Page 148 of Break Me

This morning she’s sitting on top of my workbench with one leg folded beneath her and the other swinging slowly over the edge while she cradles a paper cup of coffee between her hands.

An old country song drifts from the radio mounted on the wall of the garage. Raven sings along the way she always has, her voice soft and just a little off key. She never quite lands on the note she’s aiming for, but that’s never stopped her before.

Usually she sings louder than this, especially when no one else is around, but today the melody drifts through the garage more like a murmur. Every few lines, she loses the tune entirely and hums until she finds it again.

I keep working on the engine in front of me while listening to her behind me. For a few minutes, it almost feels like nothing has changed.

Knox is in the office arguing with a supplier on the phone, his voice rising and falling through the open doorway, and outside the bay, someone revs an engine before killing it again.

Raven reaches the chorus of the song and misses the note completely.

I glance over my shoulder. “You’re absolutely murdering that song.”

She looks up mid-line and grins like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t.

“I prefer the term artistic interpretation.”

“That’s not interpretation. That’s a crime.”

She laughs softly and taps the heel of her boot against the side of the bench. “I’ve been singing in here for twenty years, Samuel Morgan. You’re just noticing now?”

That part is probably true.

Before the diagnosis, I heard things like that without really registering them. They were part of the background of our life together, as ordinary as the hum of the radio or the smell of oil in the air.

Now I notice everything.

Raven starts singing again when the next verse comes on, quieter this time, her voice slipping in and out of the melody while she watches me work.

Normally she’d keep going until the song ended, sometimes even launching into the next one if she liked it enough. Today she only makes it halfway through the verse. The words trail off without warning.

When I glance back again, she has leaned forward slightly with her elbows resting on her knees, one hand pressing lightly against her stomach. Her coffee cup is now on the bench beside her.

“You feeling sick?” I ask quietly.

She exhales through her nose before answering. “A little.”

The word comes out casually, the same way she’s answered that question a dozen times in the last few weeks, but the way her shoulders sink forward tells a different story.

“When did it start?” I ask.

“This morning,” she says, brushing it off with a small shrug. “It’ll settle soon.”

Maybe it will. Some days, the symptoms move through her like weather, arriving suddenly and leaving just as quickly. Other days they linger longer, stretching the hours in ways that wear her down until even simple things become difficult.

I set the wrench down and wipe my hands on a rag before walking over to the bench.

“Come on,” I say gently. “I’m taking you to get something to eat.”

She smiles faintly at that, though the expression fades sooner than it would’ve a few months ago.

“Food sounds terrible right now,” she admits.

“I know,” I tell her, a little softer this time. “Just try something small.”

She watches me for a second. “You’re not going to drop this, are you?”

“No.”