"Florine. She wrote my number on everything he owned since he was in kindergarten. In case he had an attack somewhere and somebody found him. Not hers. Mine. She said I was easier to reach. I was at a desk all day." He turned his head and looked at Agata directly, and she saw that his eyes were wet and that his face had not changed at all around them, as if the eyes had decided something on their own. "And somebody found him. And nobody called that number. They called the company. And the company called me at home at seven in the morning on a Sunday and said, Mr. Varnum, there's been a medical event."
She did not say she was sorry. There were words that a person used up, and she had the feeling she had used that one up years ago, alone, at a shredder.
"You've got a girl," he said after a while. "The one in the picture."
"Zofia. She's fifteen. Left back. She's better than I was at anything when I was fifteen."
"And you've got the cancer."
"Had. We're saying had. My oncologist likes had. It was stage two. They took it out in May and then I did four rounds of one thing and twelve weeks of another and I finished in September. They scan me in December. Until they scan me I don't really know what to call it."
"And they're giving you six months of insurance."
"If I sign."
"If you sign," he repeated. He looked at the door on fourteen. "And if you sign you can't talk about this."