Chapter 11

“Hey, you didn’t do that, I’m not hurt,” Tom said, trying to project soothingand probably not doing a great job of it. Soothing really wasn’t his forte. “You weren’t goingto hurt me. At worst, even if we’d kept going, some bruising. I’m stronger and sturdier than you think.”

“It’s not…” Gabe hitched in a breath. “It’s not about you being strong. It’s…look, Amy used to say it, all the time. She’d get these coughs in the winter, and they’d go away when it was warm, and then it took longer, and longer. And she was always ‘oh, I’m fine, Gabe, don’t worry.’ By the time she finally let a doctor look at her, she had stage four cancer, and it was about a month after the last time she told me she was fine that she died, choking and wheezing. So…I don’t want to hear fine when you’re not fine.”

Tom had known that, objectively, had known that Gabe’s wife had died too young of cancer. But he was still discovering the scars it had left on Gabe. “All right,” he said softly. “I get it.”