Ryke and I stayed where we were. Not filling the silence. Letting her be in it.
When she finally moved, it was to slide down the wall until she was sitting on the corridor floor with her back against it and her knees up and both hands in her lap, the phone still in one of them.
She looked at the ceiling.
"He never told me," she said.
We waited.
"I've been — everything I did. Leaving. The post. The gate, today, standing there deciding whether to let him in." She looked at the ceiling with the specific quality of someone doing the arithmetic of a relationship they suddenly have to recalculate from scratch. "He was dying this whole time and he never—"
She stopped.
"He was trying not to use it," I said quietly. "He didn't want you to make decisions out of grief."
Her jaw tightened. "Th
