Page 88 of Don't Tell Me How to Die

I opened my purse and handed him the lab report. “I was going to wait till the weekend was over before I told you, but...”

He wasn’t listening. He was reading. Carefully. Slowly. And just like my sister, he flipped back to the first page and read it again.

“This is dated June eighth,” he said. “Today is the twenty-fourth.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you.”

“For two weeks?” he said, looking up at the sky in disbelief. “I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake. Did you not think I could handle it?”

“I didn’t need a doctor. I needed a husband. I watched what happened to my father when my mother broke the news to him. I wanted to spare you—at least for a while.”

“Well, thanks a lot, but right now I’m too angry to process the thoughtfulness of that decision.”

“I’m sorry. Can you forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive. What’s done is done. I don’t want to waste time rehashing it. We should focus on fighting this disease, doing whatever we can to reverse these numbers. What does Byrne have you doing since you found out?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?Has he lost his mind?” Alex said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “I’m getting him on the phone right now.”

“Alex, stop!” I put my hand on his. “Doing nothing was my call. Noah was ready to hook me up to a chemo drip on day one. I said no.”

He slowly put his phone away. “Why?” he said, reeling from my decision to forgo treatment. “Why would you...”

“Alex, there hasn’t been a single advancement in this disease since my mother had it, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to subject my body, my soul, and my family to the same horrific journey she went through.

“What I have is incurable and will probably kill me in six months. You just reminded me that you’re a doctor. You can accept a fatal diagnosis. You do every day. But this time it’s your wife, so you’re ready to go on a quest for a miracle cure. I don’t want that. I want to spend my time doing exactly what I’ve been doing this weekend. Living my life and enjoying my family.”

We’d been sitting on the dock. He stood, helped me up, and held me in his arms.

“I love you,” he said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but do you know how I feel when I realize that I’ve been consumed with trivial things like how big the new parking lot should be, while you’re doing your best to cope with a terminal illness? Maggie, we have to be in this together. Promise me you won’t keep any more secrets from me.”

“I promise,” I said. “No more secrets.”

Except for one. I couldn’t tell him I was on a mission to keep him from becoming a victim of predators like Connie Gilchrist. Or that I was pretty sure that Misty was the one.

“Who else knows besides Lizzie?” he asked.

“How do you know I told Lizzie?”

“Maggie, there’s no way you could live with this on your own for almost two weeks. Lizzie came back from Ireland a few days after you got the report. You picked her up at JFK, then you spent the night together talking and drinking. Now that I’m finally in the loop, it’s not too difficult to figure out what you talked about and why you drank so much. Have you told your father yet?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not ready to tell him, or Grandpa, and definitely not Katie and Kevin.”

“I agree. They’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “Have you told anyone else besides your sister?”

Just Johnny Rollo that morning at Corky’s Diner. And Van. I told Van.

“Nobody,” I said, spinning another lie and burying another secret. “Nobody at all.”

FIFTY-TWO

two months before the funeral

Telling Alex was a huge sense of relief. But it only lightened part of the burden. I still hadn’t told him everything.

In fact, when I thought about my closest confidants—Lizzie, Johnny, Misty, Alex, and yes, Van—each one of them was privy to some of the most intimate details of my life, but not one of them knew everything.

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