“Got it. Thanks, Ben.”
“How exactly are you in the country with a sick little kid on a Sunday night?” Ben asked, not especially surprised, more curious than anything.
“Long story. I’ll tell you later. Thanks again.”
“All right. Call if anything changes.”
Alex went back and repeated everything to Kate word for word. She gave Lily the medicine. The child swallowed, made a face, and closed her eyes again. Kate checked the temperature once more.
“102.6.”
“Let’s do the washcloths,” Alex said.
They worked side by side. He wet towels in cool water, she wiped Lily’s forehead, neck, arms, legs. Then they switched. Lily never fully woke, just murmured now and then. Once she said “Mom” softly, and Kate answered, “I’m here.”
By one in the morning the fever had started to come down. 101.3. Then 100.4. At two, Kate sank into the chair beside the bed like a person whose strength had simply run out all at once. Alex stood by the window.
“It’s dropping,” he said.
“I see that.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “Thank you for calling the doctor.”
“No need.”
“There is.” She looked at him. “You didn’t have to do any of this.”
Alex didn’t answer. He was looking at Lily. The child was sleeping more evenly now, breathing quietly. Her cheeks were still flushed, but no longer burning.
They sat in silence for another hour or so, each with their own thoughts. Kate got up now and then to check the temperature, straighten the blanket. Alex changed out the towels. They spoke very little, only when necessary. But the silence between them was different now than it had been the first day. Not tense. Not wary. Just two people doing one thing together, and that was enough.
At four in the morning Lily opened her eyes, looked at her mother. Then at Alex. Long, sleepy gaze.
“You’re not leaving,” she said.
Not a question. Just a statement, quiet and matter-of-fact. Then she closed her eyes again.
Alex felt something inside him—something he had kept shut for a long time and with great discipline—give way. Not break, exactly. Crack. Quietly, without drama. He looked at the little girl sleeping peacefully again and felt something warm on his face. It took him a second to realize he was crying. Not loudly. Just tears. The ones he had held back since his mother’s funeral, for more than a year, through meetings and flights and business dinners. They had simply found a moment when he wasn’t looking.
Kate said nothing. She didn’t look away, and she didn’t pretend not to notice. She just put her hand lightly over his for a second. The way you do when words would only get in the way.
Outside, dawn was beginning. Lily’s temperature was 99.1.
Monday morning came in gray and quiet. Alex hadn’t slept. At some point during the night he had moved out to the porch and sat in an old chair with a sagging seat, watching the darkness outside slowly turn gray, then pale, then faintly gold. Somewhere far off a rooster crowed. Then another. The town woke up without hurry.
Kate came out onto the porch a little after seven-thirty. She looked at him without speaking, then went into the kitchen. A few minutes later she came back with two mugs of coffee. She had found an unopened jar of instant in the cabinet. She set one mug beside him, kept the other, and sat on the porch windowsill.
“How’s Lily?” he asked.
“98.4. Sleeping.”
Kate wrapped both hands around her mug.
“I checked at six.”
“Good.”
They drank coffee in silence. The morning cold pressed against the porch windows, but inside it was warm. During the night Alex had figured out how to feed the woodstove, with the help of the stacked firewood in the shed. He didn’t really know how to run a woodstove. The last time he had done it was probably twenty-five years ago, as a teenager spending summers here. But his hands had remembered.
“You didn’t sleep at all,” Kate said…
