There was a quote on the wall that I especially liked.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly, that just to be alive, is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie, 1890–1976

It seemed very fitting.

At 6:00 Adrian still hadn’t texted. He didn’t answer my call either. I went to the inn’s cocktail hour without him.

When I got back to our room at 6:45, he hadn’t called me back. But dinner wasn’t until 9:00, and I knew he had a jury trial starting on Monday and he was probably trying to wrap things up so he could relax this weekend. I decided to take a bath while I waited for him.

A half hour passed.

Then a full hour. I added more hot water to the tub.

When he finally called, I could hear the wind in his car.

“Hey, you on your way?” I asked, putting my toe into the dripping faucet. “You missed the cocktail hour. There’s a golf pro staying here with this girl. They’re married, but I don’t think to each other—”

“Vanessa, something’s come up.”

I dropped my foot away from the faucet. “What do you mean?”

“I’m on my way to La Crosse.”

My stomach plummeted.

“Wisconsin? Why?”

“Garcia got arrested. I have to go down there.”

I sat up in the tub. “Wh—what?”

“I’m sorry. I’m not going to make it tonight.”

The disappointment lingered for only a moment before it turned into hot, boiling anger. Something inside me snapped.

“If you want to break up with me, then just fucking break up with me,” I said.

“What?”

I shook my head. “You can’t even stand to be in the same room with me, can you? You can’t even look at me.”

“It’s not— Vanessa, I don’t have a choice. I’m his attorney. I have to go down there.”

“The only reason you have to go down there is so you won’t have to face a night alone with me. He’s got a whole firm of attorneys. You said it yourself, anyone can go, it doesn’t have to be you.”

I could almost see him dragging his hand down his mouth, looking anywhere but at me.

I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly what we both know it is, Adrian. You’re running. Even when you’re with me, you’re not here. Stop ghosting me and calling it work. Please. Please. Turn around. Come back. And stop doing this to me.”

There was a long pause on the other end.

“And then what? I watch you let yourself die?”

And there it was.

So I was right.

My chin quivered. “I can’t give you what you’re asking, Adrian.”

“And I can’t give you what you’re asking either. I need this job. Right now it’s the only thing making me feel halfway sane.”

“So being away from me twenty hours a day is what’s making you sane?”

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“Yeah, you did.” I forced down the tears. “I get it. You’re still whiplashed and trying to figure it out, and you’re doing what you do when you feel out of control—you work. But you’re wasting precious time.” I shook my head. “It’s just an illusion, Adrian. The control is an illusion. No one can promise you forever. People die unexpectedly every day. They have car accidents and heart attacks and strokes and if all you do is live your life fixated on how it ends, you’re just living the end twice. We still have time and all these things that you think will save me won’t. Stop chasing it and just be happy. Be happy with me while you can.”

He didn’t answer, but the wind in the background had stopped, like he’d pulled over.

“This might be my last New Year’s,” I whispered. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you get that every single holiday might be my last one? That every day with me is a gift? Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

“Of course it does.”

“Then treat it like a gift! Come back to me. If not tonight, fine. If you have to work, I get it. Go do what you have to do. But then be in this relationship. Your knee-jerk response to finding out that I might be dying should be to spend every waking moment with me, not disappear.”

He was quiet for so long I thought I’d dropped the call.

“I can’t be helpless, Vanessa.” His voice was thick. “I can’t sit here and watch you die without knowing we did everything we could to prevent it.”

I shook my head, and the tears that had been welling in my eyes spilled down my cheeks. “I can’t wait months for you to come to terms with this, Adrian. I don’t have months to spare. Especially if you’re not going to do anything to help you work through it. You won’t go to therapy, you won’t join a support group, you won’t even talk to me. And I’m not willing to be unhappy and alone while you act like I’m already dead. I’m just not.”

There was a long, quiet pause.

“I need you to tell me that you’ll seek treatment,” he said into the silence. “That you’ll get diagnosed, that you’ll do clinical trials, take the medications available. I need answers. I need a plan.” He paused. “This is my bottom line.”

The words hung between us.

“Your bottom line?” I whispered. “Your bottom line? You’re giving me an ultimatum?”

He didn’t reply.

I shook my head. “And what if I say no?”

He waited a long beat. “Vanessa…I need to know you’re going to give us more time.”

My heart shattered and disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces.

“Fuck you, Adrian. You don’t even want the time you have.”

And I hung up on him.

CHAPTER 29

THIS GOODBYE WILL LEAVE

YOU IN TEARS

VANESSA

Annabel’s rehab facility was a nice one. It should be. It was costing me enough.

After I hung up on Adrian, I left the bed-and-breakfast and drove to Iowa.

I spent New Year’s Eve at a Motel 6 a mile from where Annabel was staying. I checked the rehab’s visitors’ hours, set an alarm for the morning, and then downed half the bottle of champagne I brought out of a paper cup and went to sleep before the countdown.