He didn’t move, didn’t answer, couldn’t. He kept his fingers on the bridge of his nose, kept his eyes closed. If he could just sit here, he thought. If he could just sit here in the dark and listen to her voice, to the sound of her voice. He loved that sound. Mary Poppins.

“I thought—when you said you had something to tell me—I thought it might be that,” she went on quietly. “I don’t know why. It just came into my head. You look so tired sometimes. And your arm, you favor your left arm. And you just always look … so sad. Is that what it is? Are you ill? Is that why you always look like that?”

He smiled, his eyes still closed. Nodded. “Yeah,” he just managed to say. “Yeah, that’s why.” And then, quickly: “It’s bad, kid. It’s what they politely call terminal.”

She was quiet for several moments after that. Storm opened his hand now and covered his eyes with it. He felt the dampness against his palm. Shit, he thought. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. This quiet from her. And when she spoke again, her voice was cool, even, politely curious.

“Does that …? Does it frighten you? Are you frightened?”

He gave a short laugh. “Uh … well …” Lowered both his hands to his legs as he sat against the sill. He saw her watching him. “No,” he said. “Since you ask. I’m not frightened. Not really. Sometimes at night when I’m alone, a little. But not much, even then.”

“I didn’t think so. I didn’t think you would be.”

“There aren’t many symptoms—maybe the reality of it just hasn’t hit me yet. I don’t know.” He sighed heavily. “I was … To be honest, I was afraid of the doctors more than anything. I think it makes them feel better if they can pretend they’re in some kind of battle with it, even when the battle is really all over. I was afraid they’d cut me up, radiate me, poison me to death for no reason. That’s why I blew town in the first place. But …no. Not this. This doesn’t frighten me at all. It just makes me—it makes everything—really, really sad.”

After a pause, she went on—went on in the same way, still cool, still curious. “It makes you sad because …? Of regrets and that sort of thing?”