Chapter 2 - Leah’s Last Request

EVAN

By the time I get back to the apartment, Rome has softened at the edges.

The heat has pulled back just enough to let the evening in. Shadows gather in the corners of buildings. Streetlights flick on one by one, like someone is slowly running a hand along the city and coaxing it from day into night.

I should be exhausted. I’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours, if I’m counting the time change correctly. My body feels a step behind itself, like it hasn’t quite arrived yet. But my mind refuses to shut up.

It replays the afternoon like footage on a loop: Livia’s voice, calm and cutting. You don’t smile much. The way she handled the old plans as if they were sacred. The moment her fingers touched mine—small, nothing, everything.

It’s dangerous how quickly she has lodged herself in my thoughts.

The apartment is cooler now, the window letting in a breeze that smells faintly of something baking downstairs. I drop the binder on the table, next to the map she gave me earlier. The parchment is still rolled, the ribbon loose.

I stand over it for a moment, then force myself to walk away before I obsess over work just to avoid thinking about anything else.

My phone lies where I left it, screen dark. When I pick it up, it lights up with two missed calls and a text from Leah.

Leah:

Did your meeting go okay?

Call me when you can. Please.

The word please does something to me. Always has. Leah doesn’t throw it around. She uses it when something matters, when she’s reaching for me and doesn’t know if I’ll reach back. A dull ache pulses under my breastbone.

I sit at the small table, elbows on the worn wood, and call her.

She answers on the first ring.

“Evan?”

“Hey,” I say softly. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“You’re okay?” Her voice is a rush of relief, then narrows into something more fragile. “You didn’t text for a while.”

“Sorry. The meeting went long. Then I went to see the archive. I lost track of time.”

“The archive,” she repeats. “Of course.”

Something in her tone catches me—tired, not accusing, but frayed. I search for something comforting and fail.

“The project is… big,” I say lamely. “Complicated. But it’s interesting. The bridge is older than I thought.”

“I’m glad you like it,” she says, and I can hear her trying to mean it.

There’s a rustle on the other end of the line, like she’s shifting on the bed or couch. For a moment, I can picture our living room perfectly: the couch we picked because it was “too expensive but worth it,” the plant she keeps accidentally killing and resurrecting, the coffee table with the tiny burn mark from the candle we swore wasn’t that hot.

“Did you eat?” she asks.

It’s such a small, domestic question that my throat tightens unexpectedly.

“Not yet,” I admit. “I… forgot.”

She makes a soft sound that falls somewhere between exasperation and fondness. “You always forget when you’re somewhere new.”

“Yeah.” I stare at the chipped edge of the table. “I’ll go out in a bit.”

“Okay.”

Silence stretches out, not comfortable, not hostile. Just… weighted.

“How are you feeling?” I ask. I should have asked first.

She hesitates a beat too long.

“I’m fine,” she lies.

“Leah.”

She exhales, the sound rough in my ear. “Dizzy this morning. The same pressure behind my eyes. I dropped a plate. It shattered. I just… watched it fall.”

A flash of guilt sharp enough to leave a mark.

“You should have called me,” I say.

“What were you going to do, Evan?” she asks quietly. “Patch me up over FaceTime?”

I flinch. She hears it.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “That was… that was mean. I’m just tired.”

“We both are,” I say.

“Not the same kind.”

She’s right. Her tired is a body betraying itself. Mine is a soul that feels permanently jet-lagged from its own life.

“I saw Dr. Hanley again,” she says.

“When?” My voice sharpens.

“A few days ago. I didn’t want to tell you before you left. I didn’t want you to worry on the plane.”

“You don’t have to protect me from your appointments,” I say. “I’m your husband. I should be there.”

“You are there,” she says softly. “You’re always there. When he talks about progression and decline and ‘quality of life.’ I see your face more clearly than his.”

Something under my ribs twists.

“What did he say?”

“The same things,” she says. “More tests. More scans. More maybe this, maybe that. He’s still calling it degenerative, but he won’t give it a name. Like that makes it less terrifying.”

I press my fingers into my temple. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “Just… promise me something.”

The way she says it makes my spine go straight.

“Promise you what?”

“That we’ll still be us when you come back,” she whispers. “Not… strangers. Not people who used to love each other and don’t know how to anymore.”

The words land like stones in my stomach.

“We’re not strangers,” I say automatically.

“Aren’t we?” she asks, so quietly I almost miss it.

I think of the way my eyes keep drifting to the memory of a woman I met today whose life I know nothing about, who still somehow feels less distant from me than my own wife right now.

The shame is instant and hot.

“Leah… I don’t want us to fall apart,” I say. “I just… don’t know when we started.”

“Probably somewhere between the last specialist and the first time you pretended you believed him,” she says, with a brittle little laugh that breaks halfway through. “I know this isn’t what you signed up for.”

“That’s not fair,” I say. “Marriage isn’t a contract with fine print we can bail on because things got hard.”

“I’m not accusing you of wanting to bail,” she says quickly. “I’m just… I see you, Evan. You don’t look at me the way you used to. You look at me like you’re already grieving.”

I close my eyes.

“I don’t know how else to look at someone who might disappear,” I admit.

Silence. Then a small, wounded sound.

“I don’t want you to grieve me while I’m still here,” she whispers.

The line blurs in my vision as my eyes sting.

“I’ll try,” I say. It’s the only honest thing I can manage.

“Promise me more than trying,” she says after a moment. “Promise me you’ll… be here. Even if it gets worse. Even if I get weird or scared or angry or… not myself. Don’t check out. Don’t go somewhere I can’t follow.”

She doesn’t say like another city.

She doesn’t have to.

“You think that’s what this is?” I ask. “Checking out?”

“I think,” she says slowly, “that if we don’t choose each other on purpose, every day, we’ll wake up and realize we don’t know how to anymore.”

Her words are too close to something I’ve been afraid to name.

I look at the small desk under the window, the empty space where a second coffee cup could sit. I look at the way the city glows faintly outside, full of strangers who don’t know me. Full of possibilities that feel like escape routes.

“Leah,” I say, the word feeling heavy. “I promise I won’t disappear. Not on purpose.”

There’s a pause, then a quiet exhale.

“Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll hold you to that.”

We talk about small things after that. The neighbor’s dog that keeps digging up her herbs. The way the smoke alarm went off when she tried to cook bacon yesterday. My failed attempt at saying the street name outside in Italian and the way the cab driver laughed.

We pretend, for a few minutes, that we’re still good at this. That we still know how to fill silence with something other than fear.

When we hang up, the room feels bigger and smaller at the same time.

I set the phone down, but I don’t move right away. I sit there, elbows on the table, palms pressed to my eyes until colors flare in the dark.

I should think about Leah. About what Dr. Hanley is or isn’t telling her. About whether I’ll be able to keep the promise I just made.

Instead, I think about a woman in an archive who looked at me like she saw every hidden crack in me in less than a minute.

“You don’t smile much.”

She’s not wrong.

I drift out onto the balcony eventually, shoulders slumped against the railing. The city below is awash in warm light, people spilling into restaurants, voices rising and falling in waves. A couple leans in close, sharing something private. A group of friends argues cheerfully about where to eat.

Everyone down there looks like they belong in their own story.

I feel, for a moment, like I slipped out of mine.

When sleep finally comes that night, it’s not restful. I dream of the Ponte delle Arti, fog creeping along its length. I walk across it and feel the stones shifting subtly under my feet. Ahead of me, a woman stands by the railing. Her back turned. Her dark hair pulled back loosely.

“Livia?” I call.

She doesn’t turn.

Behind me, I hear another voice, softer, familiar.

“Evan?”

I look back.

Leah stands at the other end of the bridge, wearing the blue sweater she had on the night she told me about her diagnosis. Her eyes are wide, scared, hopeful.

I turn toward her.

When I look back toward the railing, the first woman is gone.

I wake with my heart racing, sweat cooling on my neck, the echo of Leah’s voice and the weight of Livia’s gaze both lodged somewhere behind my ribs.