"Anything."

The text read: "Jules. I know it's been forever. Michael is sick. It's bad. He's asking for you. I'm not jealous anymore. I promise. Please come."

Julianne couldn't speak. She simply sat there, her hand still wrapped around his cooling fingers, until Lucy stopped playing and set down her bow.

Three weeks later, alone in her apartment with a bottle of cheap sauvignon blanc and a VHS copy of The Philadelphia Story , she sobbed so violently her neighbor banged on the wall. After that, she got better. Not perfect. Better.

He squeezed her hand. "Nothing. Everything. I want you to be here when I go. And I want you to promise me something afterward."

Julianne considered the question with the patience of someone who'd spent fifteen years answering it in her dreams. "No," she said finally. "I regret that I wanted to fight. I regret that I thought love was a competition. But you and Kimmy—you built something real. Something I wouldn't have known how to build. I was too busy being clever and afraid."

They didn't touch. Not yet. There was a chasm between them, and it wasn't just the hospital sheets. It was the fifteen years of almost . The wedding where she’d sung "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" and meant every word. The phone call on his fortieth birthday when she'd dialed his number, then hung up before the first ring. The letter she'd written— "I was wrong. I loved you first. I loved you best." —that she'd burned in her kitchen sink.