She did not turn around. She did not raise her voice. She just said the truth. And the truth is the heaviest thing in the room.

Those kids are my heart. I have spent years planning for their success.

I wanted them to have the things I never had. I wanted them to go to school and study and build lives that are easier than mine. If I spend that money, I am taking their future to buy myself a few more months of sitting in this same chair.

I spent the next three nights awake. I sat in the dark. I listened to the house creaking and the wind blowing through the trees. I did the math over and over again in my head.

One hundred and ninety thousand dollars. Six months versus eighteen months.

I thought about my grandson, Leo. He is starting high school this year. He wants to be an engineer. He talks about it every time he comes over for dinner. He asks me about the old tractor in the barn. He wants to know how things work.

If I pay the clinic, the money is gone. There is no replacing it. I am seventy-eight. I cannot go back to the cannery. I cannot start saving from nothing.

Is eighteen months worth their future? Is my life worth more than their chance to build something?

I thought about my own mother. She passed when she was sixty. She never got to see me get married. She never got to see her grandkids. I always felt like she was cheated out of time. I did not want to be cheated, too. I wanted to be around for the graduations. I wanted to see them grow up.

But then I thought about the look on Lucinda’s face. She knows I am being selfish. She does not have to say it. The way she stands with her back to me says everything. She thinks I am choosing myself over her own children.

Maybe she is right.

I got up this morning before the sun was even fully up. The house was cold. I walked over to the kitchen table and I looked at that envelope again. The ink seemed to be staring back at me.

I picked up the phone. I dialed the number for the clinic. I knew it was early, but I could not sleep anymore. I needed to know. I needed to finish this.

A young woman answered the phone on the third ring. She sounded professional. She sounded like she had done this a hundred times before. She asked me how I was doing. She asked me if I had made a decision.

I looked at the window. I looked at the apple tree. I thought about Judd and his kind, naive promise. I thought about Lucinda and her hard, honest silence.

“I have decided not to go through with the treatment,” I said.