Manhattan Presbyterian had a smell all its own—hand sanitizer and stale coffee and something underneath that I never could name. I was twelve weeks along now, and the nurse had given me directions to the OB suite that I promptly forgot the second I stepped off the elevator.
I took a left instead of a right. The signs changed color. HEMATOLOGY/ONCOLOGY, one read, in blue letters that felt too calm for what they meant.
I should have turned around. I was already turning around when a voice stopped me cold.
"Felicity."
I knew that voice. I'd heard it drift through my husband's phone speaker at two in the morning, tinny and warm, while he thought I was asleep.
Lilah Patterson stood in the doorway of a consultation room, wearing cream silk like she'd dressed for a lunch date instead of a hospital. Her hair was down. Her lipstick was perfect. Nothing about her looked sick.
"Come in," she said, like we were old friends. "I've been wanting to meet you properly."
I don't know why I walked in. Maybe I wanted to see her up close, the way you press on a bruise just to confirm it still hurts.
She sat on the edge of the exam table, legs crossed, utterly at ease. "You must be what, twelve weeks? You're glowing."
"What are you doing here, Lilah?"
"Appointment." She smiled. "I made a bet with a friend, actually. Rachel—you might know her, she used to date Dawson's business partner. I told her I could have Dawson back within a month." She said it lightly, like she was talking about a tennis match. "She thought a month was too generous. I told her Dawson's not complicated. He just needs to be reminded of what real feels like."
My hand found the strap of my bag and held on. "He's my husband."
"He's been your husband for five years," she said. "And whose name did he say in that ballroom, Felicity? Not out loud. But I saw the footage. Everyone did." She tilted her head. "He'll choose me. He always has. You're just the version of him that happened while he was waiting."
I didn't answer. My silence used to be a habit born of not wanting to make things worse. Now it felt like a blade I was learning to hold.
She watched my face for a reaction and didn't get one, and something flickered behind her eyes—annoyance, maybe, at being denied her scene. She stood, smoothed her skirt, and delivered the last line like she'd been saving it.
"I have stage four lung cancer," she said. "Six months, maybe less. I came back to see him one last time. I didn't expect it to feel like this again." Her voice cracked, right on cue, and her eyes went bright and wet. "I'm not trying to hurt you. I just don't have time to be polite about what I want anymore."
I looked at her for a long moment. At the flawless skin. The steady hands. The performance so smooth it almost worked on me.
"I hope you get better," I said, and turned and walked out.
My steps didn't shake in the hallway. My face didn't crack in the elevator. It wasn't until I was in my car, hands on the wheel, engine off, that I let myself sit in it—the cold, complete thing settling into my chest like sediment. Something in me had gone still in that room, and I understood, driving home, that it wasn't going to move again. Not for her. Not for him.
I cooked dinner that night. Chicken, the way he liked it, rosemary and lemon, because some habits don't die just because the heart behind them does. I set the table. Two plates, two glasses, candle I didn't light.
Dawson came home at seven, jacket over one arm, phone in his hand. He sat down and unlocked the screen before he'd even pushed in his chair.
I counted. Seventeen times over dinner, he looked down at that phone. Seventeen times, his fork paused halfway to his mouth while his thumb moved across the glass.
"This is good," he said once, not looking up.
"Thank you."
He ate in silence after that, and I ate in silence too, and the only sound in the apartment was the small electric buzz of his phone against the table, over and over, like something knocking to be let in.
Finally he set his fork down. "How was the appointment?" he asked. He even managed to look at me while he said it—concern arranged carefully across his face, the way he arranged it for cameras.
"Fine," I said. "Everything's fine."
I didn't tell him about the oncology wing. I didn't tell him about the bet, or the tears that came exactly when they were needed, or the woman in cream silk who thought she already owned him.
I wasn't going to beg him to tell me the truth.
I was going to let him show me. And I was going to watch every single second of it.
