Excerpt from We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"When what's coming?" I said. The inevitability of Edi's death was like a crumpled dollar bill my brain kept spitting back out. "Sorry," I said a second later. "I understand."

We called the recommended hospices from the hospital lobby, but they all had a wait list. "A wait list?" Jude had said. "Do they understand the premise of hospice?" We pictured an intake coordinator making endless calls, crossing name after name off her list. "Yes, yes. I see. Maybe next time!"

"Sloan says she's got to be out by tomorrow midday," Jude said, and passed me the cigarette we were splitting. We were not the only people huddled in our puffy jackets outside the famous cancer hospital, exhaling our stupidly robust good health away into the January cold, where clouds of smoke should have been gathering to form the words We're so fucked.

"There's a hospice up by us," I said, and Jude looked at me unblinkingly for a few beats. I live in Western Massachusetts. He ground the butt under his heel, picked it up, and tossed it into a trash can. "It's nice," I said. "I've visited people there. It's an actual house."

"And?" he said.

I didn't know. "I don't know," I said. "Would that be crazy? To bring her up there? I mean, they're saying a week or two, maybe even less."

"What would we do?" Jude said. "I really don't want to take Dash out of school."

"Yeah, no," I said. "Don't do that."

"But I can't leave him. Not now."

"I know." My hair was stuck in the zipper of my jacket, but I didn't bother trying to get it out. My eyes were watering from smoke and cold and also from the crying I seemed to be doing.

"I don't understand what you're saying, Ash."

"I know. I guess I'm not sure what I'm saying," I said.

"Would Dash and I say good-bye to her here?"

"I don't know," I said. "Could you?"

"I don't know," he said. "I mean, you were at our wedding, Ash. 'Til death do us part. I can't really imagine leaving her now—who I'd even be if I did that."

"Jude." I leaned forward to touch my forehead to his. "You wouldn't be leaving her. You'd be sparing your child. Edi's child. You've done 'in sickness and health' truly magnificently. We'd just be"—What? What would we be?—"seeing her off in stages. Tag-teaming it."

"It's kind of your dream," Jude teased. "Getting her all to yourself."

"I know!" I said. "I mean, finally!"

"You can be her knight in shining armor like you've always wanted." He laughed, not unkindly. Does he love me? Yes. Do I drive him crazy? Also yes. But it was true that I'd felt stuck away up in New England, happy enough in my life there but wishing I were still in New York with everybody I'd grown up with, guiltily wishing I were closer to Edi. Now my daughters were mostly grown, and also my husband seemed to have left me. I was in the perfect place in my life at the perfect time of Edi's. Not perfect in the normal sense, obviously.

"You've always accused me of being an opportunist," I said to Jude, and he said, "True."

We cried a little more, our puffy arms wrapped around each other's necks and heads. Then Jude retrieved a bottle of lavender hand sanitizer from his coat pocket, gestured at me to hold out my hands, sprayed them, sprayed his own, misted his hair for good measure. I shook a couple of Tic-Tacs into his palm and mine, and we went fragrantly back in through the revolving door to wake Edi up and ask her something we hadn't even finished figuring out. The worst question in the whole entire world, as it turned out.

Excerpted from We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman. Copyright © 2022 by Catherine Newman. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.