Was it her son's fault he was so weak?

It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind; everyone says so.

Sharon walked into the room her husband had just finished treating Pauline Coleman’s daughter in.

“I’m canceling, Daniel.”

Her husband hummed a hi and carried on scribbling in his file. The Coleman kid had chosen bright-pink bands for her braces. Sharon perched on a Lucite chair and waited for him to finish and look up.

Daniel blew out his cheeks as he chucked the file onto the desk and swiveled to face her.

“We’re going.”

“Be reasonable, we can’t go now!”

He swiveled to and fro and then stopped himself with his foot. Good, she was getting dizzy.

“I’m being reasonable. Yes, we can. We’re not canceling a cruise we booked five months ago because of Akiva. Sharon, the man is turning 30 next month and is perfectly capable of managing by himself for a week. We’ve been through this too many times, we’re going.”

Sharon compressed her lips and went to check the autoclave. Ridiculous, seeing as she was the one who’d convinced Daniel to take a winter cruise all those months ago. Who wanted to go on a cruise in the winter? Who was running such a cruise? He thought it was crazy; she thought it was just what they needed after marrying off their youngest.

Now she powered off her computer and looked down at the red line she’d drawn on the calendar through all of next week, trying to remember the Sharon she’d been then, turning the pages forward to December with its picture of the Aurora Borealis. The excited Sharon, the mother-of-the-glowing-bride Sharon, the life-was-so-beautiful Sharon.

Slowly, she flipped the pages back to June with its picture of Castelo dos Mouros at sunset, when Portugal had seemed like the perfect place to celebrate their happiness.

Imagine I could do that in real, she thought, as Daniel set the alarm, and they both walked out of his practice to the car.

Sharon had hoped a last-minute stomach upset might sway Daniel’s mind, but neither that nor her dire premonitions for coming down with the flu or sudden Ministry of Health inspections could make a dent in his intransigence.

“We ate at home this Shabbos even though Avital and Yonatan invited us. I know why you turned them down, and it has nothing to do with needing to pack. You’ve got to let go, Sharon.”

Sharon bent her head over the Samsonite case and thought of her young couple’s small studio apartment, its tiny table with four stackable chairs. No room for Akiva. Daniel knew her too well. She sighed and pushed her winter socks into a corner of the case.

They were going and that was that.