Chapter 288. Two Years.
SEDONA
Two years have a way of folding itself into something smaller in memory than it actually was.
I was thirty-one now, fully remitted according to Dr. Mitchell's last three consecutive screenings, ranked sixty-third on the circuit, which Maria insisted on telling people was "remarkable, given the gap" in a tone that suggested she still found my entire comeback slightly miraculous despite having engineered most of it herself.
Nick was eight.
The house Dante had built for us sat on five wooded acres twenty minutes outside Seattle proper, close enough that my mother could "drop by" with a frequency that had become, in practice, almost daily, and far enough that the house genuinely felt like ours rather than an extension of the Preston property.
Dante had de
