He was dying.
The restaurant hummed, soft murmuring voices, the rattle of silverware, a cobwebbed overlay of music.
"What?" Esme said.
Miguel balanced his fork on the edge of his plate and made a show of wiping his hands on his napkin. He wouldn't look her in the eye. It was a tell she had warned him about when he first joined the company.
"He's dying?" Esme said.
Miguel nodded. "He went in for testing three days ago—"
"Three days?"
"Yes. It's galazamia."
The word was sharp-edged, like a knife. Galazamia. Aina Mitsuke's disease. Zamia. It had a hundred different names but the results were always the same: you wasted away until you were nothing. It was not a disease Esme would ever have associated with her father.
"I'm sorry he didn't tell you himself. He asked me not to, but—"
Miguel twisted in his seat. "It didn't feel right, keeping it a secret from you."
Esme closed her eyes. Her body hummed like a live wire. She thought about the last time she had seen her father. It had been less than twenty-four hours before. He'd been sitting across the table from her at an investor's meeting up in the space station, lightscreen glowing while Steve Bajori rattled on about this season's financial reports. She hadn't paid much attention to him,
having other things on her mind, but she did remember glancing at him halfway through the meeting to catch him staring out the window at Coromina I, at the fine-hewn golden-red swirls of its surface.
Her father wasn't one for looking out windows.
"Esme?"
Esme opened her eyes. Miguel was staring at her, leaning into the table, looking concerned.
"I'm sorry if this was an intrusion—" he began.
"An intrusion." Esme shook her head. "No, it's fine."
"I felt bad keeping it from you."
"I understand. It's fine." Esme looked down at her half-finished meal. She didn't have the appetite to finish. "He seemed healthy the last time I saw him." She said this more to herself than to Miguel.
"It's in the early stages."
Esme laughed, shaking her head. She didn't mean to but it slipped out anyway. "The early stages," she said. "What else do you know?"
She looked up. Miguel looked away. "Come on, Miguel, it sounds like he really opened up to you." It came out more bitterly than she intended, but bitterness was impossible to avoid when Phillip
Coromina was involved.
"Not much." Miguel sighed. "Just that that it's galazamia, that it's in the early stages, that he's already started treatments."
"How long?"
"How long what?"
Esme clenched her jaw, teeth grinding together.
"Oh. How long till he—" Miguel shook his head. "God, Esme, I don't know. He didn't tell me. I don't know why he told me about the zamia in the first place."
"He likes you."