Chapter 1

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Johnson. Your condition has gotten worse than we expected. I'm afraid you may have just a few months to live."

The words hit me like cold water thrown at my face.

I have a rare autoimmune blood disorder. My immune system, the thing that is supposed to protect me, decided two years ago to attack my own bone marrow instead. It sounds like a confused body. It is. The result is that my blood can no longer sustain itself properly. I bruise without reason. I’m tired after walking across a room. I catch infections my body no longer has the strength to fight. There are treatments. There were treatments. The problem is that my body has stopped responding to all of them.

I sat in the chair across from Dr. Joel and I stopped breathing. Just for a second. Just long enough for the world to tilt sideways and refuse to tilt back.

"Harper." Dr. Joel's voice was soft. Too soft. The kind of voice people used when they were afraid you might shatter. "Did you hear what I said?"

"I heard you." My voice came out like something cracked down the middle.

He slid a folder across his desk toward me. Scans. Numbers. Clinical language that dressed up devastation in neat, professional terms. I looked at it but I didn't see it. My eyes wouldn't focus.

A few months.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach under the desk.

Three weeks ago, I had stared at two pink lines on a pregnancy test and sat on the bathroom floor for forty minutes because I couldn't decide if I was terrified or the happiest I'd ever been. I had chosen happy. I had been carrying that happiness around like a secret flame, waiting for the right moment to tell Justin.

I was pregnant.

And now I was dying.

The math of that was so cruel it didn't feel real. I kept waiting to wake up.

"There is still the trial treatment we discussed," Dr. Joel said. He leaned forward, elbows on his desk, and I could see in his face that he actually cared. That this wasn't just a case file to him. "The results from the pilot group have been very promising. If we move quickly—"

"How much does it cost?"

He told me.

I laughed. It wasn't a funny laugh. It was the kind that escapes when something is too terrible to cry about. Yet.

"I don't have that," I said.

"There may be options. Payment plans, research grants—"

"Dr. Joel." I picked up my bag from the floor slowly, like my arms had forgotten how to work properly. "I need to think."

"You should call your husband." He said it carefully, watching me. "Justin should know about this. You shouldn't carry this alone."

Something moved through my chest at the mention of Justin's name. Something I didn't want to look at directly.

"He's traveling," I said. "Business trip. I don't want to interrupt him."

Dr. Joel looked at me for a long moment. The kind of look that said he wasn't sure he believed me but was too kind to say so out loud.

"Harper." He stood when I stood. "Please. Call someone tonight. A friend, a family member. Anyone. This is too much for one person to sit with alone."

I gave him a smile. The automatic kind. The kind I had been giving people for two years every time they asked if I was okay.

Then I walked out.

The drive home blurred. I don't remember traffic lights or turns. I just remember sitting in my parked car outside our building for a long time, hands on the wheel, staring at the windshield.

A few months.

I thought about the baby. Something too small to have a name yet. Something that was half me and half the man I loved and was growing quietly in the dark, not knowing that its mother was already running out of time.

Was I going to die without ever holding it?

The thought broke something open in me that I hadn't been ready for.

I pressed my fist against my mouth and I cried. Hard. The ugly kind, the kind that takes over your whole body and leaves you shaking and wrung out. I cried until my eyes burned and my chest ached and my throat felt like sandpaper.

Then I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took three slow breaths, and went inside.

The apartment was quiet.

Justin had been gone for eleven days. Business trip, he said. He texted sometimes. Short messages, always at odd hours. Meetings running late. Don't wait up. The kind of messages that felt like they were written by someone who was managing you rather than loving you.

I changed my clothes. I made tea I didn't drink. I sat on the edge of our bed and looked at his side, at the pillow with the dent still in it from eleven days ago, and I tried to figure out how to tell him.

Justin, I'm dying soon. Justin, I'm pregnant. Justin, I'm scared and I need you to come home.

I was still rehearsing it in my head when I heard the front door open.

My heart jumped. I stood up so fast I knocked my tea off the nightstand.

He was home. He was finally home and I could tell him everything and he would hold me and it would still be terrible but it would be terrible together and that was survivable. Together was survivable.

I came to the top of the stairs and stopped.

Justin was in the entryway below. He looked good. Rested, actually. Like eleven days away had agreed with him. He was in his dark coat, relaxed, easy, and he was not alone.

The woman who came through the door behind him moved like she owned the air she breathed. Tall, polished, wearing a coat I recognized because I had once complimented it at the office and she had looked at me like a cat looking at something irrelevant.

Vivian Cole.

My boss.

The room didn't spin. It went very, very still.

Vivian looked up and saw me on the stairs first. Her smile didn't falter. It just sharpened.

"Harper." She said my name the way she always said it. Like something mildly unpleasant she had to acknowledge. "You look pale. Are you sick again?"

Again. Like my illness was an inconvenience she'd been tolerating.

I looked at Justin.

He looked up at me and there was no guilt on his face. None. Just that slight tightening around his eyes that I had learned meant he found something inconvenient.

"Come downstairs," he said. "We need to talk."

My legs carried me down the stairs on their own. My brain had stopped cooperating. I stood in my own living room and watched Vivian settle herself onto my couch like it was hers and pull out her phone, already bored, already done with me.

"Justin." My voice was barely a sound. "What is she doing here?"

"I said we need to talk." He reached into the inside pocket of his coat.

"I have something to tell you too." My hands were shaking. I pressed them against my thighs. "Something important. Please, just listen to me for a minute before—"

"Harper." The way he said my name stopped me cold. Flat. Final. The voice of a man who had made up his mind a long time ago and was only now getting around to delivering the verdict.

He pulled out a manila envelope, placed it on the coffee table, and slid it toward me.

I looked at it, then I looked at him and then  I looked at Vivian, who was watching me over the top of her phone with the expression of someone watching a mildly interesting scene play out.

"Justin." My voice broke on his name. "What is that?"

He put his hands in his pockets and looked at me and I searched his face desperately for the man I married. The man who brought me soup when I was sick. The man who held my hand in crowded places because he knew I hated crowds. The man who told me on our wedding night that loving me was the easiest thing he'd ever done.

He wasn't there.

"This marriage is a shame," Justin said. "I'm done with your sorry ass and I want out. Sign those papers. And I never want to see you again."

The silence afterward was enormous.