I felt desperate, restless, lost. I needed to help, but there was nothing to do. I needed to move, but there was nowhere to go. I was more exhausted than I’ve ever been, but I couldn’t rest.

When Diana and Josie had crochet club, I made myself go sit near them.

They wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened at the fire. They wanted to figure out why a seasoned guy like DeStasio would have put us all in danger like that—and why he would lie about it afterward. They pieced clues together and analyzed details and floated theories. I participated, but in a strange, detached way—talking, and answering questions, and providing clues, but only halfheartedly, as if I were in shock. It all mattered, I supposed, but nothing really mattered until I knew Owen was okay.

Still, we now had a pretty good theory on who my stalker had been. I just didn’t exactly have the energy to care.

It was all I could do to stay away from the hospital.

* * *

A WEEK WENT by.

I stayed home. I updated my charts on Owen’s health. I waited for texts. I slept late and stayed up late, worrying too hard to fall asleep.

Then, on Friday, my mom had a doctor’s appointment. A checkup.

And she insisted she needed me to go with her.

“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head.

“You can,” she said. “And you will.”

I hadn’t showered in a week. “I’m useless.”

“Look,” she said, “if you don’t drive me, I’m not going.”

Well played.

I drove her. It was time for Diana to get a scan to see how she was doing, and Diana resented it like hell. “There’s no point,” she said in the waiting room.

“We have to know your status,” I said. “We need to know what’s going on.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why do we need to know that?”

Why did anybody need to know anything? “Because we do.”

“This is a waste of a whole morning,” she said.

“It’s going to give us critical information about what’s going on with you.”

“Critical, how? Is there even a possibility that we’ll do anything differently?”

There was a possibility, I figured. It was possible that hearing how much the tumor had grown would inspire her to consent to experimental treatments. A little fear could be very motivational. And then it would also be possible that one of those treatments might buy her some time.

I couldn’t help but root for that, now, after spending all these months with her. Was it wrong to want a little more time, even if there were downsides? Maybe it was selfish. She had chosen quality of life over quantity with no hesitation. In theory, it made sense. In practice, I just wanted her to hang on as long as she could.

“They bought all those big fancy machines,” she said, “and now they have to find a way to pay for them.”

“Are you really arguing against CT scans? They’re a miracle of modern technology. They save lives all the time.”

“Not mine,” she said.

All in all, adding up drive time to the little outpatient center, waiting room time, and time for the scan, it took about two hours before the radiologist called us in to give us some information.

My mother had all her clothes back on by then, and she was so eager to get home that she almost left without waiting for the report.

When it came, the report was not at all what we’d expected.

The doc, who was about my mother’s age, shook her head in wonder as she showed us the films. “You’re not going to believe this,” the doctor said. “I don’t believe it myself.” She brought up two side-by-side scan images on a screen and gestured between them. “There has been no growth at all since your last scan,” she said.

Diana and I blinked at the screen.

“When was your last scan?” I finally asked my mom.

“Just before I called you in Austin,” Diana said.

“There’s been no growth in all that time?” I asked.

“Not that we can measure.”

I looked at the doctor. “I don’t understand. A ‘very malignant’ tumor just stopped growing?”

“Sometimes this happens, but it’s highly uncommon,” the doc said.

“Sometimes what happens?” I asked.

“An aggressive tumor like this will just sort of take a break.”

“For how long?” I asked.

She shook her head, like there was no way of knowing. “It’s so rare, we don’t have much data. Only anecdotal accounts.”

I looked over at Diana and her blue floral eye patch. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was just impassively listening, taking in the information. But I could tell from something about the crinkles at the edge of her one good eye that she was pleased.

“You can’t take credit for this,” I said on the drive back. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I can take credit for it, and I will.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little cocky?” I asked. “To think that you can just personally tell a malignant tumor what to do?”

She touched her fingers to the car window. “I think it’s the opposite of cocky. I am humbled by the wisdom of the body to take care of itself.”

“We don’t even know what caused the pause,” I said.

“That’s right, we don’t,” she said. “So that leaves me free to choose an explanation.”

“Maybe you’re just very, very lucky.”

“I am definitely very, very lucky.”

The doctor had given Diana a new prescription for some super-strong painkillers, not believing that she hadn’t even dipped into the first bottle. While we drove, she folded the paper into an origami bird.

When I noticed what she was doing, I said, “You might need that, you know.”

“Nah,” she said. “This stuff’ll kill ya.”

“So will a brain tumor.”

She gave me a look. “I read up on these pills. Nasty stuff. You get hooked, even if you follow all the rules. Then you get angry. You start lying. Your whole personality changes.”

“I know,” I said, nodding. We’d had to study it all for paramedic certification. She wasn’t wrong. “Even people who know better get addicted.”

She nodded, like wasn’t it a shame, but I suddenly found myself sitting very still—looking straight ahead at the answer to a question I didn’t even know I was asking. Even people who knew better got addicted.

Maybe DeStasio was addicted to painkillers.

It wasn’t all that uncommon with firefighters, given all their on-the-job injuries. DeStasio’s back pain was legendary—and so was his ability to endure it. Add to that the loss of his son, his problem drinking, his wife leaving—and the pieces seemed to fit together. Possibly.

I felt a strange twinge of worry. Not that DeStasio deserved it.

“It just hit me, right now, that DeStasio might be addicted to painkillers,” I said then, out loud.

My mom looked over. “Why?”

I walked her through my thinking.

“That’s a pretty good list,” she said.

“Maybe I should go check on him this afternoon,” I said.