"You can't run that place alone forever."
"Good thing forever hasn't started yet," Mateo answered. "Call me when you know something, brother. And Jack? Don't apologize for being a dad."
Jack hung up and stared at the phone. Mateo had never said the word brother casually. The two men had spent twenty years insulting each other's welding, arguing over engine parts, and pretending the shop could survive any problem if they worked hard enough. Now Mateo had offered to carry its entire weight without asking when Jack would pick his half up again.
By ten, their neighbor, Rose Porter, arrived with a canvas tote full of clothes, a thermos of homemade soup, and Lily's battered astronomy notebook. Rose was sixty-nine and had lived next door to the Mercers since before Jack and Mara bought the house. She had been a substitute grandmother to Lily, a stern defender of the neighborhood's stray cats, and the person who taught Jack that braids were not a problem best solved with a rubber band and optimism.
Rose saw Jack's face and stopped making cheerful conversation. She took his hand, pulled him into a chair, and sat beside him without asking him to explain the machines. When he finally spoke, he told her what Claire had said about the heart and the possibility of a transplant if it did not recover. Rose closed her eyes for a moment, then opened the notebook she had brought.
Inside were Lily's drawings of planets with unlikely colors, careful lists of facts copied from library books, and plans for a homemade rocket made from cardboard tubes. On the final page she had written, in uneven purple letters, THINGS TO DO WHEN I AM BIG ENOUGH. The list included walk on the moon, invent a robot that washes dishes, build Grandpa a new knee even though he said the old one worked fine, and take Dad to the ocean so he could see water with no other side.
Jack traced the last sentence with his thumb. They had never been to the ocean together. Work always needed doing, the truck always required something, and summers disappeared into small expenses that seemed more urgent than travel. Mara had wanted to take Lily to the coast when she turned five. After Mara died, Jack had promised himself they would go when the business was stable, then when the loan was paid, then when winter ended. The promise had become a place he kept moving just out of reach.
"She's got a long list," Rose said softly.
"I know."
"Then don't go crossing things off in your head just because you're scared."
Jack looked at her. "I'm not crossing anything off."
Rose squeezed his hand. "You are. I know that face. It was the same face you wore when Mara died, when you thought surviving one loss meant another one was waiting around the corner. Lily needs you here, not three months ahead in the worst place your mind can imagine."