Chapter 2 - The Storage RoomThat night, I discovered my wife sleeping in a damp storage room. Not a bedroom. A storage room.
She sat beside me and slowly began opening her blouse. That was when I saw the biopsy scar.
"I have cancer," she whispered. "They found the tumor five months ago."
Everything I thought I understood came crashing down.
Delaney had begged my mother, Reginella, for $300 so she could see a specialist. Reginella refused. Instead, she accused Delaney of pretending to be sick because she wanted to steal my military pay. Ophelia had been monitoring Delaney's phone calls.
The money I had been sending home all those years had never reached my wife when she needed it most.
So Delaney had done the only thing she believed she could do. She cut off her own hair. Then she sold it for $150. She used that money to pay for transportation and get a biopsy.
While my mother and sister lived upstairs in a beautiful house paid for with the money I had earned overseas, Delaney had been forced to sell her own hair simply to find out whether she was going to survive.
I wrapped my arms around her and whispered, "Just hold on a little longer."
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Later that night, I stayed awake beside my wife in that miserable storage room while Reginella and Ophelia slept upstairs, surrounded by everything my money had purchased for them.
And before morning arrived, I made one decision that was going to change all of our lives.
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