Chapter 4

The pharmacy stop had taken twenty minutes in the dark, the fluorescent lights of the strip mall buzzing over our heads while Stellan stood silently at the counter. He had paid cash for the prescription, but he didn't stop there.

I watched him through the glass as he picked up a box of saltine crackers, a bottle of unflavored electrolyte water, and a cheap digital thermometer from the display rack. He turned to the pharmacist, leaning in slightly to ask whether the nausea medication needed to be taken on an empty stomach or with crackers.

The pharmacist gave a brief nod, handing over a small brown paper bag. Stellan tucked it into his jacket pocket without offering it to me to hold, and drove the remaining miles to the lodge in absolute silence, the radio dark.

The Eklutna Ridge Lodge sat just off the Glenn Highway, twenty miles south of the lake--a modest, timber-framed roadside property with dark wood siding and a massive stone chimney curling gray smoke into the wet evening air.

By the time we checked in, night had swallowed the valley whole.

Stellan carried our bags up the exterior wooden stairs without a word. When the front desk clerk handed us a brass key for Room 214, I braced myself for an argument about sleeping arrangements.

Instead, Stellan unlocked the door, stepped inside, and placed his canvas duffel bag on the bed farthest from mine.

"I'll take this one," he said flatly.

"I assumed you would."

The room was warm, smelling of cedar and wool. A heavy stone fireplace dominated one wall, unlit.

Two double beds stood separated by a narrow nightstand.

Stellan set the brown paper bag from the pharmacy on the nightstand. He pulled out the plastic bottle of liquid antacid, the prescription vial, the electrolyte water, and the thermometer, lining them up with meticulous, military precision against the base of the lamp.

Then he took a glass from the bathroom, filled it with tap water, and placed it directly beside the medication.

He moved with the grim, habitual focus of a man shutting down a compromised machine, keeping his physical distance while his hands anticipated every physical need I might have during the night.

Finally, he lifted the small plastic wastebasket from the desk, carried it across the room, and set it quietly on the floor right beside my side of the bed.

The small motion hit me harder than any argument could have. It was the care of a body that remembered how to protect mine, even when his mind had resolved to let me go.

My phone lit beneath my palm.

CLAIRE: You landed. Good.

Now call me before I start calling hospitals.

My cousin had always treated worry like a task she could finish. I turned the phone facedown.

If Claire heard my voice, she would know I was lying before I finished saying hello.

I headed straight for the small bathroom to wash the taste of metallic acid from my mouth.

When I came out five minutes later, Stellan was sitting on the edge of his mattress, his phone glowing in his hand. He had set a silent alarm for 2:00 AM--I caught the flash of the screen before he flipped it face down against the quilt.

"The doctor said you need rest," he said, not looking up.

"I'm fine."

"You lied to me in the diner, and then you refused the emergency care the doctor recommended. And you're bleeding out of your stomach." He raised his head, his gaze catching the dim amber glow of the bedside lamp. "Is that why you brought me back to Alaska? Because this was the last place you remember me loving you without having to be asked?"

My heart twisted violently.

The words hung in the air, sharp and unanswerable. I remembered the summer we drove this exact stretch of the Glenn Highway, windows rolled down, singing along to an old cassette tape while Stellan's right hand stayed permanently clamped over mine on the center console.

We hadn't been broken yet. We hadn't learned how to turn our fears into weapons.

I wanted to tell him he was right. I wanted to walk across the scarred wood floor, press my face against his chest, and let him hold me until the noise stopped.

But I knew how his care worked. If he knew I was dying, he wouldn't love me as his wife--he would manage me as a crisis.

I kept my distance, pulling my coat tighter around my shoulders.

"It's late, Stellan. Take the bed. We have to drive north tomorrow."

He didn't move. He sat on the edge of the mattress, watching me with a gaze so steady and perceptive it made it hard to breathe.

The next promise waited invisibly inside the plastic sleeve resting on the dresser.

Never let each other go to sleep angry.

I clicked off the bedside lamp, crawled into the cold sheets of my bed, and stared at the ceiling.

A minute passed. Then two.

Just as I thought the darkness had won, Stellan's low voice cut through the quiet room.

"Irene."

"What?"

"You don't get to sleep until you tell me one true thing."