by Meghan March
Why did I fall in love with him?
Because he was another escape. Because he made me laugh. Because he made me happy at a time when I thought I would be pretending to smile for the rest of my life. Because instead of just faking living for the moment, he taught me how to do it for real, even though he didn’t know he was doing it.
He frowns when he sees me curled into a ball on the bed. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
That’s a loaded question. More like, what isn’t wrong?
Dane closes the distance between us and sits on the bed beside me, reaching out a hand to rest on my knee. “I’m sorry I was such a dick on the flight. This hasn’t been easy for me either. I just can’t keep going like we are, Kat. We’re better than this.”
I inhale, snuffling back the tears hovering just below the surface. “We probably could’ve been better than this, but I screwed everything up. It’s all my fault.”
He drops his head, and I lose sight of his eyes. “It’s not just your fault. This is on both of us.”
I shake my head, wiping away the tears that trickle over. God, who goes on vacation and wants to cry the whole time?
“There’s so much I haven’t told you.”
Dane’s chin lifts, his gaze intense when it meets mine again. “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t been honest since the beginning.”
* * *
Three and a half years ago
“I have to get back to work, but I’m going to talk to Dad so we can come up with a plan.”
I helped my mom into the house when we returned from an appointment with her doctor. I wanted to strangle my father for not making time to go with us so I wouldn’t have to repeat everything the doctor had told us this time.
With every appointment, they seemed to get worse. My mother, more stoic than any war hero, had taken the news without bursting into tears, which was more than I could say for myself. My tears didn’t burst, per se, but they tracked down my cheeks during the entire thirty-minute appointment.
Life as we knew it was over.
“Dad?” I called out as we entered the house.
The kitchen was quiet and his keys were gone. I’d have to check the garage to see if his car was missing too. Before I could go look, my mother laid a hand on my arm.
“He’s gone, Kat.” Her tone was quiet but certain.
It didn’t dawn on me what she meant.
“I don’t want to leave you alone right now. When do you think he’ll be back? I’ll make some coffee and work from here this afternoon.”
I moved toward the kitchen but my mom’s grip, already shaking, tightened.
In a voice that should be anything but calm, she told me, “He’s not coming back.”
“What?” My response came out incredulous, and I ditched my briefcase on the kitchen table before racing up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom. The bedroom where I’d stand outside the door on Christmas morning to wait for permission to go downstairs and stare at the tree in all its glory.
I shoved open the door and skidded to a halt inside. My father’s nightstand was devoid of his regular stack of books, one of which had been the Bible for as long as I could remember. I spun around to his dresser and yanked open the drawers.
Empty.
His closet.
Empty.
His bathroom drawers.
Empty.
After twenty-nine years of marriage, all he left behind was seventy-three cents in change, a few stray buttons, and a broken hanger.
My mother shuffled down the hallway, her movements already labored from the disease.
I lowered myself to sit on the perfectly made bed, pulled my knees up, and wrapped my arms around them. “How? Why?”
“Sometimes the men we think are the strongest aren’t capable of bearing the burdens set before them.”
I jerked up my head to stare at my mother. “You’re not a burden. How could he—”
“He told me last night that he wasn’t sure he could bear to see me when I wasn’t me.”
That coward. I’d never understood how years of love could turn to hate in an instant, but if I saw my father right now, I’d be hard pressed to keep myself out of prison.
“How dare he?” I whispered, and it came out like a hiss.
“What’s done is done.” Mom was trying to be strong, but her voice quavered as she settled onto the bed beside me. She wrapped her arms around me, offering me comfort when her husband of almost three decades had abandoned her in her time of need.
If I ever had a question before about who the strong one was in their marriage, my mother answered it fully and completely.
“We’re going to be fine,” I told her, vowing it to myself at the same time.
“Of course we will,” she reassured me.
We both knew we were lying. Nothing would ever be fine again.
Twenty-nine years of marriage, and my father couldn’t manage to stick around through that last one because he didn’t want to watch his wife die.
* * *
Present day
When I finish, Dane’s hands are balled into tight fists despite the empathy in his eyes.
“He didn’t deserve either of you.”
“I’ve told myself the same thing, but it still hurts.”
I swipe at my tears and take a deep breath. Now that the dam has been breached, the rest comes pouring out.
“When my mom died, Benjie was afraid I was going to crawl into the grave with her. I wanted to. For weeks after we buried her, I went through the motions, but I was dead inside. ALS is a horrific disease because it steals everything from you. She couldn’t walk. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t feed herself. She refused to go on a ventilator once her breathing became impaired, because she didn’t want to drag it out.”
Tears pour down my face as I recall those awful days. I would have given anything to ease her suffering.
“How could something so terrible happen to the best woman I’ve ever known? She was so good, so sweet. A better person than me, by far. She would take her old purses and fill them with the hotel toiletry bottles I brought back from business trips, protein bars, bottles of water, and some cash, and give them to homeless women downtown when she went out shopping. She volunteered every month at a soup kitchen. She never missed a Sunday at church except the morning I broke my ankle when I was twelve. It wasn’t fair! She shouldn’t have had to suffer like that.”
By the time I finish, my breath comes in strangled sobs. “I miss her so much.”
Dane slides up the bed and wraps both arms around me, pulling me against his chest. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I should’ve been there more for her, but if I didn’t go to work, then we couldn’t pay for her care. Insurance would only cover so much, and I wanted her to have the best. She gave me everything, and it was my turn to give it back to her. It might have been different if my dad hadn’t walked out on her.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because thinking about it nearly breaks me every time,” I say as Dane holds both my cheeks and catches more tears on his thumbs. “She didn’t want me to work so hard. She hated being a burden, but she wasn’t. She was my mom. Some days I think she willed it to go faster so I didn’t have to watch her suffer for longer. I held her hand when she passed, and I wanted to die too.”
Those months were such a blur, except for the day when we laid her in the ground and Benjie wrapped me in his arms. “You have to live for her now, Kitty Kat. She would want you to.”
“Benjie made me realize that acting like I was buried with her would just piss Mom off. So I went back to work. I went through the motions. I had to live because she couldn’t. He made me. And by the time I met you, I’d gotten really good at faking it. So good that I even believed it myself. I stopped talking about her, and I hate that too.”
“I wish you’d told me. This isn’t something you should’ve had to carry alone.”
Dane holds m
e tighter and I suck in a breath, knowing it’s time to tell him the part that haunts me every day.
“There’s still more.”
“Kat—”
“I haven’t been tested.”
Dane’s head jerks back, and his brown eyes search my face. “Why would you need to be tested?”
I hiccup and get ready to put my greatest fear into words. “I could have it too. ALS can be genetic. Every time my hand shakes, I tell myself I’m a coward for not getting tested, but I don’t know if I can live knowing that I’m going to die that way. So instead, I started this all on a lie. Everything. And I never told you. I just kept it going.”
Dane’s arms flex, and he tucks me into his chest again. “It wasn’t a lie. None of it. You were dealing the only way you knew how. There’s not a damn thing wrong with that. Whatever happens next, we face it together.”
I cling to him like he’s a rock in the ocean and I’m being battered by waves. The rock I wouldn’t let him be when I needed him most.
The days after Benjie died without telling anyone he had cancer.
Chapter 9
Dane
I’m a fucking fraud. My wife is baring her soul by sharing her secrets, except they aren’t secrets. I know all of it. About her piece-of-shit dad, the painful decline of her mother, and how Kat shouldered the whole thing.
The only thing I didn’t know, and I could kill him myself for not telling either of us, was that Benjie was dying. I should have seen it. I should have known something was wrong the day he tracked me down at the bar a few blocks from our apartment while I was waiting for Kat.
* * *
One year and two months ago
I ordered a Crown and Coke as I waited for Kat, knowing she was going to be at least fifteen minutes late. I called it Kat time, and since I knew she was probably at the office still answering one more e-mail, I wasn’t going to hold it against her. After ten months of our unconventional marriage, with both of us traveling more than we were home, I finally had her mostly figured out.
Or so I thought.
“Hey, Dane. Kat mentioned she was meeting you here for drinks before going to dinner tonight.”
Benjie, my wife’s best friend, dropped onto the stool next to me. It was August in Texas, and he should be dying of heatstroke in that pink button-down shirt, but that was Benjie for you. Didn’t exactly adhere to any trend that I’d noticed in our limited interaction.
“What brings you around?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
The bartender slid the Crown and Coke across the wooden bar, and I nodded at Benjie. “You want anything?”
He looked up at the bartender. “Perrier, if you have it.”
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why he’d seek me out here. “You need Kat?”
Benjie shook his head. “No, I need to talk to you.”
The bartender set the green bottle of Perrier in front of Benjie on a cocktail napkin, and Benjie twisted the cap off, taking a little more time than I would expect. He folded the cocktail napkin inside out and wiped off the mouth of the bottle before he took a drink. Through all of this, I waited for him to tell me whatever he’d come here to say.
Finally, he looked up at me. “You’re not around much.”
This wasn’t a secret, by any means. I wasn’t spending as much time out of the country as I did before, and most of the time, I was home on the weekends.
“About as much as Kat.”
“What the hell do you do, again?”
“Imports.”
“Sounds boring as shit.”
I shrugged and took another drink. “It keeps me entertained.”
Benjie must have decided that was enough small talk. “I told her she was making a mistake by marrying you.”
Blunt and to the point. Even though I didn’t like what he was saying, I respected the guy for putting it out there so plainly.
“Is that right?”
He nodded. “She didn’t know you well enough. Not for real. And I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you still don’t know her either.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I knew what mattered, like how she tasted and what she sounded like when she came, but Benjie wasn’t here to whip out dicks and measure ’em. Actually, he would like that a little too much.
“You’re the one who pushed her at me to begin with, so I find it a little ironic that you warned her away.”
He sipped his fancy water before replying. “That was a one-night stand. Or it was supposed to be. She needed the distraction.”
“Why don’t you just tell me why you’re really here, Ben,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“Has she ever told you about her mom?”
“I know she passed not long before we met.”
When the subject came up, it was clear from her body language that Kat didn’t want to talk about it. Considering there was a whole hell of a lot of stuff I didn’t talk about, I’d never pushed it. I figured she’d tell me when she was ready.
“She never told you the whole horrible truth, did she?”
I shook my head. I could have found out. It wouldn’t have taken much of my time. But I didn’t want to invade her privacy that way either. Some things were better left buried.
“No.”
“And you never pushed?”
“No.”
“You’re both so fucking stubborn, it’s a miracle you’re together.”
“Hey now—” He could take jabs at me, but he’d better watch it when he talked about Kat.
Benjie held up a hand. “I don’t mean in a bad way. I love that woman more than anyone in my life. She almost broke when her mom died.”
Everything he said next hit me like bullets to the chest. Her mom had ALS, and Kat had shouldered it all when her dad walked out. Emotionally, financially, and physically.
“Jesus,” I whispered. My chest ached at the thought of Kat going through all of that on her own.
“She didn’t break, but she lost a piece of herself. I still think it’s a freaking miracle she actually married you, because I would’ve said she didn’t believe in marriage anymore after her dad walked out.”
Benjie turned away and coughed, a long hacking one, and grabbed another cocktail napkin to cover his mouth.
“So, why are you telling me this now?” I asked when he turned back.
“Because there might come a time when I can’t be there for her, and someone needs to know what she’s been through. Kat is strong, but everyone has their breaking point.” He met my gaze. “You need to be there to pick up the pieces.”
* * *
Present day
I should have seen it. He all but told me that something was coming, and I was too caught up in thinking about how horrible her mom’s death must have been for Kat that I didn’t see what was right in front of my face. Even when Benjie coughed, it didn’t occur to me that he was dying and that in two months he’d be gone.
But he warned me. All but laid it out that she was going to be put through the crusher again, and he would be the one to do it this time. The problem was, he didn’t realize that by my rushing home to be with Kat when she found out he was gone, I set something into motion that would tear me apart from the inside out.
I tried to pick up the pieces, but I was too fucked up to get them all.
* * *
One year ago
We both felt like we were walking through a fog on that cemetery sidewalk, but for different reasons. Kat hadn’t stopped crying since I got home from the airport. Even when I thought she was cried out, she’d put her earbuds in and listen to Benjie’s favorite album, and silent tears would drip down her face.
Because he knew it was coming, he’d planned his entire ceremony himself, down to the green alligator-skin casket with brass tacks and the ban on black clothes.
Benjie’s brothers and friends had carried the casket, and Kat had followed behind with a spray of yellow lilies. Yellow ros
es weren’t enough to symbolize their friendship, Benjie’s funeral notes had read.
Everyone was dressed in bright colors, standing beneath black umbrellas in the afternoon rain at the cemetery on a day Kat and I should have been lying on the beach, celebrating our first anniversary. The trip had obviously been cancelled.
My tie matched Kat’s pink dress, but despite the bold colors, the crowd was subdued.
Benjie hadn’t told anyone he was dying, not even his parents. They’d read a letter from him at the service in which he’d explained why.
When everyone knows you’re sick, they start treating you differently. Every question is about the cancer or how you’re feeling, if they don’t have the balls to bring it up directly.
Well, pardon my foul mouth, Father, but fuck that.
I’m alive, and I’m going to live every last moment of this life the way I have before I found out that despite going through round after round of antiquated treatments, I’m still going to die. I wasn’t going to spend the last year of my life with everyone looking at me like I had an expiration date and we were all counting down.
I’m sorry to those who will feel like this was unfair, that I didn’t give you time to prepare. As I think we can all agree—death blows. There’s no good way for it to take someone. You could watch me fade or you could be surprised, and because it’s my life, I chose the second option.
I didn’t just do this for you, so don’t go thinking I’m a selfless bastard. I did this for me too. I made the most of every moment I had. I spent time with friends. I traveled the world. I lived.
Don’t be sad for me. Be happy I’m no longer hacking up a lung after you leave the room.
Fucking lungs. Who knew they’d be the ones to bring me down? I refuse to believe it was all the pot I smoked in college. And after.
I love you all. Now, go tear it up in my name,
Benjie
He added a separate note for Kat.
Kitty Kat, I’m so fucking sorry. I found out a couple months after your mom died, and there was no way I was going to put you through the wringer again. Instead, I decided that I was going to teach you how to live for both of us.