I always heard love in that sentence. I never once heard what he was leaving out.
His health had started slipping not long after he turned seventy-eight — first the exhaustion, then the weight falling off him, then the tests and the specialists and the careful, rehearsed way doctors talk when they already know how the story ends. I slept in the vinyl chair beside his bed that final week, jerking awake at every change in his breathing, memorizing the rhythm of the monitors.
On the last night, the doctor pulled me into the hallway. “It could be a matter of hours now, Rosalie.”
I nodded because if I’d opened my mouth, I would have come apart.
When I came back in, Frank looked asleep. I sat and slid my hand under his.
His fingers closed around my wrist. Hard.
“Promise me you’ll hear all of it before you hate me,” he said.
I stared at him. “I could never hate you.”
