Joel didn't call again. He just kept apologizing over text, saying Victoria was nobody, a stranger who meant nothing, and that I shouldn't take it to heart.
When that got no reply, he went back to playing pitiful, and finally sent me a thousand-word suicide note, all about how it wasn't meant to be in this life, how we'd pick things up again in the next.
He wanted it to make me regret everything, to come crawling back and beg him to get treatment.
The old me would have done exactly that. But now I just turned on Do Not Disturb.
Last time around, he'd walked off with every cent I had, which meant he had a backup plan, something waiting in reserve. I had to be careful. That was the whole reason I hadn't torn the mask off and blown things up on the spot.
That thought sent me straight to the phone with my assistant.
“Joel won't be discharged for a while. Find a way to put surveillance in his hospital room.”
She agreed at once, and had it handled in no time.
Just as I'd guessed, Naomi Henson and Joel were using the money they'd conned out of me over the years to keep paying Victoria's hospital bills.
Victoria, though, was furious.
“Joel, does that Dawn woman know something? Otherwise why would she suddenly refuse to donate?”
Joel shook his head, all confidence.
“No way. She's an idiot. If she actually knew, she'd have blown the roof off by now.”
“She's acting like this because she wants me to cave. She's using it to force me into signing the papers and marrying her, that's all.”
Naomi threw in a few insults about me too.
“But what do we do now? Victoria can't keep dragging this out, and you can't actually go marry her!”
Joel gave the two of them a reassuring look.
“Relax. I know her. To her, I matter more than anything, and she knows my days are numbered, so she won't hold out more than a few days.”
“So we're not the ones who should be panicking. She is.”
He said it with plenty of confidence, but when I still didn't show, and his own savings ran thinner and thinner until they couldn't cover Victoria's hospital stay, he finally got desperate.
So a few days later.
Naomi pushed Joel home in a wheelchair.
They'd clearly gone to some trouble with the makeup. Naomi's eyes were rimmed red, as if she cried her way through every day.
Joel looked even worse, gaunt and sallow.
If I didn't know his body was perfectly fine, I might have believed he really was on his deathbed.
I acted like I couldn't see the two of them and their little "makeup job," didn't even let them inside, just left them standing out in the sun.
“What are you two doing here?”
That wasn't the reaction Joel had planned for, but he stuck to the script and put on a smile that was mournful yet full of longing.
“The doctor says I don't have long.”
“The only person I can't let go of is you, so I came to see you one last time.”
I nodded.
“Well, you've seen me. You can go now.”
The words dropped, and both of them froze.
Joel coughed and coughed, waving for Naomi to wheel him away.
But Naomi didn't move. She looked at me with brimming eyes.
“Dawn, please, save Joel.”
“Joel doesn't want to be a burden to you, that's why he won't make it official, won't marry you. But in his heart and mine, the two of you are already husband and wife.”
“Once you're both recovered from the surgery, you can sign the papers, get married, spend your whole lives together.”
Before I could say a word.
Joel coughed even harder, and hard as he was coughing, he still shook his head.
“Mom, you promised me. You said you wouldn't let Dawn donate her liver. How could you lie to me?”
“My job is to protect Dawn, not to hurt her. Making her donate her liver, you might as well just kill me.”
