His fingers smelled of crushed bay leaves when he touched her face; and she tried to select further words to explain her thoughts. “If I only had to ask, ‘How strong are you?’ I wouldn’t have to deliberate so long. But I’m also thinking, ‘How strong are we?’ and I can’t answer that yet.”

“It wasn’t your liminal state of being that attracted me, if that’s what you’re worrying. I’ve never seen you as a victim needing protection. To the contrary: it was your independence and self-composure I loved. The first time I saw you…was that about May? I heard you laughing and thought: what a fascinating woman. You were young, and beautiful, and staring at the real possibility of death, yet you kept your grace and humor. I wouldn’t have had your courage. You hung on to hope, and you never felt sorry for yourself for a moment.”

The corners of her mouth twitched upward as he said this. She remembered the precise hour too. Alex was someone who seemed to drink up all the light in a room, and his physical presence had a powerful luminosity for her at a dark time. “So you quite liked the old me?”

Alex ran his hand through her hair and nodded. He wanted to find her soul in her eyes. “What’s troubling you?”

His kindness—the way he looked right into her like this—often made Lucy feel vulnerable, almost uncomfortably naked. She stood and crossed the kitchen to look away and regain some physical autonomy. Then, when she could face him again, she said simply: “I think I have your brother’s heart.”

It was perhaps thirty seconds, but it seemed to Lucy as if whole minutes froze.

“Say something, Alex.” She had physically put space between them and was uncertain how to bridge the gap verbally. When she examined his face, searching out his thoughts, they were a mystery. She tried another tack. “I thought, perhaps, you’d know who my donor was?”

Tenderness answered her, rather than shock. He saw she was grappling with something enormous. He shook his head quietly: “I wasn’t there. It’s at best only a detail for the coordinator’s knowledge—although sometimes some aspects of the donor’s life, or cause of death, might be relevant to the whole team.” He seemed calm. “But remember, at that moment I wasn’t a part of that team. Why would you think it was Will’s?”

“Well, the date matches.” She broke off and saw Alex nodding, thinking, and she continued, “But it’s much more. When I think back over the last few months, I don’t understand why I didn’t realize sooner. Will was obviously going to have been an organ donor with you for a brother.”