“I’m fine.”
It was the same answer she’d given me for years.
Even when she wasn’t.
Two days earlier, the doctor had pulled me into the hallway.
I still remembered the way he’d closed the door behind him.
Doctors have a certain way of speaking when they already know the truth but don’t want to be the person who puts it into words.
He’d used careful phrases.
“Advanced.”
“Progressive.”
“We’ve done what we can.”
“Focus on comfort.”
But I heard the words that mattered.
*Spread.*
*Nothing more.*
*Comfort.*
I had stood in that hallway staring at the floor tiles while the world seemed to move around me.
A nurse pushed a cart past me.
Someone laughed at the other end of the corridor.
A phone rang.
A television played quietly behind a reception desk.
Everything continued as though nothing had happened.
But my life had just changed.
Carol had come into my life when I was at my lowest.
I was young then, angry at the world and even angrier at myself. I had lost my father, couldn’t keep a steady job, and had somehow convinced myself that needing anyone was a weakness.
Carol never believed that.
She never pushed me to talk about it.
She just stayed.
That was the first thing I loved about her.
She stayed when I expected people to leave.
I fell in love with her slowly, almost without noticing it.
Then one day I realized I couldn’t imagine my life without her.
And after that, I loved her completely.
Carol told me from the beginning that she couldn’t have children.
She had said it quietly one evening while we were sitting on the steps outside her apartment.
“I need you to know something before this goes any further.”
I remember looking at her.
“Know what?”
“I can’t have children.”
She had been waiting for disappointment.
I could see it in her eyes.
Instead, I took her hand.
“Then we won’t have children.”
She looked at me.
“You say that now.”
“I mean it.”
At the time, I believed I did.
Then, sometime later, Carol surprised me.
She suggested we adopt a little girl.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“About what?”
“Maybe being a family doesn’t have to happen the way we thought it would.”
That conversation changed everything.
We started looking into adoption.
We filled out paperwork.
We sat through interviews.
We waited.
And eventually, Rebecca came into our lives.
That was when Carol and I decided to get married and become a family.
I still remember the first time I held Rebecca.
She was tiny.
She had a blanket wrapped around her and a furious little expression on her face.
Carol cried.
I pretended I had something in my eye.
We brought her home, and from that moment forward, our lives revolved around her.
“She’s going to hate us when she’s sixteen,” I joked.
Carol laughed.
“She already hates you.”
“She’s three months old.”
“Exactly.”
I smiled at the memory.
Now, forty years after I first met Carol and decades after we became parents, we were lying in a hospital room talking about those days as if they belonged to another lifetime.
“I’m right here,” I whispered.
Carol looked at me.
“Tell me about Sunday breakfasts.”
I smiled.
“When Rebecca was little?”
She nodded.
“You made cinnamon pancakes.”
“I did.”
“Our daughter sat on the counter cracking eggs and getting shells in the bowl.”
“She was terrible at cracking eggs.”
“You let her keep trying.”
“She had to learn.”
“You ate half the shells.”
I laughed quietly.
“I did not.”
“You did.”
“Maybe once.”
Carol’s eyes softened.
“She looked so much like me back then.”
“She did.”
I looked toward the window.
“Our daughter had your whole face.”
Carol smiled.
“Except those green eyes.”
“Those green eyes always made her stand out.”
Carol’s expression changed.
Only slightly.
But I noticed.
She looked away from me.
“They certainly did.”
There was something strange about the way she said it.
Not sadness.
Not exactly.
Something closer to discomfort.
I almost asked her about it.
But then she looked back at me, and the moment passed.
I thought about Rebecca as a little girl, running through the backyard with her hair flying behind her.
I remembered her first day of school.
Her first broken arm.
The terrible teenage years.
Her wedding.
The birth of her own children.
Somehow, the little girl who used to sit on the kitchen counter cracking eggs had become a grown woman with a family of her own.
I squeezed Carol’s hand.
“Your mother would’ve spoiled her rotten.”
I thought of my mother, Ruth, who had died ten years earlier.
Half of Millfield still called her a saint.
She had taught Sunday school for forty years.
She had organized church suppers.
She never missed taking a casserole to a grieving neighbor.
If someone in town was sick, Ruth knew about it before the doctor did.
If someone was struggling, she showed up at their door.
“Mama would’ve spoiled Rebecca rotten,” I said again.
Carol’s eyes filled with tears.
“She loved Rebecca.”
“She did.”
“Very much.”
I nodded.
There was another silence.
Then Carol’s fingers tightened around mine.
“Walt?”
“I’m here.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
She looked directly at me.
“Walt, I’ve been a good wife to you, haven’t I?”
The question hit me harder than I expected.
I stared at her.
“Of course you have.”
“Don’t just say that.”
“I’m not.”
“I need you to tell me.”
I leaned closer.
“You’ve been more than a good wife, Carol. You’ve been my life.”
Her eyes closed.
A tear slipped down the side of her face.
I wiped it away.
“Why are you asking me that?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Her breathing became slower.
Then she whispered something I almost couldn’t hear.
“Because there’s something you need to do for me.”
I waited.
“Promise me first.”
“Carol…”
“Promise.”
I swallowed.
“All right. I promise.”
Her eyes opened again.
“Find Anna.”
The name meant nothing to me at first.
I frowned.
“Anna who?”
She stared at the ceiling.
“Anna.”
“Carol, I don’t know an Anna.”
“You did.”
My stomach tightened.
“When?”
She turned her face toward me.
“Before me.”
I felt the blood drain from my face.
There are names you hear after forty years and immediately remember where you were when you last heard them.
Anna was one of those names.
Suddenly, I wasn’t in the hospital anymore.
I was twenty-four again.
Standing outside a small white house.
Holding a ring.
Waiting for a woman who had already decided to say no.
I hadn’t thought about Anna in decades.
At least, I hadn’t allowed myself to.
Carol watched my face.
“You remember.”
I couldn’t answer.
She squeezed my hand.
“I need you to find her.”
“Why?”
Carol’s eyes filled with tears again.
“Because you deserve to hear the truth from her.”
The machines continued their slow rhythm beside us.
Beep.
Pause.
Beep.
But suddenly, that sound was the only thing keeping me from hearing my own heartbeat.
“What truth?”
Carol closed her eyes.
“I can’t tell you everything.”
“Then tell me what you can.”
She shook her head.
“Find Anna.”
I stared at my wife.
Thirty-six years of marriage.
One daughter.
A lifetime of memories.
