“I know it wasn’t,” Sienna said. “I panicked. Uncle Roy offered to drive me, and it just seemed easier than figuring out how to ask you the right way.”
⸻
Roy, standing quietly near the window through most of this, finally spoke. “I should have called you myself, Paige. I let Sienna talk me into keeping it quiet, telling myself it was just until Gordon figured out how to have the harder conversation with you. That’s on me as much as anyone.”
⸻
I sat with all of it for a long moment, the anger I’d been carrying since Thursday afternoon slowly reshaping itself into something considerably more complicated once I understood the full picture.
⸻
“How much time does he actually have?” I asked, looking at Roy instead of Gordon, needing the answer from someone who wasn’t trying to manage my reaction to it.
⸻
“The doctors said weeks, not months, as of last week’s scan,” Roy said quietly. “Could be sooner.”
