Harper got better. Then she got worse. In January of this year, the doctors used a word I’d never heard before.
Relapse.
The leukemia was back. The chemo that had worked the first time wasn’t working the second.
Wyatt didn’t talk about it. He just started staying up later. He’d be on his laptop or his phone at midnight, at one, at two. When I walked past his room, he’d flip his phone over on the bedspread.
I figured it was Harper. I figured it was a crush, no matter what he said.
I didn’t ask.
I should tell you about Harper’s parents.
I barely speak to them.
I don’t even know how to explain why. In eight years, I’ve been inside their house exactly once. A birthday party, when the kids were six. Harper’s mother, Diane, answered the door and took Wyatt’s present out of my hands and said, “Thank you, we’ll bring him home at five,” and closed the door. I sat in my car at the curb for a minute, confused.
