the hell Mitchell Heath is.”

“Very funny. Can I have a little cream, please?”

“Look, I clearly wasn’t planning on having this conversation with you this morning, but you seem adamant,” he says. “So here’s the truth: I’m the one who backed off on things with Gemma. I liked her, but not as much as she liked me. So I sidelined her. Like I did with every girl when I was nineteen years old.”

“Did you go out late last night after work? If so, I think you still might be drunk,” I playfully accuse him.

“Stone sober, actually.” Clearly not in a joking mood. “I don’t like to drink so soon after losing a patient. It’s a dark habit a lot of doctors fall into.”

“Where’s the urn? I should go,” I say, not feeling like going tit for tat on whose loss is worse.

“You don’t need to go, Charlotte. I was just trying to—”

“I’m sorry about your patient, Brian. I really am. I, of all people, know that death isn’t easy. I know all about the dark habits people—not just doctors, mind you—fall into when you lose someone. But the reality is, tomorrow you get to go back to work, and chances are, there will be new problems for you to solve. Problems you get to check off the list and move on from. I wake up tomorrow and that urn is still my problem and still not going anywhere.”

“I’ve offered a solution for rehoming the urn,” he reminds me. “You’ve ignored it.”

“Buying a crypt at some fancy place doesn’t just make my problems go away. You can’t just solve them on the spot for me.”

“Hey, I didn’t buy it. And I said you didn’t have to go with that, remember?”

“Then why did you even put a hold on it in the first place?”

“Because for some reason, you seem stalled with this whole urn thing. You’re a strong person. The strongest I know. And it pains me to see you this way—stuck. I was just trying to do something—anything, really—to show you moving forward is actually a possibility here. And I’m not just talking about helping you with things with the urn either. What about your meeting with Warren? How’d that go?”

“My meeting with Warren? Holmgren? How do you know about that?”

“Warren’s kid was a patient of mine before he moved their entire family up to San Fran. I knew he was in tech and saw on Facebook he was in town for the weekend for Hamilton, so I called in a last-minute favor and he did me a solid by calling your work and pretending to have just happened upon you in a magazine. I thought he could help you with your app thing.”

“My goodness, why are you trying to do everything for me? I didn’t grow up like you and Decker, okay? I’m not used to things just getting handed to me and I don’t want to start that now. If you talk to your buddy again, do us both a favor and tell him he doesn’t have to take on this charity case, will you? And also, I’m calling bullshit. I don’t think you think I’m strong at all. In fact, you clearly think the exact opposite. That I’m just a weak little girl who had a bad thing happen to her and now she needs things delivered to her on a silver platter. I mean, really, what are you compensating for?”