Seven Lies (ARC)
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“I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m never going to be”— and she screwed
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up her face, almost disgusted— “healthy.”
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“ But— ”
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“No,” she continued. “That will never be me. I haven’t been that
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person in over a decade.” She shuffled down beneath her covers and
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turned her head toward the window. “This is going to kill me,” she said.
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“You know it and I know it. That’s the only way this will ever end.”
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“Now, Emma,” I said. “Come on, now. That’s just not true. There
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are ways to survive it. You know better than anyone. Look at you; it’s
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what you’ve been doing all along.” And even though I knew that it
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could be true, that it was for some, I knew that it would never be true
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for Emma. She was right: I knew and I had known for years.
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Emma had always been invincible, and yet at some point it became
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very clear that she was broken, too, and that even the best of her would
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never be enough. She started to exist in a peripheral space inhabited
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only by the sick and inaccessible to everyone else. She lived with a
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countdown, ticking in the depths of her mind, measuring the fight left
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in her. And we all knew her fight was running thin.
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“You can do this,” I insisted. “You’re strong.”
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“I am,” she replied. “But I’m also sick. They aren’t mutually exclu-
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sive. I’m not giving up and I’m no less brave for knowing that the end is 10
a real place.”
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“I know,” I said. “I know all of that. I just— ”
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“I’m getting worse,” she said. “You can see it, can’t you? I see it in
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your face when you look at me. I’m not in control of it anymore; it has
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me completely.”
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“We can find a new normal,” I said, and I look back now and I know
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that I was sort of begging.
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“You don’t understand,” she said. “And it’s not your fault; I wouldn’t
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wish that you could. But it owns me. It’s all that I am.”
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“That’s just not true,” I said. “You are so much more than simply this.”
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And then tears flooded the corners of her eyes and I imagined then
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that she must have been terribly sad, but perhaps she was simply in-
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credibly frustrated, exhausted by the myriad of people unable to un-
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derstand her and a disease that she couldn’t understand herself.
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“No,” she replied. “You wish that I was but I’m not. Maybe once
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upon a time. Maybe. But not anymore. Remember what you were like
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when you first met Jonathan?”
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“ Emma— ”
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“No. Stop. Let me finish. Do you remember? Because I do. You were
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totally overwhelmed by him. He was in everything you said and did
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and probably your every thought too. That’s what this is. It’s like being 31S
in love. It is utterly consuming. It’s unstoppable. It’s all that I am.”
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“No,” I said. “What you’re describing is horrible, miserable. Love is
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wonderful, Em. You’ll see. One day, you’ll see.”
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She laughed and I wanted to cry. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I think
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I’m past the big things now. Just one more at the end of the road for me.”
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I wanted to shake her. I wanted to shake her from her stupidity and
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I wanted to reach deep inside her and pull that demon out. I knew I
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couldn’t save her, but I also knew that I must have been able to at some
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point. I knew that there must have been a way to stop this before her
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bones became brittle and her muscles started to waste away and her
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heart began to stop. I must have failed her somewhere along the line for
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this to be her ending.
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We heard footsteps approaching and fell silent. A nurse appeared at
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the end of the bed.
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“Mrs. Black?” she said. “My name’s Lillian. We spoke earlier. Now,
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Emma. The paperwork’s complete, so you can go home whenever you’re
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ready.”
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“ But— ” I began.
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“I’ve discharged myself,” said Emma. “There’s nothing they can do
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for me here.”
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I tried to persuade her to stay in the hospital. She refused. I tried to
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persuade her to spend a few weeks in a rehabilitation facility. She re-
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fused. I tried to persuade her to live with me for a little, while she re-22
cuperated, while she recovered. She refused.
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I took her home in a taxi and put her to bed.
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I feared that it might be the last time I ever saw her, but I was ex-
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hausted and overreacting and, most importantly, wrong.
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I wish the day had ended there but, still, it didn’t.
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My phone was beside me on my pillow, there in case she needed me
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in the night. I was almost asleep, my mind fogging with thoughts that
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weren’t quite conscious, when it vibrated. My hand jumped immedi-
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ately, drawn to it like the pull of a magnet.
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It wasn’t ringing— the vibrations ceased quickly— but there was a
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red circle suspended over the mail icon. I opened my inbox and there
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was her name: Valerie Sands.
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You stayed in their flat for a whole week.
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She hadn’t written anything else, just that one sentence, and I sat
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up, pushing my pillow against the headboard, to work through her
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meaning.
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She was right, of
course. She was almost always right.
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Charles had asked me to water their plants while they went on hol-
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iday, and I had done just that. Except I had also stayed over, without
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invitation, living in their home for nearly a week.
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How much of that did she already know?
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And what was she going to do with it?
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Here was the thing that was slowly seeping through, that was start-
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ing to make sense. My fear manifested only when my friendship felt
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threatened. I was less perturbed by the possibility of police and prison
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because there was no body, no motive, no reason to doubt the reports
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already written. But I was becoming increasingly aware that the small
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threads protruding from my lies, if pulled, would devastate my friend-
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ship with Marnie. The problem, it seemed, was that those were the
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threads that most appealed to Valerie. She was determined to see us
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unraveled.
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The
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Sixth Lie
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Chapter Thirty- One
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k
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C
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harles had been dead for more than six months and I was sleeping
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badly for the first time in several years. I had slept as a child— not
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easily, but comfortably, often after reading late into the night, a flashlight 15
clasped beneath my covers— but I had struggled throughout my teenage
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years. I had spent long nights rotating my pillow and adjusting my posi-
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tion and refilling my water glass, which would quickly absorb the thick-
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ness of a warm bedroom and gather a filmic, stale taste. I know that I
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slept best with Jonathan beside me.
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It was often difficult to believe that one simple action had been so
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effective, that he had died so simply, that death was so attainable. I
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found myself returning to it regularly, retelling that story, developing
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my role, but it never frightened me. In fact, I found it strangely com-
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forting. It was reassuring to know that I had some agency in the course
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of my own life.
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And I felt, again, like that might be necessary, that I needed to do
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something in order to maintain control. I couldn’t have articulated this
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for you then, but I had a sense that I was losing my balance. There had
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been a temporary stability— just those few months— but things were
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beginning to feel uneven again.
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k
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It was mid- April the day that Marnie went into labor, a Friday, and I 04
was exhausted. I had been interrupted by my neighbors going out the
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previous evening at half past eleven— their incessant giggling, the clink-06
ing wine bottles, the thunderous hum of voices trying to be quiet— and
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then returning to the flat just after three in the morning. I had hopped
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between dreams: of Emma, of Marnie, of Charles.
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I hadn’t dreamed about Emma’s corpse since my years at university,
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almost a decade earlier, and yet that vision had returned and it felt more 11
frightening, more graphic, than it ever had before. It would creep into
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an entirely unrelated narrative. I’d be in the middle of a work dream—
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hundreds of calls simultaneously and not enough staff to answer the
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phones, wait times reaching several hours, being summoned to that
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windowed office on the eighth floor— or one of those traditional anxi-
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ety dreams, in which I was standing naked in front of a crowd or my
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teeth were falling out. And then suddenly, in the stationery cupboard
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or at the dentist’s office, I would discover her lifeless body, simply
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nudged into a corner, stiff limbs fixed and eyes clouded. And I would
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wake gasping for air and sweating and trembling in cold, damp sheets.
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It wasn’t unusual for Charles to appear unexpectedly in my dreams,
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too. He would be there, sitting at another desk in my office, or on the
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hygienist’s stool, either in his suit and tie or in those striped pajamas 24
and that university sweater. He rarely participated or addressed me
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directly; he was just there, present in the corner of a nightmare, watch-
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ing as things unfolded. I wondered if I was haunted by my actions, if his 27
presence in my dreams suggested the early symptoms of some deep-
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rooted guilt or shame. But the truth is that I never felt disturbed by his 29
company. He was simply there, as in my real life he was simply not.
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Marnie called me in the middle of a nightmare. I was stuck in the
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mirror of my wardrobe watching Emma’s dead body rot between
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my blankets. I could hear a lawnmower rumbling somewhere outside,
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shaking against the earth, and it continued to reverberate, its engine
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growling, until I finally forced my eyes open.
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My phon
e was vibrating on the bedside table beside me. It shivered
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off the lip and clattered to the ground, still attached to its charger. I slid 04
my hand across the floor and finally found it still ringing.
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“Hello?” I said. My voice caught in my throat and emerged in a
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croak. I coughed to clear the phlegm that had set there overnight.
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“Jane?”
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It was a woman’s voice, but I didn’t recognize it. There was some-
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thing breathless about it, something desperate.
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My heart began to beat a little faster.
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I knew immediately that it wasn’t Emma— I knew her too well; it
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wasn’t her voice and she’d have filled this silence immediately— but it
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could have been a friend of hers, or another nurse, or someone from my
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mother’s facility.
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“Speaking,” I said in response, and in an unnecessarily formal manner.
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There was a sharp intake of breath. “ Just . . . one moment.” Then a
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loud sigh. “ Okay— thank goodness— it’s done. I— ”
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“Who is this?” I interrupted.
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“Oh, it’s me,” said the voice. “ Sorry— not helpful at all. It’s Marnie.
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Jane, it’s me.”
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Which didn’t make sense. It was barely light outside.
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“Marnie?” I asked. “ What . . . ? Why are you calling? It’s the middle
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of the night.”
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“It’s not the middle of the night,” she said. “It’s nearly six. I thought 25
you’d be up.”
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“What’s happened?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”
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We had lived together for years, so embedded in the details of each
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other’s days that there were no secrets, no missteps, no unknowns. I
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could easily have woken one morning and lived her day instead: drink-
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ing her tea, going to her gym and using her shower gel, speaking in her
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voice, using her words— simply being her. And she could have done the
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same for me. She knew my routines and habits. And she knew, too, that
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not once in my entire life had I left for work before six in the morning.
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“Now,” she began, “there’s no need to panic. I just . . . I think that
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maybe stuff is starting to happen. You know, with the baby. And I won-
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