“Claire,” he said. Not a question.
“Hi. I’m with the hospice program. I brought chicken noodle soup, but I didn’t know if you—”
“Soup’s perfect.” He stepped aside. “Come in. Fair warning, I’m terrible at dusting.”
He wasn’t lying.
That first week, I cleaned his kitchen, sorted a mountain of mail, and learned that he’d been an accountant until the diagnosis. He’d never married. He liked old movies, crossword puzzles, and Scrabble, which he played ruthlessly.
“You can’t play ‘QI,’” I told him on my third visit.
“It’s in the dictionary.”
“It’s not a real word.”
“It’s a real word in Chinese philosophy and in my heart,” he said, adding up his score on the back of a CVS receipt. “Thirty-one points. Your move, Hale.”
I laughed so hard I nearly knocked over my tea.
That was the thing about Julian. The house was quiet and full of pill bottles, and yet I laughed there more than I had in years.
