Nina
She dreamed of water.
Not the ocean outside Caleb's glass house — something smaller. A bathroom sink. The kind with rust stains around the drain and a mirror that fogged up no matter how much you wiped it. In the dream, Nina was washing her hands. Over and over. The water was hot. Too hot. Her skin turned red, then pink, then something closer to raw. But she couldn't stop.
Because her hands had held Marcus's heart.
Not metaphorically. Actually. Her palm against his sternum, compressing two inches down, feeling his ribs bend under the pressure. One and two and three and four. The way his chest had felt like wet sand — giving way, always giving way, no matter how hard she pushed.
She woke up gasping.
The guest bedroom was dark. Not city dark — the kind of dark that only happened in places where the nearest streetlight was five miles away. Nina lay still for a moment, her heart hammering against her ribs, her hands curled into fists beneath the pillow.
You're not there. You're in Oregon. You're in a glass house on a cliff.
She uncurled her fingers one by one. Flexed them. Her palms remembered the weight of a chest compressions — the way a body pushed back against you when you tried to save it. Like even dying, it had opinions.
The clock on the nightstand said 5:47 AM.
Nina sat up. The floor was cold under her bare feet. She had left her shoes by the front door last night, and her socks were still in her duffel bag, and for some reason that small oversight made her want to cry. Not because she was sad. Because she was tired. The kind of tired that lived in your bones and sent postcards to your heart.
She pulled on her socks. Then her jeans. Then a sweater that had belonged to her grandmother — soft and gray and worn thin at the elbows. It smelled like nothing now. Everything she loved eventually stopped smelling like anything.
The hallway was dark, but the glass walls of the main room caught the first hint of dawn — a pale blue light that made the ocean look like liquid mercury. Nina walked quietly, her feet memorizing the floorboards, which ones creaked and which ones stayed silent.
She found Caleb exactly where she expected.
Not in bed. Not in the kitchen.
Standing at the glass wall, facing the ocean, his forehead pressed against the cold surface like he was trying to borrow some of its steadiness.
He was wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Gray sweatpants. Black t-shirt. No shoes. His reflection in the glass was faint — a ghost superimposed over the waves — but she could see his eyes were open.
"Couldn't sleep?" she asked.
He didn't jump. Didn't flinch. Just said, "I don't sleep much anymore."
"How much is much?"
"Two hours. Three on a good night."
Nina walked to the kitchen. Filled the kettle. Set it on the stove — not the fancy Italian coffee maker this time, because something about the morning felt like it needed tea instead. Chamomile. The kind her mother used to make when Nina couldn't sleep as a child.
"My father used to wake up at three AM every day," Caleb said from the window. His voice was flat. Not sad. Just... reported. "Not because he wanted to. Because his body forgot how to stay still. He'd sit in the dark and stare at the wall for hours. My mother would find him there in the morning, his hands shaking, his eyes empty."
The kettle began to hum.
"Is that what you do?" Nina asked. "Sit in the dark?"
"Sometimes. Mostly I just... wait."
"For what?"
"For the morning to decide if it wants me."
The words landed softly. But they landed heavy. Nina had heard patients say things like that before — the ones who were tired in ways that had nothing to do with sleep. The ones who had stopped believing that tomorrow might be different from today.
She made the tea. Two mugs. Chamomile with a spoonful of honey in his, because the tremor would be worse on an empty stomach, and sugar helped with the morning stiffness. She didn't ask if he wanted honey. She just did it.
"Come sit down," she said.
Caleb pushed off from the glass. Walked to the table. His gait was careful — deliberate, like he was thinking about each step before he took it. His right arm hung at his side, fingers curled, not swinging like his left arm did.
He sat. Nina put the mug in front of him.
"You put honey in this," he said.
"You need the calories."
"I didn't tell you I needed the calories."
"You didn't have to." She sat across from him, wrapped her hands around her own mug, and waited.
Caleb stared at the tea for a long moment. Then he lifted it — right hand shaking, left hand steadying it from below — and took a sip. His eyes closed. Just for a second. When they opened again, something in his face had softened.
"My mother used to make me chamomile tea," he said. "When I was a kid. Before I knew what Parkinson's was. Before I knew what my father had."
"What did you think was wrong with him?"
Caleb set the mug down. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I thought he was angry. That's what I called it. 'Dad's having an angry day.' Because his hands would shake and he'd knock things over and yell at me for no reason. I didn't know he was scared. I just thought he hated us."
"Did he?"
"No." Caleb's voice cracked. Just a little. Just enough. "He loved us too much. That was the problem. He loved us so much that watching himself become someone we had to take care of... it made him furious. Not at us. At himself. But we were the ones who caught it."
Nina said nothing. She drank her tea and let the silence do its work.
Outside, the sun was starting to break through the clouds — not fully, just in patches. Long fingers of gold light stretched across the water, touching the waves, then retreating. A seal popped its head up near the rocks, looked around, and disappeared again.
"You asked me yesterday," Caleb said, "which one scared me the most."
"Number five."
"Right. Let someone see me fall." He looked down at his hands — both of them resting on the table now, the right one trembling against the wood. "I think I lied. Or maybe I just didn't know the real answer yet."
"What's the real answer?"
He was quiet for a long time. The kettle had stopped humming. The only sounds were the rain — lighter now, almost a mist — and the distant cry of gulls fighting over something on the beach.
"Number one," he said finally. "Tell my mother I love her. In person."
Nina set down her mug. "Why?"
"Because I haven't seen her in four years."
"Four years is a long time."
"It's been longer than that since I was a son." He ran a hand through his hair — left hand, because the right couldn't do it smoothly anymore. "After my father died, I threw myself into work. Built a company. Sold it. Made more money than I knew what to do with. And every time my mother called, I was too busy. Every time she asked to visit, I was traveling. Every time she said 'I love you,' I said 'me too' and hung up before she could say anything else."
"Why?"
"Because she looked at me like I was him." His voice dropped. Almost a whisper. "She looked at me like I was my father, and she was already grieving me before I'd even gotten sick. I couldn't take it. So I stopped calling. And then she stopped calling. And now it's been four years, and I have a list, and the first thing on it is the thing I've been running from the longest."
Nina thought about her own mother. Three thousand miles away in Chicago, probably just waking up, probably making coffee in a kitchen that still had Nina's childhood drawings on the fridge. They talked every Sunday. Two hours, sometimes three. Her mother never said "I miss you" because she didn't have to — it lived in every pause, every "be safe," every "send me a picture of your dinner."
"I'll drive," Nina said.
Caleb looked up. "What?"
"To Portland. To your mother's house. I'll drive."
"I didn't ask you to drive."
"You don't have to ask." She stood up, gathered the mugs, carried them to the sink. "That's what rule two is for. You don't hide from me. And you don't do hard things alone."
He watched her rinse the mugs. Watched her dry her hands on a dish towel that had a small hole in the corner. Watched her check her watch — 6:30 AM.
"We should leave by nine," she said. "That gives you time to shower and eat something."
"I'm not hungry."
"You will be. Your body needs fuel whether your feelings agree or not."
Caleb made a sound — not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. Something in between. "You really don't let up, do you?"
"I'm a nurse. Letting up is how people die."
The words came out sharper than she intended. She saw something flicker across his face — not hurt, exactly. Recognition. Like he'd just heard something he understood in a language he thought he'd forgotten.
"Okay," he said. "Nine o'clock."
---
At 8:47, Nina was waiting by the front door.
She had packed a bag — not her duffel, just a small canvas tote with water bottles, granola bars, a first aid kit, and a paper map of Oregon because she didn't trust her phone's service once they left the coast. Her grandmother's sweater was still warm from the dryer. She had found a hair tie on the nightstand and pulled her hair back into a ponytail so tight it pulled at her temples.
She was nervous.
Not about the drive. She'd driven in worse conditions — ice storms in Chicago, flash floods in Texas, that one time she'd had to navigate Los Angeles traffic during a presidential motorcade. She was nervous about what would happen when they arrived.
She didn't know Caleb's mother. Didn't know her name, her house, her history. All she knew was that a thirty-six-year-old man had written tell my mother I love her on a list of things to do before he lost the ability to try.
That kind of love was complicated. And complicated love often came with complicated hurt.
Caleb emerged from the hallway at 8:53.
He was wearing jeans — real jeans, not sweatpants — and a dark blue sweater that made his eyes look less tired somehow. His hair was wet, combed back from his forehead. He had shaved. She could see a small nick near his jaw where the razor had slipped.
"You look nice," she said.
"I look like a man going to his own funeral."
"Same thing, sometimes."
He snorted. Actually snorted. It was so unexpected that Nina almost laughed. Almost.
"The car is in the garage," he said, handing her a set of keys. "Black SUV. You can't miss it."
"Which garage?"
He blinked. "The one attached to the house."
"There's a garage attached to the house?"
Caleb stared at her for a moment. Then he walked to the kitchen, pressed a button on the wall that Nina hadn't noticed before, and the entire back wall of the glass house slid open to reveal a garage with a black SUV inside.
"Show-off," she said.
"Billionaire," he corrected. "There's a difference."
"Is there?"
He didn't answer. Just walked to the passenger side, opened the door, and climbed in. His hands were shaking as he reached for the seatbelt. He missed the buckle twice. On the third try, Nina reached across and guided it into place.
Neither of them acknowledged it. They didn't have to.
---
The drive to Portland took two hours and seventeen minutes.
Caleb gave directions in short bursts — "take the next left," "stay right at the fork," "don't speed through Cannon Beach, the cops there have nothing better to do." His voice was steadier than his hands. Nina wondered if that was practice or just stubbornness.
For the first hour, they drove in silence. Not the uncomfortable kind — the kind that happens between people who are still figuring out where the edges are. The radio played softly — some jazz station that Caleb had tuned without asking. Nina didn't mind. Jazz was easy to ignore.
At 10:15, they passed a sign that said Portland: 42 miles.
"My mother's name is Eleanor," Caleb said.
Nina glanced at him. He was staring out the window, watching the trees blur past. "Eleanor," she repeated.
"She hates being called Ellie. Or Lena. Or anything that isn't Eleanor. My father called her El once, and she didn't speak to him for a week."
"What did you call her?"
"Mom. Mostly. Sometimes 'hey' when I was being a teenager." He paused. "I don't know what I'll call her today."
"You'll call her whatever comes out."
"And if nothing comes out?"
Nina merged onto I-5 South. The traffic was light — just a few logging trucks and a minivan with a bumper sticker that said I BRAKE FOR BEACH GLASS.
"Then you let her talk first," she said. "Sometimes that's easier."
Caleb turned away from the window and looked at her. Really looked. The way he had yesterday, in the kitchen — like she was a puzzle he hadn't solved yet.
"How do you know so much about this?" he asked.
"About what?"
"About... hard conversations. About showing up when you don't know what to say."
Nina kept her eyes on the road. The trees were getting thicker now — Douglas firs and western hemlocks, their branches heavy with rain. She thought about Marcus's mother. The waiting room. The way the woman had looked at her — not angry, not sad. Just empty. Like someone had reached inside her and pulled out everything that mattered.
"I had a patient once," Nina said. "A boy. Seventeen. Hit by a drunk driver on his way home from a party. He was dead when they brought him in, but I worked on him anyway. For forty-five minutes. Because he was seventeen and his mother was in the waiting room and I couldn't bear to tell her that I'd given up."
Caleb said nothing. He just listened.
"When I finally walked out to talk to her, I didn't have any words. None. I'd been a nurse for twelve years, and I'd had a hundred conversations like that one, and I still didn't have anything to say that would make it better. So I just... sat down next to her. And she put her head on my shoulder. And we stayed like that for an hour."
The SUV hummed along the highway. A logging truck passed them, spraying water onto the windshield.
"I left nursing after that," Nina continued. "Not because I couldn't handle death. Because I realized I'd been handling it wrong. I'd been treating it like something to fix, instead of something to sit with. And I didn't know how to just... sit. Not until that woman put her head on my shoulder."
"You sat with her," Caleb said quietly.
"I sat with her."
"And that was enough?"
"It wasn't enough. But it was something." Nina glanced at him. His hands were in his lap now, the right one tucked inside the left, holding on. "That's all we can do, Caleb. We show up. We sit down. We don't run away when it gets hard. The rest is just details."
He was quiet for a long time. The jazz station played something with a saxophone and a piano and a lot of silence in between the notes.
"My mother's house is on Alameda Ridge," he said finally. "Yellow colonial. There's a rose bush in the front yard that my father planted the year they got married. It's still there."
"Does she know you're coming?"
"No."
"Should we have called?"
He shook his head. "If I called, I wouldn't come. I've almost called a hundred times. Every birthday, every Christmas, every time I saw something that reminded me of her. And every time, I put the phone down and told myself I'd do it tomorrow."
Nina took the exit. Portland — City Center.
"Tomorrow is today," she said.
Caleb looked out the window at the city skyline — the bridges, the cranes, the green hills rising up on the other side of the river.
"Yeah," he said. His voice was barely a whisper. "Tomorrow is today."