Page 45 of Until You

“What did you eat?”

A pause that lasts two beats too long. “A cracker. Some crackers.”

I stare at the side of her bowed head. “Crackers.” I keep my voice flat. “You’re at a barbecue. There is a hundred and fifty pounds of brisket, twenty yards behind you. And you ate crackers. I made you a plate.”

She pushes against me, leaning herself back up. “Thank you for the plate. It was very thoughtful of you.” She shakes her head. “I was nervous. When I’m nervous my stomach—” She stops. I can hear the exact moment she realizes she’s said too much. The words just cut off, like a switch flipped.

I wait.

“Your stomach what?” I ask. Quiet. Careful.

“Nothing. It’s nothing. I just get lightheaded sometimes. Low blood sugar. It’s a thing.” She lifts her head slowly. The color is coming back to her face, but her eyes are still careful. Guarded in a way that’s become familiar—the exact look she gets when she’s managing information. Deciding what to give me and what to keep. “See? Fine. Totally fine.”

She is not fine.

And I’m done pretending I don’t know why.

Every piece I’ve been filing away for a week—every morning when she’s sick down the hall. The water tonight. The ridiculous number of open cracker packages at the house. All of those pieces of information assemble themselves in my chest with the solid, definitive click of something falling into place.

I’ve known. I think I’ve known for days. I just wasn’t ready to know I knew.

“I’m taking you to the hospital,” I say.

She turns quickly to face me. “What? No.”

“You almost collapsed.”

“I got dizzy. There’s a difference.”

“You couldn’t hold yourself upright.”

“I was leaning. Strategically.”

I look at her. “Into me. At a forty-five-degree angle. With your eyes rolled back.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

It is not an exaggeration. I watched her eyes go and felt my heart stop. I’ve done plenty of things on our ranch that should have toughened me past that kind of reaction. Apparently not. Not when it comes to Cora.

I look at her straight on, and I let her see it—the thing I don’t usually put on my face because I don’t usually let it get there.

Worry. Real worry. The kind you can’t dress up as anything else.

“Something is wrong,” I say. “And you’re going to tell me what it is.”

“Nothing is wrong, Oliver.”

“I’m getting in and driving you to Saddle Creek Memorial, whether you like it or not.”

“I got lightheaded.”

“Darlin’, you looked like you were about to meet Jesus.”

She pulls in a breath. “I wasn’t going to meet Jesus. I was going to meet the ground. Briefly.”

I reach over to palm her cheek. Those pale green eyes track my movement. She calculates, measures, and considers all her options and comes up empty. She is exhausted. She has been exhausted, and I’ve been watching it through walls and closed doors and purple-ink sticky notes, and I am done watching.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” she says.