After Losing Her Husband, a Woman Learned from a Nurse That Another Woman Had Been Visiting Him for Several Weeks – A Few Days Later, the Visitor Came to Her House and Said, ‘So You Don’t Know What He Left You, Do You?

I organized. Jack joked.

Neither of us said the obvious thing.

We’ve been together since high school.

During his last few months, Jack started disappearing.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“For three hours?”

“I needed air.”

Cancer should be terrified of me.

“You can barely walk through Target.”

“I’m fine.”

“What’s in your jacket?”

“Nothing.”

“Those are papers.”

Jack started disappearing.

“Claire.”

“And you were on your laptop at two this morning.”

He kissed my forehead. “Please don’t interrogate the dying man.”

“I hate that joke.”

“I know.”

You can barely walk.

“Whatever you’re doing, you can tell me.”

“I wish I could.”

“Then tell me.”

He looked down at the papers. “You already have enough to carry.”

“That’s not your decision.”

Don’t interrogate the dying man.

“It should be sometimes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means if someone needed help tomorrow, you’d forget to ask whether you could afford to give it.”

“That sounds like a compliment.”

“It scares me.”

You already have enough to carry.

“Why?”

“Because you never know when to let someone else be the problem.”

I thought he deserved one corner of his life where cancer – and I – weren’t watching him.