One Hour to Decide

Walter looked at Caden the way he looked at everything important.

Slowly. Thoroughly. Like he was reading something and wanted to get it right the first time.

Caden sat in the chair beside the bed, the same chair I always sat in, and he did not fidget and he did not fill the silence with noise and he did not do the thing most people did when they were uncomfortable which was talk too much. He just sat there and let Walter look at him.

"How old are you," Walter said.

"Thirty two."

"What do you do."

"I run a private company. Acquisitions, investments, property."

"Never heard of it."

"Most people haven't."

Walter looked at him. He said:

"You met my granddaughter last night."

"Yes."

"And now you want to marry her."

"Yes."

"That's fast."

"It is."

"Why."

Caden looked at him. He said:

"Because she needs something solid right now and I can provide it. And because I think she's someone worth providing it for."

Walter was quiet. He turned his head and looked at me where I was standing near the window.

He said to me:

"Leave us for a minute."

"Walter—"

"Go get a coffee or something. Come back in ten minutes."

I looked at Caden. Caden looked at me. He gave me nothing. No reassurance, no slight nod, no it's fine. Just looked at me the way he looked at everything, steady and straight on.

I went and got a coffee.

I stood in the corridor for eleven minutes because I couldn't make myself stop at ten. I watched the nurses go back and forth. I watched a family further down the hall standing together outside a room with their arms around each other, the way you stand when you are bracing for something. I thought about Derek. Not with feeling, not yet, just the fact of him. The fact that this morning I was supposed to be getting ready to marry him and instead I was standing outside my grandfather's hospital room while a stranger I met over a diner table last night talked to him alone.

I went back in.

Walter was looking out the window. Caden was sitting with his hands on his knees and his back straight.

Neither of them looked upset.

Walter said, without turning from the window:

"He said you told him not to give you a comfortable answer. That you told him to be honest."

"Yes," I said.

"Good girl."

He turned back to look at me.

"He was honest."

"What did he say," I said.

"That's between him and me."

He held out his hand. I crossed the room and took it. He said:

"You do what you need to do today. I'll still be here when you get back."

"I know you will."

He squeezed my fingers. He looked past me at Caden and he said:

"You take care of her."

"Yes," Caden said.

One word. No decoration. Walter nodded once like that was exactly what he wanted.

I kissed Walter on the forehead and we left.

In the corridor Caden handed me the folder. I opened it. Twelve pages of very clean language. I flipped through it. Every term we had discussed last night was there. Walter's medical coverage in its own section with specific numbers. Separate living arrangements stated clearly. At the bottom, two signature lines.

"I need to read this properly," I said.

"You have an hour. We need to be at the courthouse by one."

I looked up.

"One o'clock."

"The appointment is made. If you want to cancel it you can. But if we're doing this today then we need to leave by twelve thirty."

We went down to the cafeteria.

I read every page. He sat across from me with a coffee and his phone and he did not rush me and he did not watch me read, he just let me read. I found two things I wanted changed. I told him. He took out a pen, crossed out the relevant lines, wrote the changes in the margin, initialled them, pushed the papers back to me.

Just like that.

No argument. No that's not how we do this. No let me check with my team. Just a pen and two initials.

"Two more things," I said. "Non negotiable."

"Go ahead."

"When this is over, whenever that is, Walter never finds out it was a contract. He dies believing I was loved properly. That is not up for discussion."

"Agreed."

"And if at any point I feel like this arrangement is hurting Walter more than helping him, I can end it immediately. No thirty days. Immediately."

"Write it in."

I wrote it in the margin. I initialled it. He initialled the same line.

I picked up the pen.

I signed.

He signed.

He took his copy. I took mine. He folded his and put it inside his coat. I folded mine and put it in my bag next to the engagement ring I had taken off in Walter's room.

"We need to pick up Nadia. She's a witness," he said.

"How do you know about Nadia."

"You mentioned her last night."

I had mentioned her once, briefly. He had remembered her name.

I said nothing. I just walked with him to the car.

Nadia was waiting outside her building with red eyes and a face that said she had been crying and was furious about it. She got in the back seat. She looked at Caden. She looked at me.

"This is actually happening," she said.

"Buckle up," I said.

She buckled up.

The car pulled out into the street. I sat in the passenger seat with my signed contract in my bag and my ex-fiance's missed calls on my phone and I looked out the window at the city going past like a normal Tuesday.

Nadia leaned forward between the seats. She looked at the side of Caden's face. She said:

"If you hurt her I will make your life genuinely difficult. I don't have money or connections but I am creative and I hold grudges."

"Noted," Caden said.

Nadia sat back. She looked at me. She reached forward and squeezed my shoulder once, hard, and let go.

The courthouse was twelve minutes away.

I watched the streets go past and I thought about Walter saying you do what you need to do today and I thought about Caden writing those initials in the margin without checking with anyone and I thought about the fact that in twelve minutes I was going to walk into a building and come out a different person with a different name and a different life to the one I woke up expecting yesterday.

I pressed my hand flat against my leg to stop it shaking.

Caden said, without looking away from the road:

"You're allowed to be nervous."

"I know," I said.

"It doesn't mean you're making the wrong call."

I looked at him.

He was still watching the road. He hadn't looked at me. He just said it, straight and quiet, like he knew I needed to hear it and wasn't going to make a thing of it.

The car stopped outside the courthouse.

Nobody moved for a second.

Then Nadia said from the back seat, very quietly:

"Okay. Let's go get you married."

I opened the door.

I got out.

My phone buzzed one more time in my pocket. I took it out. Derek's name on the screen.

I turned it off completely.

I walked up the steps.