Chapter 28

“Too late in the day,” he said.

“What’s that?” Phyl asked, walking by his desk.

He had developed a dangerous habit of talking to himself out loud.

“Oh, I was just thinking, it’s too late in the day to call our London office. It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

Tomorrow—how many more would there be? he’d wonder as he watched Nan sleep. Sometimes life has a way of saving the best for last, like a glorious sunset. She had given up on the chemo treatments, and Jade thought she never looked lovelier—lush and glowing, a woman in full.

“Must be the tumors plumping me up,” she said.

She had stopped coming to his place. And except for himself and Mrs. S., she had stopped receiving visitors. She had reviewed her will and funeral arrangements, received the last sacraments, and made her bequests.

“I want you to have this,” she said one night, nodding to a package in a corner of the bedroom, where, propped up on pillows, she held court for him like Madame de Stael.