PART 2
Dr. Feld didn’t let me fall apart for long.
“Lydia, listen to me,” she said. “Four months is a long time. But it’s not too late. We’re going to scan you tomorrow morning. And then we’re going to fight this. Together.” The new scans showed the cancer had grown. Stage three now. It had reached two lymph nodes.
But it hadn’t spread to my organs.
“Still treatable,” Dr. Feld said. “Very treatable. We just can’t lose another day.”
I had surgery nine days later.
I didn’t go home that first night. I went to my sister’s. I changed every password I had from her kitchen table. Then I called a lawyer.
My lawyer found the rest within a week.
Evan’s “business” was a craft brewery that had been failing for two years. He owed more than $200,000. He’d been quietly moving money out of my boutique’s account to cover it.
And there was a woman. A bartender at his brewery named Celine.
Their text messages were in his cloud backup.
“Just be patient. By Christmas, everything will be different.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me. Doctors gave her a year, maybe less. Then the shop, the house, all of it.”
Under my will, Evan inherited everything.
He’d forwarded my patient portal emails to an account only he could see. He’d changed my cell phone voicemail so it was always full. He’d answered every call from the hospital and told them I wasn’t interested. He’d even printed a fake “benign” result on letterhead he’d downloaded, in case I ever asked to see it.
I’d never asked. I trusted him.
I filed for divorce from my hospital bed.
The police took my case after my lawyer brought them the call recordings. Evan was charged with identity fraud, theft from my business, and reckless endangerment.
His lawyer argued that he “had a right to make medical decisions for his wife.”
The prosecutor played the recording in court.
“You would have died anyway, Lydia. I was just making it easier.”
The jury was out for less than two hours.
I changed my will the week I got out of the hospital. Everything goes to my sister’s kids now. And a scholarship for young women who want to open their own businesses.
Six rounds of chemo. Then six more.
I lost my hair. I lost twenty pounds. I kept the boutique open every Saturday, wearing a silk scarf and a lot of lipstick. My brides didn’t care. Some of them brought me soup.
Last month, I rang the bell at the cancer center.
The scan came back clean. Really clean. This time, I read the report myself.
Simone was there. So was Dr. Feld.
“You know,” Simone said, “I almost didn’t call that old shop number. It was buried in your file from eight years ago.”
“Why did you?”
She shrugged.
“Something about your husband’s voice on those calls. He sounded too calm for a man whose wife had cancer.”
THE END.
