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  His words are spoken on a whisper and I have to strain to hear them. But hear them, I do, and they turn my whole world upside down.

  Somewhere deep, in a place I’ve tried to ignore, I still love Sam. Even now, as shameful as it is, I yearn for him just like I did when I was seventeen. All the years, all the miles, it’s like they meant nothing. Here we are again. After all this time, here we are.

  Together.

  Again.

  “I know it’s insane. And I know it’s so much to ask, but…”

  “But you are asking.”

  “I am. And am I hoping you’ll agree?” He doesn’t answer his own question right away, but I’m listening with every cell of my being for the moment he does. I’m listening with anticipation. With dread. With frustration. And I’m listening with hope. “Yes. Very much, yes.”

  “Sam…” I say his name, but then I trail off. I tip my head back, looking to the clouds for answers. When I find none, I close my eyes. I don’t know where to go from here. I don’t even know what to say.

  After long, quiet moments, I hear his voice.

  “Abi?” A question. A plea. “Will you try? Will you try to love me again?”

  I breathe in. I breathe out.

  I lower my gaze to meet his. I meet the conflict and the honesty, the guilt and the rage. But I also meet something softer. Something sweeter, kinder. Something loving.

  “Do you think you could?” he asks, open and defenseless before me.

  After only a moment’s pause, I nod.

  I nod because I can.

  I nod because I already do.

  I nod because I always have.

  I nod, even though, God help me, some part of me knows that I might’ve just condemned us both.

  CHAPTER 16

  ABI

  What now?

  I’m in a daze. I’m certain that’s how any normal person would respond to such an abnormal situation. My ex boyfriend, arguably the romantic love of my life, asked me to try and love him again in order to grant his dying wife her final wish—or at least grant her the hope of it—which is that her husband and child will be cared for, looked after. Loved.

  And I agreed.

  The loving him again part is a done deal. I never stopped loving Sam Forrester, not even when I married Greg, whom I’d hoped could be the one man to make me forget about Sam.

  Only he didn’t. Not by a long shot.

  So what now?

  I already love him. Even though I have to get to know the man he’s become, it’s clear that he’s just a better version of the boy I once knew. I don’t doubt for a second that I can love Sam again, for real. I only have to let myself.

  But how will that work?

  My head pounds as I’m filled with this shameful feeling, like we’re doing something wrong. Like we’re cheating on a woman who is making her way quickly and prematurely to the grave. But if this is what she wants…

  Maybe that’s where I’m getting hung up. Even though the Sam I knew wasn’t the type of man to make something like this up to get into a woman’s pants, I’m jaded enough not to fully, one hundred percent believe it until…

  Until what?

  And then it hits me.

  I know what “what now” has to be. I know what my next step has to be.

  I have to talk to Sara.

  To say what, to ask what, to confess what, I don’t know. I only know that I need to see her.

  I run inside, sparing only a quick glance at the clock. Eleven forty-one on a Sunday morning in the South. Everyone will be at church. Except maybe the sick.

  Hurriedly, I take off my shirt so I can put on a bra. My hair is in a messy bun and my shorts are old and faded, but this will have to do. She might not even be there. She might be well enough to go to church. My guess, however, is that her ventures out are few and far between, and relatively short when they happen.

  I drive barefoot down the road, following it around the cove to the house at the other end, the big, beautiful house built especially for the perfect man and his perfect wife and their perfect family.

  Only I was wrong. Theirs isn’t a perfect life. It’s full of pain and struggle and strife and heartbreak. But tragic as it is, they’re still handling things better than I would have. Better than I have.

  I get out and make my way gingerly to the front door. Tiny pebbles on the driveway poke into my left foot. It’s uncomfortable, but nothing excruciating. My right foot, however, is a different story. Each grain-like rock causes a deep, stabbing sensation that reminds me in no uncertain terms that coming here without shoes was a mistake. A big mistake. As a result of this, my foot could flare and leave me in agony, unable to bear weight on it, for days if I’m not careful.

  Regret over my rash choice flees my mind when the door swings open, and it does so long before I get the chance to knock or ring the bell.

  “Abi. You’re here.”

  Sara Forrester stands in the opening, looking ethereal in a pale peach blouse and off-white slacks. She doesn’t appear to be the least bit surprised to see me. It’s almost as though she was expecting me, like she anticipated I would come to her today.

  “I…I need to talk to you.”

  She says nothing, just steps back and invites me in with a graceful sweep of her hand. Her smile never fails, making me wonder if it ever does. In her situation, I don’t see how it could not. Of course, I don’t see how a woman could want for her husband to find someone else while she’s dying either. I can’t wrap my brain around it. Apparently I’m not that selfless.

  “Do you drink tea?” she asks, leading me through to the kitchen where a kettle is whistling on the stove. An eerie sense of predestination assails me, one only emphasized when she takes the kettle off the eye and pours steaming water into two mugs set out on the counter.

  Two.

  “Y-yes.”

  She nods, still smiling, and drops a tea bag into each mug and then hands one to me. “Let’s go out on the patio. The sun is shining and it’s a beautiful morning.”

  I follow her, noting the slow way she walks, like she’s exhausted or sore, or maybe both. She takes every step carefully, as though she’s so fragile she might break if she makes the wrong move. My heart squeezes at the thought of what she must be going through.

  Sara chooses a comfortable looking, thickly cushioned chair to curl up on. It faces the lake and she’s immediately bathed in the warm glow of the sun when she sits down. She tilts her face up at just the right angle, in a practiced way, like she might do this on every sunny morning. I wonder if it’s her favorite spot and if that’s her favorite chair. I also wonder, morbidly, if I would ever be able to sit in that chair after she’s gone.

  I know the answer is no.

  Even though I hardly know her, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

  I take a seat across from her, the sun at my back, so I can watch her. Her eyes are closed and her face is lit up as she basks. Judging by her expression, the heat feels good to her. Maybe it’s therapeutic. I don’t know about having Lupus or Type I Diabetes, but I do know that sometimes the sun on my face makes my soul feel lighter.

  And maybe hers needs some lightening.

  “This is what I want.” I startle the tiniest bit when she speaks, her quiet yet firm words jerking me back from my thoughts. “For Sam. This is what I want. That’s what you came to ask, right?”

  My jaw goes slack. “How did you…”

  She lowers her chin and opens her eyes, pinning me with them like two sparkling emerald spears. “I would want to know for sure if I were in your shoes. I would want to hear it for myself. This is where I would’ve come.”

  I bow my head, dropping my gaze away from hers. Suddenly I feel dirty. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for even considering it. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  I see a bony hand with long graceful fingers, a hand that was probably quite beautiful before illness set in, come to rest on my knee. Comfort and acceptance and something else, something like p
ermission, flow from it. I know that, if I were to look up, I’d see the same things in her eyes, but I can’t bring myself to meet them.

  “Don’t be sorry. Sam is a wonderful man. Any woman would be lucky to have him. I can’t blame you for loving him.”

  Automatically, I rush to defend myself. “I don’t—”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t treat me like a fool.” Her words aren’t sharp, just pleading. “I know what I know, and it’s okay. I just don’t want you to hurt him.”

  At that, I lift my head. “Why do you think I’d hurt him? I would never do that.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” There is no judgment in her expression, only the clarity of someone who is facing death, who is fighting. And losing.

  “No. I…I would never…”

  “Then you’ll change your plans for him? You won’t leave?”

  I don’t answer.

  She doesn’t know me. She can’t possibly know of my plans. And yet, it’s there in her eyes that she knows me far better than I would’ve believed.

  “H-how…how did you…” I’m so off balance, so off kilter that I can do nothing more than stammer, so I stop. I stop speaking. I stop trying to speak. I stop pretending. For just a moment.

  “Pain recognizes pain, Abi. You’re suffering. I can see it. But you don’t have to live this way. You don’t have to condemn yourself. You can find happiness again. It’s not too late. If I could live on, I would never leave my husband or my daughter, but I don’t have the luxury of choice any more. You, on the other hand, do. You get to choose whether you’ll let whatever hurt you go and embrace a second chance at love, at life and happiness and fulfillment, or if you’ll let it consume you.”

  “I don’t deserve a second chance.” My confession is so small, so agonizingly small, I’m surprised she hears it.

  “I promise that you do.”

  “But you don’t even know me.”

  She shrugs her thin shoulders. “Maybe, maybe not, but I do know this: Some of us are beyond second chances. They’re a gift, a gift that I’d gladly give all the money in the world for. Yet life is handing you one, free of charge. Don’t throw it away. It dishonors those of us who have no choice when you waste yours.”

  This woman, with her gently delivered, achingly-direct dagger to my heart… She assumes too much. She dares too much.

  She sees too much.

  I wrap my arms around my middle, fighting off a chill. It’s as though the windows to my soul are wide open and she’s peering into the deepest, darkest, most painful parts of it. And there’s nothing I can do to stop her.

  “I…I don’t know what you mean,” I deny weakly.

  She smiles again, and I realize now that her smile is almost otherworldly, like she has one foot in a higher, better place than the one we’re sharing right now. “You do, Abi. You do. You’ll have to forgive my bluntness. I know some things take time, things like trust and confidence, but I don’t have very much time to spare, so I tend to be short on subtlety.”

  I’ve become so uncomfortable with this conversation that I actually turn it toward her condition, something that should be even more uncomfortable. And yet I do it on purpose. Just to escape. Because I’m a runner. I run from pain and discomfort. It’s what I do.

  “Will you tell me what’s happening to you?”

  Only now do I see a waver in her smile. This is where her bravado gets shaky. “I’m sure Sam will be happy to give you the clinical details. I’ll just tell you the part that matters. I’ve been on dialysis for over two years because my kidneys are failing. A combination of Lupus and my diabetes. Something medical and complicated. Some people, in best-case scenarios, can live for years and years taking dialysis, but for some, it’s just not enough. As you can probably guess, I’m one of the latter.”

  “What about a transplant?”

  She shakes her head, her smile turning sad. “I’m not a candidate. Putting fresh new kidneys into the body of a woman with not one, but two diseases that damage the kidneys would be a senseless waste.”

  “I doubt anyone who needed the kidneys would call it a senseless waste,” I offer in her defense.

  “I think you’re wrong. I think they’d understand why it would be. If my loved one died and was gracious enough to donate their organs, I’d want someone healthy to have them. Get the most life possible out of them.”

  “Oh,” is all I can say. When you look at it that way…

  “For now, the choice is mine. How long I’ll continue taking dialysis, I mean. I’ll have weeks at most from the moment I stop. I’ve been holding on for so long, it seems. Holding on to the hope that Sam would find someone that I could leave him and my daughter with.” She leans in and lowers her voice. “To be perfectly honest, I’d begun to give up on him even trying.”

  A word hangs in the air. It’s as clear as if she’d spoken it aloud.

  Until.

  Until me.

  I resist the urge to fidget. I know what she’s getting at, and even though I’m the one who sought her out, I hope she doesn’t spell it out for me.

  But she does.

  “Until you. The moment I saw you, I knew.”

  I don’t want to ask what she knew. I’m not sure I can handle the guilt of being so transparent about the feelings I could never quite overcome.

  “If you think I—”

  “It’s okay, Abi. There is a reason you never got over Sam. And there’s a reason he never got over you. I am that reason. As backward as that sounds, it’s true. God kept your love alive for me.”

  I want to deny it. I want to tick off a thousand reasons why she’s wrong. I want to reassure her that there is nothing between Sam and me, and that there never will be.

  Only…

  Her words break into my thoughts.

  “Sam loves me. I know he does. You don’t need to feel like you’re stealing him from me. If I weren’t dying, he would fight his feelings for you. That’s just the type of man he is. But I don’t want him to. And I don’t want you to fight your feelings for him. You…this…is a gift to me. I’ve loved Sam Forrester from the moment I met him. I knew there was competition for his heart, but I wasn’t intimidated.” She leans back and laughs, shaking her head in consternation. “I was overconfident, but I guess it all worked out. I got to have most of his heart for all these years. He loved me better than I deserved, even while you still held a piece of him that I could never reach. And we have the most beautiful little girl in the world. I’ve had a wonderful life. How can I regret anything?”

  I know the question is rhetorical, but I shrug anyway, unsure of what I’d say if it weren’t.

  “Now that you’re back, I feel like I’m leaving them in good hands. Because I am, aren’t I, Abi?”

  There is so much I could say right now, things that would steal the peace right out from under this woman. But I know what she needs to hear. So that’s what I give her. And the instant I utter that one word, I see her shoulders sag with relief.

  “Yes.”

  The word is a whisper. A quiet rustle of leaves. A gentle shift of clouds.

  And it’s a lie.

  I feel guilty, but not so much that I tell her the truth. If lying to her, a sin in and of itself, can give her the peace she so desperately needs, I’m willing to risk it. I can’t let her leave this life worrying about the two people she loves most in the world. I’m many things—broken, lost, bitter, a taker of life—but what I’m not is heartless.

  CHAPTER 17

  ABI

  Starting Over

  That one word—yes—seems to set fate in motion, beginning with the arrival of a child.

  I hear Noelle calling my name long before I see her, long before she comes barreling through the glass door and onto the patio. I figure her father must’ve told her that was my car out front.

  Decked out in a frilly blue dress with matching socks and tiny white shoes, she launches herself at me as though I’m her favorite relative, come for an extended visit. “D
id you come to play hide and seek with me?”

  “Well, no. I came to see your momma, but I can play a quick game with you before I go. How’s that?”

  One would think, now that I’ve spoken to Sara about the situation, I’d feel much more comfortable. But I don’t. If anything, I feel more uncomfortable. It’s as though my love for Sam hangs in the air like a dense layer of dust, coating everything around us. It’s more noticeable than the trees or the grass or the birds. That’s why I find Noelle’s entrance and request to play a game of hide and seek quite the reprieve.

  After this, I’ll make my exit. I’ll run.

  Not far. I won’t run far. Not yet. I just need to run from here. I need to go home and hide, and squirm and writhe, and consider my options. But maybe running will be part of the plan eventually. Maybe running would be smart, getting away from this town before all of this can become any more real.

  “Yaaaay!” She throws her arms around my neck then hops down and reaches for my hand. It’s the voice of her father that stops her in her tracks.

  “Not in your church clothes, young lady.” Sam is using his daddy voice, a voice that causes a pang of regret to reverberate mournfully between my ovaries and my heart. It’s a phantom pain of what we never had, and what can never be.

  Mere days ago, I was thinking that this should be my life. Here. With Sam. I was thinking that I should’ve had his beautiful child and I should’ve shared his beautiful home, but I didn’t want it like this. Not this way.

  But I did want it.

  And, God help me, a big part of me still does.

  If only for a little while.

  Noelle, unperturbed, races off toward the house, flying past her father. When she reaches the door, she looks back at me. “Help me change, Miss Abi.” She holds out her tiny hand, her eyes bright and shining, and agony swells in my throat. She’s so sweet and innocent, so vulnerable. She doesn’t deserve what’s coming.