Inside, beneath a stack of legal correspondence, was a photograph I hadn't seen before.
Eleanor, older now, standing outside a building I recognized.
The building where I had worked before I started volunteering.
A candid shot, slightly blurry, taken from a distance.
She had found me before she found me.
She had stood outside my workplace.
She had not gone in.
I sat down on the floor of the storage unit with the photograph in my hands and tried to understand what it meant to want something that much and still choose to wait.
To choose to let it happen gently, or not at all.
At the bottom of the same box was a small notebook.
I opened it to the last written page.
*Saw her today going into the building on Clement Street.
She was carrying a coffee and laughing at something on her phone.
She looked happy.
She looked like herself.*
*I didn't go in.
I wasn't ready.
Or maybe she wasn't.
Or maybe I just wanted one more day of it being possible before it became real.*
*Next week I start volunteering at St.
Catherine's Hospice.
I put in the application this morning.
I don't know if she'll ever come in.
But if she does, I want to be there.*
I closed the notebook.
She had chosen the hospice because of me.
She had placed herself in my path and waited, with a patience I could not fully comprehend, for the universe to close the distance she was afraid to close herself.
I put the notebook in my bag.
I put the photograph beside it.
I drove to Hale's office and placed both on his desk.
