“Breast cancer,” I say. “She was in remission for a while, and we thought she’d beaten it, and then it came back stronger than ever. Even after she resigned from school, I used to go and visit her at home. Her husband was really nice. Toward the end, he barely let her walk anywhere. He carried her up and down their two flights of stairs.”
I look at him out of the corner of my eyes. We’re wandering aimlessly now, which is fine by me. I just want to be alone with him. Between the quiet and the dark and the solitude, it feels like I can finally say things I’ve been waiting a long time to say.
“Sometimes, it feels like life is so unfair. The bad get away with everything and the good live tragic lives and have tragic deaths. How is that right?”
“It’s not right,” Daniil agrees. “But the world
