Chapter 2 - The Consultation
Warren was sitting at our kitchen table when I got home. A duffel bag waited by the front door.
"Dr. Osei talked to me."
"I didn't want him explaining me."
"Then maybe you shouldn't have asked him to explain after you walked away."
"What do you want me to say?"
"The truth."
He stared at me. "Were you going to leave me?"
My stomach tightened. I looked away. He noticed immediately. "So there was something."
I folded my arms. "What did you find?"
"During the insurance dispute, you asked me to search your email for legal paperwork. I searched the word 'legal.' A confirmation for a consultation appeared."
My stomach dropped. "Warren..."
"Three days before my diagnosis."
"It was only a consultation."
He gave a bitter laugh. "Thank God. For a second I thought my wife wanted a divorce."
I looked away again. That was the problem with buried truths. They waited.
"Why didn't you ask me?"
"When, Ros? When I was throwing up after treatment? When you were sleeping three hours a day? When neither of us knew whether I'd still be alive six months later?"
"You had eleven months."
"And for eleven months I kept asking myself the same question."
"What question?"
"Whether you'd still be here if I wasn't sick."
"That's not fair, Warren."
"Neither was finding out you were thinking about leaving me."
Something inside me finally gave way. "You're right. I was thinking about leaving."
His face changed. I forced myself to keep going, because stopping would mean doing what I'd always done — swallowing difficult feelings, cleaning the kitchen, answering another email, pretending silence meant peace.
"I didn't hate you, Warren. I felt invisible."
"That's not true."
"Do you remember our anniversary?"
He looked down. "I was working."
"I sat alone at that restaurant for more than an hour."
"I apologized."
"You sent me one word."
I could still remember the untouched place setting across from me, telling the server over and over, "He's coming." He never came.
That night, alone in my car, I searched for divorce attorneys. Warren had never been cruel. In some ways cruelty would have been easier to understand. He had simply stopped noticing me.
A week before that anniversary I'd told him, "I miss you."
He'd barely looked away from his phone. "I'm right here."
After that, I stopped trying. Then cancer arrived, and suddenly there was no room left for pretending.
"You got sick, and somehow we started talking again."
"About treatment."
"About everything. We laughed again."
"Because everything was terrible."
"You reached for me again."
"Because I needed you."
I stepped closer. "You're turning every good thing we found during those months into a symptom of your illness."
His eyes filled. "You were leaving me."
"Yes. I was thinking about it. But then I almost lost you."
"And that made you feel guilty."
"No."
May you like
"How do I know?"
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. So I left.
