I don’t know what I expected to find when I opened the drawer. Bottles of some hallucinogenic? A signed confession from Graham? None of that is in the drawer.
What’s in the drawer is paper. A huge stack of paper. And the first page has my name on it.
I glance behind me. I’m still alone in Graham’s office. So I pull the stack of papers out of the drawer and rest them on his desk. I turn the first page and I start to read. And I keep reading. Page after page after page.
Oh God.
Oh no. I can’t believe this. No wonder Harry didn’t want me to open the drawer.
No no no no no… “Tess?”
I was so absorbed in what I was reading that I didn’t even see Graham enter the room. He’s standing behind me in a clean shirt and slacks. His blue eyes behind his glasses look incredibly sad.
“I never wanted you to read that,” he says.
I drop into the leather chair in front of his desk because my knees can’t support me anymore. I find myself gasping for air.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
“How…” I croak. “How did it happen?”
He exhales loudly. “It started over a year ago. Every morning when you woke up, you would complain about terrible headaches, always on the right side. I kept telling you to go to the doctor, but… well, you know how you are about doctors.” A corner of his mouth quirks up, even though there’s nothing funny about what I just read. “The headaches kept getting worse, and then one day while you were driving, you crashed your car. The accident was minor,
but it turns out it happened because you had a seizure while driving.”
I cover my mouth, barely able to listen to this. But nothing he’s telling me is a surprise after what I just read in the stacks of my medical records from Mount Sinai.
“When they took you to the hospital after the accident, they found a large tumor in the right side of your brain,” Graham says. “They did surgery to try to remove it, but they couldn’t get it all. The pathology came back saying it was a malignant tumor. Stage four. Glioblastoma.”
Those are the words written on every doctor’s note in the stack. From neurosurgeons to neuro-oncologists to neurologists.
Stage four cancer. Glioblastoma.
Poor prognosis. Terminal.
“They tried doing chemotherapy treatment for a short time,” he goes on, even though I wish he would stop. “But you hated it. You hated going to the doctor so often. You hated the side effects of the medication. And it wasn’t working. So you decided to stop treatment.”
And then a memory comes back to me. Sitting in front of the desk of a doctor. The doctor has a white beard and a grave expression on his face. There’s nothing more we can do, Mrs. Thurman. I’m so sorry.
The realization that I was going to die. The same way my mother did.
Graham takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his fingers. “I thought you might be at peace after we decided to stop treatment, but you weren’t. You were miserable. You woke up every day, acting like you were already dead. You couldn’t stand the idea of wasting away like your mother did. We tried anti-depressants, therapy… but nothing worked. You had so little time left, and it felt like you were
going to spend that time wishing you were already dead. So that’s when your psychiatrist got the idea…”
I lift my eyes. I already know what he’s going to say—I almost remember it—but I want to hear him say it.
“It was an injectable drug in a clinical trial to treat victims of trauma.” He slides his glasses back on his nose. “It affects recent short-term memory. The idea was that I would give you an injection every night, and you would forget your diagnosis. And you could be happy for the remaining time you had left.” He shakes his head. “And it worked. Really well. I mean, yes, there were gaps in your memory and you couldn’t work anymore, but you couldn’t work anymore anyway because of the tumor. You were happy again. We explained the scar on your head by telling you that you were in an accident, and generally, you enjoyed your days.”
Distantly, I can hear the doorbell ringing on the first floor.
“But then it all changed.” He lowers his voice. “I don’t know if it was too much of the medication accumulating in your bloodstream or maybe just the progression of the tumor. Your psychiatrist wasn’t sure. But the gaps in your memory became worse. You would wake up, unable to remember most of the last decade. You couldn’t even remember me anymore.” He takes a shaky breath. “Do you know what that’s like? To wake up every morning next to a woman who has no idea who you are and accuses you of being an intruder in your own bed?”
“I don’t know,” I shoot back. “Is it worse than finding out you’re dying of terminal cancer?”
The doorbell rings again downstairs. Someone is pounding on the door.
Graham hangs his head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tess. This is why I didn’t want you to know. I kept hoping to make it work…”
There are footsteps on the stairs. The footsteps grow louder, and a second later, an elderly man bursts into the study. I stare at the slightly hunched figure with the white hair and deep grooves in his cheeks. It takes me a second to place him.
“Dad,” I whisper. “Princess,” he says.
He looks so old. I hadn’t seen him in a long time, even before my engagement to Harry, and it shocks me now that my father has become an old man. I wonder how many of the creases in his face are my fault. He aged ten years in the months leading to my mother’s death. And I bet in the last year, he’s aged another ten years.
“Are you okay?” The wrinkles on my father’s forehead deepen. “Did Graham tell you…?”
“Yes,” I manage. “He told me everything.”
“I thought you deserved to know the truth,” he says softly. “Your mom… as much as it hurt her to leave you, she always said how grateful she was for those last few months the three of us had together. I didn’t want you to miss out on that.” He shoots Graham a hard look. “He disagreed.”
“You don’t know what she was like,” Graham says through his teeth. “You didn’t see how miserable it was making her.”
A tear escapes my right eye and I swipe at it. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m dying, just like my mother was. My father sees the look on my face, and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I’m so sorry, Princess.”
It hits me that my father hasn’t called me “princess” since my mother passed. This is the first time I’ve heard him say that word. A lump forms in my throat, and then a second later, the tears are flowing freely. I fall into my father’s arms and sob on his shoulder.
“Maybe Graham was right,” my father murmurs as he strokes my short hair. “You’re not the same as your mother. I think maybe you’re happier not knowing.”
“No.” I pull away from his chest and wipe my eyes. “I wanted to know. I’m glad I know.”
At that moment, a man with dark hair and a beard bursts into the study. His brown eyes widen at my swollen eyes and puffy red face. It takes me a second to realize who I’m looking at.
It’s Harry.
And by the look on his face, I can tell he knows everything.
“Camila let me in,” he says. Our eyes meet across the room. “You know…”
Graham whirls around. He shoots Harry a dirty look. “What the hell are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in jail?”
Harry returns the dirty look. “They released me this morning.” He looks back at me. “Are you okay?”
I squeeze my hands into fists. “Did you know about any of this… before?”
“No.” He looks as sick as I feel. “I thought you had been in a car accident, same as you did.” He glances at my father. “But then I talked to your dad, and he told me…”
It all makes sense now. I don’t remember doing it, but according to Harry, I called my father every day. And he never returned my calls. Because apparently, I was never calling him in the first place. Graham was keeping me from reaching him so he wouldn’t tell me I was dying.
I look over at Graham. The man who engineered this daily deception for my own good. I still feel like I don’t know who he is. I don’t remember him. I don’t remember falling in love with him. I don’t remember marrying him. The drug he gave me took all of that from me.
And I’m glad.
I turn to my husband. “How much time do I have left?”
He shakes his head. “Hard to say. The last time I took you to the doctor a month ago, he said six or seven months.”
My body goes cold. Six months. Six months left on this earth.
If that’s all I have, I’m damn well going to enjoy it.
“Graham,” I say. “Thank you for running my business while I’ve been sick. You’ve done a good job and… I want you to keep doing it. Keep it going. Please.”
He nods slowly, his brow wrinkled.
“But I don’t want to live here with you anymore.” I shake my head. “I don’t even know who you are. And I’m sorry, but I don’t love you. This arrangement needs to end.”
Graham drops his eyes. “I love you, Tess. Maybe you don’t remember me, but I remember you. I want you to be happy. I’ll do whatever it takes…”
“I’m not happy here. And there’s nothing you can do except let me leave.”
His eyes widen. “But where will you…?” He stops mid- sentence and turns to look at Harry. “Oh.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
Graham looks down at his loafers. His chest rises and falls. “I just want you to be happy, Tess. So whatever you need to do…”
I thought he would put up more of a fight. But he isn’t.
He’s letting me go.
For a moment, I wonder if I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe Graham is The One. I married him, after all. He’s the one I had planned to spend my life with. When I thought I had a whole life to spend.
But then I look over at Harry, wringing his hands together. There was always only one person for me. I somehow got lost along the way, but having terminal cancer can show you what’s important.
“Harry,” I say. “Will you let me spend these six months with you?”
His eyes light up. Even though I’ve lost my memory, I know it’s the first time I’ve felt happy in a very, very long time.
