Thomas twists the hem of his shirt. “Is she in a lot of pain?”

“Not anymore, and we can ensure she’s comfortable with the right medications, but—”

“I’m not ready,” Thomas admits.

The doctor nods. “I understand. We’ll fill Chris’s prescriptions here. When you are ready? We can come to you, if you’d like. A favorite place . . .”

“I kept her indoors,” Thomas says, his voice breaking.

“Her favorite place is a person,” I say. A tear dribbles down Thomas’s cheek, and the urge to wipe it away is hard to suppress.

“She’ll feel much better with meds on board,” the vet says and stands. “But just to be clear, she is living on borrowed time.”

The vet shakes my hand. I hold hers for an extra moment. She was a single mother . . . is about to become a grandmother. Her son will name the baby after her. I don’t know if any of that is true, or if it’s an attempt to find light in this dismal moment, but my mind, without the pressure of shows or the crutch of research feels more . . . facile, receptive.

It’s dusk by the time we drive back to Portland. The monochromatic day darkens without ever releasing a single ray of sunshine. I drive and Thomas holds Chris on his lap. She does seem better, more alert, and bats Moose’s nose when he drops his head over the seat to check on her.

Thomas sighs. “I can’t recall the last time I cried.”

What about when your dad and Deacan died? I hesitate then opt to help him regain his composure. “Not even when your last girlfriend broke up with you?”

He gives me a side-eye. “How do you know that I didn’t break up with her?”

“Just a guess.”

“Why do you think she dumped me?”

“You’re emotionally unavailable?” I venture.

“Bingo.”

He rubs beneath Chris’s chin and she purrs. Once again, I’m drawn to his hands.

“What about you?” Thomas asks.

I admit, “I can connect with total strangers, yet intimate relationships ultimately elude me.”

“Maybe,” Thomas says, “if you let people get too close, you’d have to answer the hard questions, and they’d really know you.”

Seven different therapists who never lasted more than five months, only a few casual boyfriends, no good friends, a handful of one-night stands. “Maybe.”

We’re both quiet for a few minutes as the truth settles. “Can you grab the envelope Dad gave me, show me those figures again?” I ask. Thomas reaches into the glove box, empties the envelope onto my palm. A woman in a straw hat, a little girl in a white sundress dotted with pink flowers, and a broken swing set. “They were in the snow globe, in my dream.”

“What do you think that means?”

If you let people get too close, you’d have to answer the hard questions, and they’d really know you . . .

I close my fingers over the plastic woman, little girl, fractured swing set. “I don’t know. But that snow globe, these figures? They were my real life.”