She didn't ask him to stay.
She just didn't ask him to leave.
There was a difference and they both understood it without saying so. Julia got a blanket from the hall closet the spare one, grey and soft, the kind she kept for her sister's visits and set it on the couch without comment. Daniel took off his jacket and folded it over the armrest and that was that.
Julia checked on Nora twice before midnight.
Fever was down slightly. Breathing steady. The small lamp casting its familiar warm circle across the room.
She should have slept.
She lay in the dark and listened to the apartment the particular nighttime sounds she knew by heart. The refrigerator's quiet hum. The occasional car below. The building settling into itself.
And underneath all of it, the sound of someone else breathi
