PART 3 — THEY STARTED PLANNING MY FUNERAL
Nathan became careless. Perhaps cruel people always become careless once they convince themselves their victim is powerless.
Three days later, he sat beside my bed making funeral arrangements on his phone.
Not with me.
With Vanessa.
My hearing was excellent.
“White lilies?” she asked through the speaker.
“No,” Nathan replied. “Claire never liked lilies.”
That almost made me laugh. After twenty-one years of marriage, he remembered one thing.
“Then roses?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I stared toward the window.
Doesn’t matter.
Vanessa began talking about keeping the service “small and tasteful.” Then she asked how quickly afterward Nathan thought it would be appropriate to “start changing things around.”
There was a pause.
“Give it a few months,” Nathan said.
“Months?”
“Vanessa.”
“What? Everyone knows we’ve been unhappy for years.”
That was fascinating. Apparently, Nathan had rewritten our marriage too.
We had not been unhappy for years. The year before my diagnosis, we celebrated our anniversary in Maine. He had danced with me barefoot on the porch of a rental cottage. He’d kissed my forehead and said, “I can’t imagine getting old with anyone else.”
Then I became sick.
The future he imagined changed. So did he.
That was the truth. And painful as it was, accepting it freed me from searching for some flaw in myself that had caused his betrayal. My illness had taken my muscles. Nathan’s choices belonged to Nathan.
A week later, I discovered something more painful.
Rebecca came to see me. We had once been inseparable, but after our mother’s death, we drifted apart. Nathan never liked Rebecca. He said she was too opinionated. Over time, I began seeing less of her.
As soon as she entered my bedroom, she broke down.
“I’m sorry.”
My eyes filled with tears.
She took my hand carefully.
“I should’ve come sooner. Nathan kept telling me you were too tired for visitors.”
My pulse quickened.
Too tired?
Rebecca explained. She had called repeatedly. Nathan told her I slept almost constantly. He claimed visitors agitated me. He suggested she wait.
My sister had been sitting forty minutes away believing she was respecting my wishes. I had been lying in bed believing she didn’t care.
It wasn’t simply betrayal anymore. Nathan had isolated me.
Maybe because he wanted control. Maybe because he didn’t want Rebecca noticing Vanessa. Maybe because guilty people prefer rooms without witnesses.
For the next hour, Rebecca and I communicated through my screen. It was slow. It was awkward. It was one of the happiest hours I had experienced in months.
Before leaving, Rebecca kissed my forehead.
“You’re still my bossy big sister.”
I typed:
OBVIOUSLY.
She laughed through tears.
That night, something inside me changed again. My plan stopped being about punishing Nathan. I had very little time left. Time had become too valuable to spend entirely on revenge.
I wanted to protect what I had built. I wanted to repair what could still be repaired. And I wanted my final days to belong to people who actually loved me.
Nathan returned around eleven. Vanessa’s perfume was on his jacket.
He leaned over my bed.
“You asleep?”
I looked straight at him. He froze.
For one moment, our eyes met. Something uncertain flickered across his face. Then he smiled.
“You always had beautiful eyes.”
He kissed my forehead.
I wanted to ask him how someone could kiss his dying wife with another woman’s perfume still on his collar.
Instead, I closed my eyes. Not because I was weak. Because tomorrow was the day Monica would come back. And tomorrow, Nathan would discover that the woman he treated like a piece of furniture had quietly redesigned his entire future.
