“They didn’t at first.”
A nurse came out of the room while he was still talking.
She held a clipboard against her chest.
She looked between us.
“Are you his wife?”
“I am.”
She nodded gently.
“Ma’am, I think this may help.”
Help with what?
I almost asked.
Instead, I waited.
“When she was going downhill, we asked her whether there was anyone we could call.”
My chest tightened.
“She wasn’t fully conscious by then,” the nurse continued. “Not really. But she kept saying one name.”
She tilted her head toward James.
“His.”
I looked at him.
James looked at the floor.
“Over and over,” the nurse said. “Nothing else.”
Eleven years.
She had married another man.
Built an entirely different life.
Been abandoned inside that life.
And at the end of everything, the only name she could still reach for was the name of a boy she had trusted
