She smiled at him, then got up from her chair. “Come to bed, handsome. I’ll relax you. And I’ll clean the kitchen afterward.”

“Winning on all fronts today.” He stood up and wrapped her in his arms, and Lauren felt, as she always did, that this was the best place in the world. Right against his neck, smelling his nice Josh smell, slipping her hands up his lean back, feeling the slide of his muscles. When he kissed her, it was slow and warm, and she felt everything in her rise and lean into him, from the hairs on the back of her neck to the tugging deep in her stomach.

They still had this. Desire, attraction, affection, lust . . . and love, that golden light that seemed to wrap around the two of them, shielding them from the outside world.

WHEN HE LEFT the next day, Lauren savored the house, wandering from room to room, looking out at the ocean in a state of wonder. Pebbles, who took her Australian shepherding heritage seriously, stuck to her heels. Around three, they took a nap, and when Lauren woke up, she checked her O2 sat and found it was on the low side. She put in the cannula and turned on her oxygen, then sat on the deck with a blanket around her shoulders and sipped some wine as she listened to the ocean.

It had been a year and a half since her diagnosis. It seemed longer. In hindsight, she could see that the IPF had been there for years before Dr. Bennett gave it a name. So, assuming it had started around age twenty-three, the first time she could definitively remember feeling short of breath for no reason, she’d been living with this for almost five years.

The life expectancy of most IPF patients was three to five years. But she was young and otherwise healthy, and she was a damn good patient, complying with everything and then some—yoga, meditation, exercise, healthy foods, Chinese herbs, respiratory therapy. So there was plenty of reason to think she’d live years longer. That she and Josh could come back to this house every summer for a few weeks. That they could celebrate her thirtieth birthday here, and her fortieth. She’d made friends with Charlene, another young woman on the IPF forum, and Char had just gone to Australia and swum with dolphins off the Great Barrier Reef. So there.

A seagull drifted down from an air current and landed on the deck post. Pebbles cocked her head but didn’t bark.

Seagulls were lovely. Lauren had never understood why people called them rats of the sky (pigeons held that title, in her opinion). No, seagulls were impressive, flying like no other, diving, fishing, bobbing on the water. Calm and fearless. If she had to pick a Patronus, seagull would be in the running. Maybe part of her experience in the Great Beyond could be seagull-for-a-day.