Chapter 2 - The Cold Side of the Bed
What I didn't know: Elliot had been sick for months.
He'd been losing weight. He had headaches that folded him in half, a deep ache under his ribs, a bone-tiredness he kept blaming on work. One week before our wedding, he finally saw a doctor without telling me.
It was cancer. Aggressive, and far along. The doctors gave him months. There was a hospital in Germany running a trial that would cover an experimental treatment — but he'd have to leave within days, and nothing about it was a sure thing.
He didn't tell me.
He decided — alone, in a parking lot, terrified — that marrying me would chain me to a dying man and five grieving kids. He convinced himself his older brother, Dale, would move in for a while and then take the children for good. He called Dale, said he had a medical emergency and had to travel, and left it vague. Dale said he'd come in a few days.
Elliot signed a temporary paper naming me caregiver until Dale showed up. He left cash for a few weeks of rent and groceries. He sold his truck for travel money.
Then he was gone.
I woke up that morning and reached across the bed to a cold sheet. Cora was already standing at the top of the stairs in her pajamas.
"Mama Meredith," she whispered. "Dad's gone."
I called him nine times. Straight to nothing. His shop hadn't heard from him. His friends hadn't heard from him. I was still in my robe when I lifted the sugar bowl off the counter and found the note folded underneath.
*I'm sorry. I can't do this anymore.*
I read it until the letters stopped making sense. Poppy wandered in wanting juice and climbed into my lap like it was any other morning.
May you like
That was the moment my heart broke.
It was also the moment I knew I wasn't going anywhere.
