When Greer told me, my first reaction was to tell her no. But no one tells Greer McCann no. Not even her husband. When she said it, this eerie calm came over me, as though I were outside myself, receiving news that didn’t pertain to me. I had just faced that Greer was sick. I had never considered that my wife would die. She was too real to actually die. When she brought the subject up in our usual restaurant with my usual steak and merlot, I had nearly forgotten, seeing the way the light reflected off her pretty face, that she was even sick.
We had just been talking about how we would decorate a nursery when she got well, for Pete’s sake.
I swallowed a sip of wine, my stomach turning over. This was the only woman I had ever loved. I had changed so much of who I was and what I wanted because being with her was so much better than anything else. She made me happy in a new way, one I had never experienced before. My first thought, looking across the table, was, They’re going to have to kill me, too.
I would have given anything to trade places.
After that, I couldn’t stop touching Greer. I followed her everywhere, gauging her moves and her actions, trying to decide if she was getting worse, trying to keep her here with me. I didn’t necessarily agree with her idea to announce her plans via Clematis. But, again, Greer and “no” never mixed well. She wanted to frame the story to bring attention to her charity. I didn’t care what she did as long as I got to hover over her and breathe life into her while she did it.
She wouldn’t let me stay in the room with Amelia—the reporter who also happened to be my childhood friend. But I stood at the door. I could make out only snippets of the conversation. When I showed Amelia out of the house, I could tell she was shell-shocked. I’d known her since I was born. She was so quiet. “I’m sorry” was all she managed as she engulfed me in a familiar hug.
I nodded. “Me too.”
That was it, but maybe it was all we needed.
Back in the house, I found Greer in the shower, and I climbed in behind her.
I kissed her, quite intent on making love to her right then and there. In that simple gesture, something as familiar to me by then as brushing my hair, I finally broke down. Sobs escaped me, and, naked as the day I was born, I wept on the black-and-white marble floor of our walk-in shower.
“Babe,” Greer said calmly, “what is the matter?”
I pulled her down onto the floor with me, holding her in my arms. “I can’t know it’s the last time,” I said, pressing my face into her neck. She didn’t smell like death yet. She still smelled like her, like Shiseido shampoo and rose body oil.
She ran her fingers down my back, laying her head on my shoulder, the water dripping around us. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t have it planned, G. I can’t know when you’re going to go. I can’t know that it’s the last time I’m going to make love to you, or kiss you, or feel you in my arms.” I paused, catching my breath. “I know all that is coming, but it has to be a progression. I can’t know ahead of time.”
My dying wife was the one consoling me. I thought I was tough, but she was stronger. I expected her to argue with me. Instead, she whispered, “Okay.”
I looked up at her. “Really?”
She nodded sadly. “I wanted to get it over with for you. I didn’t want you to have to watch me go downhill. But if that’s what you need, if that will help your healing process, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“It’s like a really bleak ‘Gift of the Magi,’ ” I said, kissing her.
“I always thought that story was pretty bleak anyway,” she joked, trying to make me smile.
She got up, washing the soap out of her hair like we hadn’t just had one of the most emotional scenes of our lives. She pulled me up and said, “Parker Thaysden, you are the best decision I ever made, and I will love you for all eternity. Even when I’m not here.”
I kissed her again. “No man has ever loved a woman the way I love you.”
She smiled. “I agree wholeheartedly.”
The shower is where most people go to think. But for me, now, the shower is memory central. There isn’t a single morning I step in that I don’t think about that night. I feel guilty about it, but I stand firm in my decision. We had more time than we were told we would. I cherish every moment of it, even the bad parts.
With all of that weighing so heavily on my mind, I knew I couldn’t talk about Greer. Not even to Amelia, who I’d known all my life. Not to anyone. But then again, my urgently ringing phone reminded me, Amelia could potentially have some pressing news from Cape Carolina. Or maybe she wanted to do an article about the foundation, which would bring attention to the great work we were doing. Greer would want that.
The phone had already rung four times when I slid to answer and hit the speaker button. “Hello.”
“Parker,” Amelia said cheerily. Too cheerily. So cheerily that something was clearly up.
“What’s going on, Amelia?” I asked.
“Oh, same old,” she said. She was lying. Amelia and Greer were totally, completely different people, but they had similar sparks that made it impossible for them to sit still. Amelia was always moving forward, just like Greer. I admired that about her, especially since, as my inability to talk about my dead wife in the past tense for three solid years indicated, moving forward was not my strong suit.
I didn’t say anything. That was the tactic I always used when I wanted someone to get to the point.
It worked. “Listen, Parker,” she said. “I need to meet up with you. It’s important.”
Suspicious. The casseroles had started flooding in the day after Greer died. If I hadn’t been so devastated, it would have been a huge ego boost. For a moment, I wondered if Amelia might be coming on to me. But then I remembered that she was married to Thad, a fact that I tended to conveniently forget. My family had teased me for years about my crush on Amelia.
“You’re-on-a-tight-deadline-and-need-a-quote important? Or a-secret-uncle-has-died-and-left-me-twenty-million-dollars important?” I smirked.
“Um.” She paused. “It’s decidedly more important than either of those things.”
“Can’t you just tell me now? My interest is piqued.”
She was quiet. I could tell she was deciding. “Yeah, no. I don’t think so. It’s a face-to-face kind of thing.”
“Well, damn,” I said.
“I’m leaving for Cape Carolina in the morning,” she said apologetically. “Maybe next week?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s my mom. Or my dad. It is, isn’t it?”
She laughed. “No, Parker. You’re killing me. Everything is fine. Let’s just get coffee when I get back to Palm Beach.” I could hear noise on the other end of the phone, and as I was saying, “Well, you might be seeing me sooner than you think,” she was talking over me, saying, “I’ll text you to set it up. I have to run!”
I am a harper. Once I want to know something, I can’t think about anything else. Fortunately, I was heading to Cape Carolina tomorrow, too. So I wouldn’t have that long to wait.
When we hung up, I rubbed shaving cream on my cheeks and chin and saw that I was smiling. Human interaction wasn’t my favorite thing these days, but that phone call had been less painful than most. It had to be that Cape Carolina connection.