Despite her misgivings about hiring a fan, Maggie sat down with him the same day, and it became clear that he’d done his homework. He knew a great deal about Trinity and his work; he mentioned a specific installation that was currently on display at MoMA and another at the New School, drawing comparisons to some of Robert Rauschenberg’s later work in a knowledgeable but unpretentious way. Though it didn’t surprise her, he also had a deep and impressive familiarity with her own body of work. And yet, though he’d answered all her questions satisfactorily, she remained a little uneasy; she couldn’t quite figure out whether he was serious about his desire to work in a gallery, or just another person who wanted to witness her own tragedy up close.

As their meeting drew to a close, she told him that they weren’t currently interviewing—though technically true, it was only a matter of time—to which he responded by asking politely whether she would nonetheless be willing to receive his résumé. It was, she thought in retrospect, the way he’d phrased his request that charmed her. “Would you nonetheless be willing to receive my résumé?” It struck her as old-fashioned and courtly and she couldn’t help smiling as she held out her hand for the document.

Later that same week, Maggie had uploaded a job posting to some art-related industry sites and called several contacts at other galleries, letting them know she was hiring. Résumés and inquiries flooded the inbox and Luanne met with six candidates while Maggie, either nauseated or vomiting from her first infusion, recuperated at home. Only one candidate made it past the first interview, but when she didn’t show up for the second, she was scratched as well. Frustrated, Luanne visited Maggie at home to update her. Maggie hadn’t left her apartment in days and was lying on the couch, sipping the fruit-and-ice-cream smoothie Luanne had brought with her, one of the few things Maggie could still force down.

“It’s hard to believe we can’t find anyone qualified to work in the gallery.” Maggie shook her head.

“They have no experience and don’t know anything about art,” Luanne huffed.

Neither did you, Maggie could have pointed out, but she remained silent, fully aware that Luanne had turned out to be a treasure as both a friend and an employee, the luckiest of breaks. Warm and unflappable, Luanne had long ago ceased being a mere colleague.

“I trust your judgment, Luanne. We’ll just start over.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t anyone else in the pool worth meeting?” Luanne’s tone was plaintive.

For whatever reason, Maggie’s mind flashed to Mark Price, inquiring ever so politely whether she would be willing to receive his résumé.

“You’re smiling,” Luanne said.

“No, I’m not.”

“I know a smile when I see one. What were you just thinking about?”

Maggie took another sip of the smoothie, buying time, until finally deciding to come out with it. “A young man came in before we listed the position,” she admitted, before proceeding to describe the meeting. “I’m still not sure about him,” she concluded, “but his résumé is probably somewhere on my desk in the office.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if he’s even available at this point.”

When Luanne probed the origins of Mark’s interest in the job, she frowned. Luanne understood the makeup of the gallery crowds better than anyone and recognized that people who’d seen Maggie’s videos often viewed her as their confidante, someone who would both empathize and sympathize. They frequently longed to share their own stories, the suffering they had endured, and the losses. And as much as Maggie wanted to offer them comfort, it was often too much to support them emotionally when she felt like she was barely holding it together herself. Luanne did her best to shield her from the more aggressive contact seekers.

“Let me review his résumé and I’ll speak with him,” she said. “After that, we’ll take it one step at a time.”

Luanne contacted Mark the following week. Their first conversation led to two more formal interviews, including one with Trinity. When she later spoke with Maggie, her praise for Mark was effusive, but Maggie insisted on meeting with him again, just to be certain. It took four more days before she had the energy to make it to the gallery. Mark Price was on time, dressed in a suit and holding a slim binder as he stepped into her office. She felt sick as a dog as she studied his résumé, noting that he was from Elkhart, Indiana, and when she saw his graduation date from Northwestern, she did a quick mental calculation.

“You’re twenty-two years old?”

“Yes.”

With his neatly parted hair, blue eyes, and baby face, he looked like a well-groomed teenager, ready for the prom. “And you majored in theology?”

“I did,” he said.

“Why theology?”

“My father is a pastor,” he said. “Eventually I want to get a master’s in divinity as well. To follow in his footsteps.”

As soon as he said it, she realized it didn’t surprise her in the slightest. “Then why the interest in art if you intend to go into the ministry?”

He brought his fingertips together, as though wanting to choose his words with care. “I’ve always believed that art and faith have much in common. Both allow people to explore the subtlety of their own emotions and to find their own answers as to what the art represents to them. Your work and Trinity’s always make me think, and more importantly, they make me feel in ways that often lead to a sense of wonder. Just like faith.”

It was a good answer, but she nonetheless suspected that Mark was leaving something out. Setting those thoughts aside, Maggie continued with the interview, asking more standard questions about his work history and knowledge of photography and contemporary sculpture before finally leaning back in her chair.

“Why do you think you’d be a good fit for the gallery?”

He seemed unfazed by her grilling. “For starters, having met Ms. Sommers, I have the sense that she and I would work well together. With her permission, I spent some time in the gallery after our interview, and after a bit of additional research, I put together some of my thoughts about the work currently on display.” He leaned forward, offering her the binder. “I’ve left a copy with Ms. Sommers as well.”

Maggie thumbed through the binder. Stopping on a random page, she perused a couple of paragraphs he’d written concerning a photograph she’d taken in Djibouti in 2011, when the country was mired in one of the worst droughts in decades. In the foreground were the skeletal remains of a camel; in the background were three families dressed in brilliantly colorful garb, all of whom were laughing and smiling as they walked along a dried riverbed. Gathering storm clouds clotted a sky that had turned orange and red in the setting sun, a vivid contrast to the bleached bones of the skeleton and deep desiccation cracks that illustrated the lack of any recent rainfall.

Mark’s comments showed a surprising technical sophistication and a mature appreciation for her artistic intentions; she’d been trying to show an improbable joy amid despair, to illustrate man’s insignificance when faced with the capricious power of nature, and Mark had articulated those intentions well.

She closed the binder, knowing there was no need to look through the rest of it.

“You clearly prepared, and considering your age, you seem surprisingly well qualified. But those aren’t my major concerns. I still want to know the real reason you want to work here.”

His brow furrowed. “I think your photographs are extraordinary. As are Trinity’s sculptures.”

“Is that all?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I’ll be frank,” Maggie said, exhaling. She was too tired and too sick, with too little time, to be anything but frank. “You brought in your résumé before we’d even posted that we were hiring, and you admitted you’re a fan of my videos. Those things concern me because sometimes people who have watched my videos about my illness feel a false sense of intimacy with me. I can’t have someone like that working here.” She raised her eyebrows. “Are you imagining that we’ll become friends and have deep and meaningful conversations? Because that’s unlikely. I doubt I’ll be spending much time at the gallery.”

“I understand,” he said, pleasant and unflustered. “If I were you, I’d likely feel the same way. All I can do is assure you that my intention is to be an excellent employee.”

She didn’t make her decision right away. Instead, she slept on it and conferred with Luanne and Trinity the following day. Despite Maggie’s continuing uncertainty, they wanted to take a chance on him, and Mark started at the beginning of May.

Fortunately, since then, Mark had given Maggie no reason to second-guess herself. With chemotherapy continuing to wipe her out all summer, she’d spent only a few hours a week at the gallery, but in the rare moments when she was there, Mark had been the consummate professional. He greeted her cheerfully, smiled easily, and always referred to her as Ms. Dawes. He was never late for work, had never called in sick, and seldom disturbed her, knocking gently on her office door only when a bona fide buyer or collector had specifically asked for her and he deemed it important enough to intrude. Perhaps because he’d taken the interview to heart, he never referred to her recent video posts, nor did he ask her personal questions. Occasionally he expressed the hope that she was feeling well, but that was okay with her, because he didn’t actually inquire about it, leaving it up to her to say anything more if she wanted to.

Moreover and most importantly, he excelled at the job. He treated customers with courtesy and charm, moved the cancer groupies gracefully toward the exits, and excelled at sales, probably because he wasn’t pushy in the slightest. He answered the phone, usually by the second or third ring, and carefully wrapped the prints before shipping those ordered by mail. Usually, to complete all of his tasks, he would stay for an hour or more after the gallery had closed its doors. Luanne was so impressed by him that she had no worries about her monthlong holiday in Maui with her daughter and grandchildren in December, a trip she’d taken almost every year since she’s started at the gallery.

None of that, Maggie realized, had been much of a surprise. What did surprise her was that in the last few months, her reservations about Mark had slowly given way to a growing sense of trust.

Maggie couldn’t pinpoint exactly when that had happened. Like apartment neighbors regularly riding the same elevator, their cordial relationship settled into a comfortable familiarity. In September, once she began to feel better after her last infusion, she had started spending more time at work. Simple greetings with Mark gave way to small talk before segueing to more personal subjects. Sometimes those conversations took place in the small break room down the hall from her office, other times in the gallery when it was devoid of visitors. Mostly they occurred after the doors had been locked, while the three of them processed and packaged the prints that had been ordered by phone or through the website. Usually Luanne dominated the conversation, chattering about her ex-husband’s poor dating choices or her kids and grandkids. Maggie and Mark were content to listen—Luanne was entertaining. Every now and then, one of them would roll their eyes at something Luanne had said (“I’m sure my ex is paying for all the plastic surgery on that tacky gold-digger”) and the other would smile slightly, a private communication meant just for the two of them.

Sometimes, though, Luanne had to leave immediately after closing. Mark and Maggie would work together alone, and little by little, Maggie came to learn quite a bit about Mark, even as he refrained from asking personal questions of her. He told her about his parents and his childhood, which often struck her as something akin to an upbringing imagined by Norman Rockwell, complete with bedtime stories, hockey and baseball games, and his parents’ attendance at every school event he could remember. He also spoke frequently about his girlfriend, Abigail, who’d just started working toward a master’s degree in economics at the University of Chicago. Like Mark, she’d grown up in a small town—in her case, Waterloo, Iowa—and he had countless photographs of the two of them on his iPhone. The photos showed a pretty young redhead with a sunny, midwestern affect, and Mark mentioned that he planned to propose after she received her degree. Maggie could remember laughing when he said it. Why get married when you’re still so young? she’d asked. Why not wait a few years?

“Because,” Mark had answered, “she’s the one with whom I’d like to spend the rest of my life.”

“How can you know that?”

“Sometimes you just know.”

The more she learned about him, the more she came to believe that his parents had been as lucky with him as he’d been with them. He was an exemplary young man, responsible and kind—disproving the stereotype that millennials were lazy and entitled. Still, her growing fondness for him sometimes surprised her, if only because they shared so little in common. Her early life had been…unusual, at least for a time, and her relationship with her parents had often been strained. She herself had been nothing like Mark. While he’d been studious and had graduated with highest honors from a top university, she’d generally struggled in school and had finished less than three semesters at a community college. At his age, she had been content to live in the moment and figure things out on the fly, whereas he seemed to have a plan for everything. Had she met him when she was younger, she suspected that she wouldn’t have given him the time of day; when she’d been in her twenties, she’d had a habit of choosing exactly the wrong kinds of men.

Nonetheless, he sometimes reminded her of someone she’d known long ago, someone who had once meant everything to her.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, Maggie considered Mark a definite member of the gallery family. She wasn’t as close to him as she was to either Luanne or Trinity—they’d spent years together, after all—but he’d become something akin to a friend nonetheless, and two days after that holiday, all four of them had stayed late in the gallery after closing. It was Saturday night, and because Luanne planned to fly to Maui the following morning while Trinity left for the Caribbean, they opened a bottle of wine to go with the cheese and fruit tray Luanne had ordered. Maggie accepted a glass, even though she couldn’t fathom the thought of either drinking or eating anything.

They toasted the gallery—it had been far and away their most successful year ever—and settled into easy conversation for another hour. Toward the end, Luanne offered Maggie a card.

“There’s a gift inside,” Luanne said. “Open it after I’m gone.”

“I haven’t had a chance to get yours yet.”

“That’s fine,” Luanne said. “Seeing you back to your old self these past few months has been more than enough gift for me. Just make sure you open it well before Christmas, though.”

After Maggie assured her that she would, Luanne stepped toward the platter and grabbed a couple of strawberries. A few feet away, Trinity was speaking to Mark. Because he visited the gallery even less frequently than Maggie did, she heard Trinity asking the same kinds of personal questions that she had over the last few months.

“I didn’t know you played hockey,” Trinity offered. “I’m a huge Islanders fan, even if they haven’t won the Stanley Cup in what seems like forever.”

“It’s a great sport. I played every year until I got to Northwestern.”

“Don’t they have a team?”

“I wasn’t good enough to play at the collegiate level,” Mark admitted. “Not that it seemed to matter to my parents. I don’t think either of them ever missed a game.”

“Will they come out to see you for Christmas?”

“No,” Mark said. “My dad set up a tour of the Holy Land with a couple dozen members of our church for the holidays. Nazareth, Bethlehem, the whole works.”

“And you didn’t want to go?”

“It’s their dream, not mine. Besides, I have to be here.”

Maggie saw Trinity glance in her direction before he turned his attention back to Mark. He leaned in, whispering something, and though Maggie couldn’t hear him, she knew exactly what Trinity had said, because he’d expressed his own concerns to her a few minutes earlier.

“Make sure you keep an eye on Maggie while Luanne and I are gone. We’re both a little worried about her.”

In response, Mark simply nodded.