Not long ago, I thought I had received a phone call from your father, and when it turned out not to be him, what felt like a near miss almost crushed me. When I walked up to you at school that day, you reached out, took my arm in a gentle hold with one of your small hands, and gave a sad smile.

“It’s okay, Grampy,” you told me. “We’ll be okay, the two of us.”

How do you know these things?

It is still thirty minutes until your day ends, and the parking lot is full of teachers’ cars, but there are no parents, not yet. I sit on the swing and the chains protest. The thin rubber seat pulls in tight against my hips as I sag down in the middle. I push myself gently, feet not leaving the ground. I close my eyes and remember that swaying, that freedom, forward and back, forward and back. The breeze kisses the sweat on my forehead, and I wonder if I’m sweating because of this thing inside of me that’s making me die or if I’m sweating simply because it’s hot for September.

I reach up and touch the marble-sized lump above my ear. It’s a little larger than a marble now, and my stomach drops at this new realization. Evidence of the culprit. The root. The knot, always growing.

This unusual autumn day has gone from warm to hot, but the heat is comforting. It is weight, like a gravity blanket. I remember where I was the day Mary left me, how hot it was on the lake, how the water felt too warm to swim in. John, your father, only days old, had fallen asleep on my bare chest where I lay on the stale, golden sofa in the cabin. The top of his head was covered in night-black hair, fine baby hair, and he smelled like powder and sour milk and sweet drool. His eyes were small black embers rarely revealed in those early days, his yawning mouth somehow both tiny and gaping. I looked up over that fine black hair, through the glass doors that led out to the deck. Beyond it all, beyond his hair and his smell and the heat waving up off the deck, I could see the lake, and out on the lake I could see Tom and Shirley coming, each in their own kayak. Only them. And I thought, Where on earth is Mary? And why are they coming so quickly?

I hear the thunk of the heavy metal door.

“Mr. Elias?” It is Ms. Howard, your principal.

If Mary left me forty years ago next week, that means John’s birthday is . . . today? Tomorrow? Did I miss his birthday?

“Yes?” I say without opening my eyes. I know today is Friday and that there’s no school on Monday, and I imagine my doctor going home and telling her husband, if she is married, about the old man she had to talk to today, the old man who is only fifty-eight and has anytime to three months left to live. Did I seem old to her? I imagine him drawing her close and the two of them not saying it but thinking it, how sad it would be to only have anytime to three months to live. We are all comforted by the misguided confidence that we have certain decades ahead of us.