The rain had not stopped for three days.
It wasn’t dramatic rain, not the kind that lashes sideways and sends people running for shelter. It was the slow, relentless kind that seeped into everything, a constant gray curtain between the world and the sky. From the hospital waiting room, I watched the drops bead on the long pane of glass, gather themselves into trembling little bodies, and then slide down in wandering paths. Sometimes they met another drop halfway. Sometimes they merged and fell faster. Sometimes they hesitated, clinging to the glass until gravity finally insisted.
After a while they all blurred together, streaks of water on a dirty window. I realized I’d been staring so long my eyes hurt. I blinked, and the room swam back into focus: the stiff plastic chairs, the flickering soda machine, the muted television looping the same bad daytime show. A child whined somewhere behind me; a nurse laughed softly at something a colleague said. The air smelled like bleach and microwaved food.
My life felt like those raindrops—shapeless, uncontrollable, slipping away in directions I hadn’t chosen.
Two floors above, machines were breathing for my brother because his lungs had forgotten how.
I checked my phone for the hundredth time. No new messages. No call from the doctor. No miraculous change. Just the same photo lighting up my screen when it went idle: Tommy standing in our mother’s backyard, grinning with a burger in one hand and a beer in the other, a ridiculous novelty apron tied around his waist.
KISS THE COOK, it demanded in huge red letters. He’d bought it for himself, because of course he had. He’d worn it for every barbecue since.
The last time I saw him wearing it, I’d been teasing him about his uneven burger patties. He’d chased me around the yard with the spatula while Sarah—the woman he was supposed to marry next year—laughed so hard she’d nearly fallen off the lawn chair.
That had been two months ago.
Now he lay upstairs with a fractured skull, a collapsed lung, and enough metal in his leg to set off airport security from ten yards away.
The drunk driver who’d hit him had walked away with a few scratches and a lawyer. I tried not to think about that. When I did, my hands shook and I wanted to throw something, and tired nurses gave me careful looks like I might become a Problem.
“Miss Sullivan?”
I turned, expecting another nurse, another clipboard, another quiet apology that there was nothing new. Instead, I found myself looking at a man who looked like he’d taken a wrong turn on his way to a boardroom downtown.
The first thing I noticed was his suit. It was navy, perfectly cut, the kind of fabric you can’t pretend is cheap. A discrete silver tie clip, a watch that cost more than my car—my former car—in one smooth sweep of metal on his wrist. His shoes were polished. His dark hair was neatly combed, his expression composed. Everyone else in that waiting room wore exhaustion, fear, or boredom on their faces. He wore none of that. He looked like he belonged on the other side of the glass, in one of those towers downtown, not under the harsh fluorescent lights of a county hospital.
“Yes?” I said, wary. I stood automatically, a reflex I’d picked up from dealing with parents and administrators at the middle school where I taught art. Standing always made me feel less small.
“I’m Richard Chen,” he said, extending a hand. His voice was smooth, professional, but there was a softness behind it. “May I have a moment of your time?”
I didn’t take his hand. “Are you with billing? Because I already spoke to them and—”
“No,” he said quickly. “This isn’t about billing. Or not directly, anyway.”
That confused me. “Then… who are you?”
He glanced around at the waiting room and its sagging chairs, its vending machines, the small, hunched bodies of worry and boredom. Something flickered in his eyes. Embarrassment? Discomfort? He stepped slightly to the side, creating a small illusion of privacy.
“I’m here on behalf of Mr. Harrison Blackwell,” he said.
The name meant nothing to me. It may as well have been John Smith.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t—”
“He owns Quantum Systems,” Richard supplied. “The tech company.”
I blinked at him. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, a jagged piece of knowledge surfaced: late-night news segments about some genius entrepreneur taking his company public; headlines about a software breakthrough; an article I’d skimmed about a local boy who had built something huge out of nothing but code and obsession. I’d never paid much attention. Those stories belonged to other worlds, other people’s lives.
I was an art teacher who sometimes had to buy supplies out of her own pocket. My world was kids who chewed on paintbrushes and drew dragons on their math homework. Billionaires existed for everyone else.
“What does he want with me?” I asked, the phrase coming out more bitter than I meant it to. It was just—everything. The exhaustion, the looming bills, the helplessness. The way doctors said “I’m sorry” with their eyes before they opened their mouths.
Richard didn’t flinch. He studied my face like he was cataloguing it, committing each twitch to memory.
“He’s been following your brother’s case,” he said. “The accident, the… situation with the driver, the mounting medical costs.”
My chest tightened. “How?”
“News stories. Social media. A friend of his is one of the surgeons here.” Richard’s gaze softened just a fraction. “He’d like to help.”
Hope is a strange thing when you’ve been without it for a while. It doesn’t come fluttering in like a bird; it arrives with a jolt, sharp and painful, like suddenly standing after your foot has fallen asleep. Part of me reached for it instinctively. The other part flinched, suspicious.
“Help how?” I forced myself to ask.
“He’ll cover all of your brother’s medical expenses,” Richard said, calm and matter-of-fact. “The surgeries, the rehabilitation, every bill that has come or will come. He can ensure your brother receives the best possible care at a specialized facility.”
My knees felt weak. I gripped the back of the chair.
“I—what?” I said stupidly. “Why? He doesn’t know us. I’ve never—this isn’t a charity case the hospital set up?”
“No.” Richard shook his head. “This is personal. For Mr. Blackwell.”
“Did he… lose someone?” I asked, thinking of some tragic backstory, a sister or a friend who hadn’t been so lucky.
“In a manner of speaking,” Richard said. “He’ll explain if you decide to meet him. But there is one condition.”
Of course there was.
My fingers tightened around the plastic until it squeaked. “There it is,” I muttered, half to myself. “What does he want? My kidney? My soul?”
Richard’s expression flickered again. “Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “He asks only one thing in return.”
He reached into his leather briefcase and pulled out an envelope. The paper was thick, the kind that was expensive for no good reason.
“He would like you,” Richard said, “to marry him.”
For a second, I honestly thought he was joking. My brain tried to fit the sentence into any other shape. He would like you to meet him. To talk to him. To sign something. To work for him. But the words were clear, sitting between us like something fragile and ridiculous.
I laughed.
It came out wrong—too loud, too sharp. People turned to look at us. I clapped a hand over my mouth and shook my head.
“I’m sorry,” I wheezed, because that was what you said when someone told an inappropriate joke at a funeral and you couldn’t help yourself. “But that’s… that’s insane.”
Richard didn’t smile.
“I assure you, Miss Sullivan, I am quite serious.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Why on earth would a tech billionaire want to marry a broke middle school art teacher he’s never met?”
“Mr. Blackwell is terminally ill,” Richard said quietly. “He has been given approximately six months to live. Five, now.”
The laughter died in my throat. “Terminally…?”
“Yes. A heart condition.” Richard’s gaze was steady. “He has spent the last thirty years building his company. He has no living family. Very few close friends. He is facing the end of his life… alone. He would like companionship for whatever time he has left. Nothing more.”
“Nothing more,” I repeated, hollow.
“When he passes,” Richard continued, “you will be free to move on with your life. Your financial arrangement will be handled in a prenuptial agreement. Your brother will have the care he needs. The foundation Mr. Blackwell has quietly used to pay medical bills in the past will be extended to cover everything.”
He said it so smoothly you’d think he was offering a promotion, not laying an impossible choice at my feet.
“This is crazy,” I whispered. But even as I said it, my mind was racing—through numbers and invoices and the yellow envelopes that had been arriving daily. The typed amounts that didn’t seem real. Three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for past surgeries and immediate care. Projected costs for rehabilitation. The doctor’s gentle warning that they couldn’t wait forever to start certain therapies if we wanted Tommy to walk again.
I’d already sold my car. I’d borrowed against my retirement account, the tiny one I’d been proud of building up even a little. I had maxed out every credit card I owned. I was making thirty-eight thousand dollars a year. There was no universe where those numbers added up to “save Tommy,” not in any timeframe that mattered.
Richard offered me the envelope. I stared at it like it might bite.
“Think about it,” he said. “You don’t have to decide right this second. You have until tomorrow morning; Mr. Blackwell is prepared to have the paperwork drawn up immediately should you accept. If you decline, he’ll… look for other ways to help.”
That last part sounded faint. Less certain.
“What if I meet him and say no?” I asked.
“Then he will respect your decision,” Richard said. “But—he asked me not to bring you to him unless you were… open to the possibility.”
So even the meeting was conditional. Of course it was.
“I’m not some… escort,” I blurted out, flushing. “If this is about—”
“Mr. Blackwell is not interested in that,” Richard cut in gently. “He is fifty-three, in very poor health, and more uncomfortable with his own body than you could possibly be. This is not about sex. It is about… not dying alone.”
That last phrase landed in my stomach like a stone.
I thought of Tommy upstairs, pale against white sheets, machines clicking and humming around him. I thought of Sarah dozing upright in a chair, still clutching his hand. I thought of how wrong it felt for someone to go through something like this without someone who loved them nearby.
“You don’t have to answer me right now,” Richard said, misreading the silence. “Take the night. Talk to your brother, if you like. Think. I’ll call you in the morning.”
He set the envelope on the chair next to me, offered me a small nod, and walked away. He moved through the waiting room like a foreign object sliding through a body, barely touching anything, leaving ripples of curiosity in his wake.
I stared at the envelope for a long time before I picked it up.
The paper felt heavier than it looked.
That night, I sat by Tommy’s bed, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. The machines had become a background symphony; I knew which beeps meant normal, which chirps meant a nurse would appear. The bandage around his head was smaller now; the bruising on his face was fading. But there was still something heartbreakingly vulnerable about him. My big-little brother, the one who used to jump off the garage roof wrapped in a sheet because he was sure he could fly, reduced to this.
His eyelids fluttered. He’d been drifting in and out more lately. When he was awake, he tried to joke about everything. He looked like Tommy then. When he slept, he looked like a stranger.
I took his hand and squeezed.
“Hey,” I said softly. “I got the weirdest proposition today.”
His eyelids didn’t move. His fingers lay limp in mine.
“I know you can’t really hear me,” I went on, because if I stopped talking, I was afraid I’d start screaming. “But you’re the one I talk to about… well, everything. So you’re gonna have to listen anyway.”
I told him about Richard Chen. About the billionaire with the dying heart and the empty house. About the offer that didn’t feel real, like something out of a movie where the heroine makes a ridiculous deal and it all works out because the script says so.
“This isn’t a script,” I said. “This is my life, and yours, and I… I don’t know what to do, Tom.”
The monitor beeped steadily, indifferent.
I thought of our parents, gone now—both claimed by quiet, boring illnesses that didn’t make headlines. Dad gone first, a heart attack at sixty-two. Mom two years later, her body worn out by grief and a disease that slowly turned her lungs into stiff, useless things. We had emptied our savings to make her comfortable, and even then it hadn’t felt like enough.
“If Mom were here, she’d tell me to say no,” I said, though I wasn’t entirely sure. “She’d say you’re not a debt to be traded. That I can’t… sell myself, even if it’s on paper, for your sake. That it’s not what you’d want.”
I looked at his slack face and felt something tear inside me.
“But what do I do, Tommy?” I whispered. “What do I do when the choices are this or watch you slowly lose everything because I couldn’t make it work?”
I already knew the answer. That was the worst part. Hope and dread twisted together into something sharp.
I stayed until dawn, whispering half-formed prayers to a God I wasn’t even sure I believed in.
The next morning, at nine o’clock on the dot, my phone buzzed. Richard’s number lit up the screen.
“Yes,” I said before he could speak. My voice sounded distant in my own ears. “I’ll do it.”
There was a pause. “Are you certain?” Richard asked.
No, I thought.
“Yes,” I said.
“The legal team will prepare the contracts,” he said. “If you can be at the Blackwell & Chen offices by noon, we can… proceed.”
No church. No flowers. No music. No dress shopping with friends. No father walking me down an aisle. No giggling with my brother in a cramped dressing room, no half-irritated tears, no something borrowed, something blue.
Just a lawyer’s office, a stack of papers, and a man I’d never met.
The world did not pause to mark the occasion. Traffic crawled. People jaywalked. I got honked at when I didn’t move fast enough. The city was its usual impatient self as the Uber carried me downtown.
The building was all glass and steel, an arrow pointing at the sky. Quantum Systems occupied the top floors. The lobby smelled like money—clean surfaces, art that looked minimalist and expensive, people in sharp clothing speaking in low, efficient voices.
I felt like an intruder in my thrift-store blazer and scuffed flats. I had put on lipstick in a restroom at the hospital, my hand shaking. It didn’t make me any less out of place.
Richard met me near the elevators. He greeted me with a small nod that, absurdly, reminded me of how the principal at my school welcomed substitute teachers.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
He studied me for a second. Then he nodded, as if I’d given the answer he’d expected.
“This way,” he said.
We didn’t go up. We went sideways, into a smaller wing of the building where the walls were lined with framed patents and news articles: photographs of a younger man shaking hands with mayors, standing in front of servers, giving talks at conferences.
I recognized his face from the news before I saw him in person.
In the conference room at the end of the hall, a man in a wheelchair sat with his back to the window. The skyline rose behind him in a jagged line.
He was thinner than the photos had shown him, his shoulders narrow beneath the soft gray sweater. His hair was more salt than pepper now. He might have been handsome once; some of that still clung to the lines of his face. But illness had done its work. His skin had a grayish cast. Dark circles hollowed his eyes. His hands, resting on the armrests of the chair, trembled faintly.
He looked older than fifty-three. He looked… tired.
He turned his head when we entered. For a moment, his gaze met mine directly. It was like being looked at by a searchlight—intense, focused, but searching for something he wasn’t sure he’d recognize when he found it.
“Ms. Sullivan,” he said. His voice was rough, like the sound had to drag itself out of his chest. “Thank you for coming.”
“Margaret,” I blurted. “Please. Ms. Sullivan makes me feel like I’m about to hand out detention slips.”
He blinked. Then, almost imperceptibly, his mouth twitched into something that almost counted as a smile.
“All right,” he said. “Margaret. I’m Harrison.”
“I know,” I said, then flushed. “I mean, I’ve… heard. Obviously.”
“That must be very annoying,” he said, and something in his tone—dry, self-aware—made me think that maybe there was still a person under all the illness and legend.
“A little,” I admitted. “But I guess… worse things.”
“Worse things,” he agreed.
He gestured to the chair opposite him. I sat. The table between us gleamed, reflective enough that I could see my own pale, nervous face staring back at me.
Richard distributed folders and began talking about terms and protections. Words like “trust,” “stipulation,” and “beneficiary” floated past me. I signed where he pointed after reading enough to be sure I wasn’t unknowingly selling my organs on the black market. They’d thought of everything: what would happen to Tommy’s medical coverage if I left, what I would receive in the event of Harrison’s death, what responsibilities I would have as his legal wife.
Mostly, it boiled down to: be there. Legally, ceremonially. A spouse on paper and in the eyes of the law, so that the end of his life would look less like abandonment and more like… completion.
The actual wedding took place two hours later in a smaller room with a mahogany table and a single, slightly dusty ficus in the corner. A justice of the peace read the words in a kindly monotone. There were four witnesses: Richard; a woman in her seventies with kind, lined eyes who was introduced as Mrs. Hartley, his long-time housekeeper; a secretary who looked like she’d rather be anywhere else; and some junior lawyer who kept checking his watch.
No music played. No one cried. I wore the same thrift-store blazer. Harrison had a tie now, though I suspected someone else had knotted it for him.
“Do you, Margaret Sullivan, take Harrison Blackwell—”
I had always imagined I would cry at my wedding. That it would be a good kind of crying, the kind where joy bubbles up and leaks out through your eyes. Instead, my face felt oddly numb as I said, “I do,” in a voice that didn’t quite sound like mine.
When it was Harrison’s turn, his hands shook so violently he nearly dropped the ring. Mrs. Hartley stepped forward and steadied his fingers without comment. He slipped the plain band onto my finger, and something inside me tightened.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, almost under his breath, when the paperwork was signed and witnessed and it was done.
“You’re saving my brother’s life,” I replied. “I should be thanking you.”
He looked like he wanted to argue, but his breath hitched, and he leaned back in the chair, exhausted by the simple act of existing. The nurse who had accompanied him fussed with a blanket over his legs, taking his pulse, checking his oxygen.
We left through a side entrance, away from the main lobby and its steady flow of confident strangers. Richard drove. The car was sleek and silent; the city slid by like a muted film.
No one spoke. The fact of the ring on my finger felt unreal, like a prop from a play I’d stepped into by mistake.
Harrison’s house—our house, I corrected myself automatically, though the word did not fit yet—was an hour north of the city, nestled in an enclave where houses weren’t really houses so much as architectural statements. The driveway curved through manicured grounds to a sprawling structure of glass and steel that seemed to grow out of the hillside.
It was beautiful, in an almost aggressive way. Floor-to-ceiling windows, sharp angles, a wide sweep of terrace facing what I guessed was the ocean, though the rain made everything a blur.
Inside, the air smelled faintly of lemon and something floral. The floors gleamed. Art hung on the walls—abstract pieces in bold colors, a few stark black-and-white photographs. I had the disorienting sensation of walking into a magazine spread.
It was also incredibly, profoundly empty.
Your room is on the second floor,” Harrison said. His voice echoed slightly in the high-ceilinged foyer. “Mine is on the first. I don’t go upstairs much anymore. Too many steps.”
“Okay,” I said. The word felt small in the cavernous space.
“Mrs. Hartley will show you around,” he added, not quite looking at me. “If you need anything, just ask her. She knows the house better than I do.”
“What about meals?” I asked, because the practical details felt like something I could hold onto.
“We can eat together,” he said, his gaze flicking briefly toward my face, then away. “If you like. Or not. Whatever makes you comfortable. I…” He trailed off, coughed. “I work most days. You won’t see me much.”
Before I could respond, he turned his wheelchair and rolled away down a hallway, his shoulders hunched as if bracing against an invisible wind.
I watched him go, feeling oddly abandoned in a house that did not feel even remotely like mine.
“Don’t mind him, dear,” Mrs. Hartley said, appearing at my elbow like she’d been summoned by some invisible bell. Her hand, warm and dry, closed gently around my forearm. “He’s not used to people.”
“He has you,” I said, because it was easier than saying, He has a wife now, at least on paper.
She smiled sadly. “Oh, I’ve been here forever. I’m part of the furniture, as far as he’s concerned. Come,” she added briskly. “I’ll make you some tea. You look like you could use something hot in you. And then we’ll get you settled upstairs.”
The kitchen was the first room that felt like people actually used it. It was large but not intimidating, with a big wooden table scarred by years of use and sunlight streaming in from a row of windows over the sink. Copper pots hung from a rack; recipe books lined a shelf; a vase of tulips brought a splash of color to the island.
The air smelled like bread and vanilla.
“This is…” I let out a breath. “This is lovely.”
Mrs. Hartley’s smile brightened. “I insist that one room in this mausoleum feel like a home,” she said. “Sit, dear. Milk? Sugar?”
“As much sugar as you’re legally allowed to put in,” I said.
She chuckled and busied herself with the kettle. As she moved around the kitchen, her steps sure and unhurried, some of my tension eased. Here was something I recognized: the rhythm of someone who had taken care of people and places for a long time.
“How long have you worked for him?” I asked, wrapping my hands around the warm mug she set in front of me.
“Thirty-two years.” She sat across from me, smoothing her apron over her knees. There was a faded embroidered rose near the hem. “I watched that boy grow up in this house. Brilliant mind, kind heart, but so alone.”
“Alone?” I echoed.
She nodded. “His parents died when he was nineteen. Car accident. One of those senseless things. They were coming back from a weekend away. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel.” Her eyes went distant for a moment. “He was at university then, already tinkering with computers in his dorm room. After they died, he threw himself into building the company. Worked day and night. Never stopped long enough to build a life around it.”
“A company instead of a family,” I murmured.
“Yes.” Mrs. Hartley’s gaze returned to me. “This illness has been hard on him. He’s scared, I think, though he’d never admit it. Scared of stopping. Scared of looking around and realizing how much he’s missed.”
I hesitated. “What… what kind of illness is it, exactly?”
Her face clouded. “Heart condition. Cardiomyopathy, the doctors called it. Something about the muscle not working right. They gave him six months. That was…” She frowned, counting. “Five months ago, give or take.”
Five months.
So I had arrived near the end.
The words settled over me like dust.
The first two weeks were strange, like living with a ghost.
Most mornings, when I came downstairs, Harrison was already in his study or had left for the office. Sometimes I heard the soft whirr of the motor on his wheelchair in the hallway outside my room late at night; a quiet cough behind a closed door. We rarely crossed paths. When we did, our conversations were careful, polite. He seemed determined to be as unobtrusive in my life as possible, as if he had brought home a roommate rather than a wife.
We ate together occasionally in the formal dining room, a long table that could have seated twelve. The first time, we sat at opposite ends like characters in a period drama. The distance made conversation even more awkward. After that, he asked Mrs. Hartley to set two places side by side at one end of the table.
“That’s better,” he said when I finally joined him one evening and saw the change. “The other way makes me feel like I should be wearing a powdered wig.”
I snorted, then clapped a hand over my mouth. He glanced at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. “You’re allowed to laugh, you know,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “It just feels… weird. Laughing.”
“Life doesn’t stop being ridiculous just because it’s hard,” he replied. “In my experience, it tends to get more so.”
There it was again—that dry wit, peeking out between the cracks of his fatigue.
Mostly, though, our interactions were muted. He was clearly sick. Some mornings he moved slowly, his face drawn. Other days he looked almost normal, aside from the chair and the occasional wince when he shifted. I heard him coughing at night sometimes—harsh sounds that echoed up the stairwell and made me curl my hands into fists on the pillow.
In between, I went to the hospital every day.
Tommy’s surgery had gone well. The doctors were cautiously optimistic. He was awake more often than not now, though groggy and heavily medicated. Seeing him smile, even weakly, even with tubes and wires everywhere, felt like emerging from underwater just long enough to gasp a lungful of air.
“How’s married life?” he asked one afternoon, his voice still rough. Sarah sat on the other side of the bed, her fingers laced with his. She tried to smile but her eyes were rimmed red.
“Quiet,” I said. I pulled the chair closer. “My husband has more guest bathrooms than I’ve seen in my entire life, and I still get lost trying to find the kitchen half the time.”
Tommy tried to laugh and dissolved into a coughing fit. I winced. Sarah reached for the plastic cup with the bendy straw, pressing it to his lips.
I waited until he settled before continuing. “He… keeps himself busy,” I said carefully. “He’s at the office a lot.”
“This guy treating you okay?” Tommy asked, squinting at me. Even through the haze of meds, the big-brother protectiveness slipped through.
“He barely speaks to me,” I admitted. “But he’s polite. Considerate. He… keeps his distance. It’s fine, Tom. It’s just temporary.”
“That’s weird,” Tommy mumbled. “You’re great.”
I snorted. “You’re biased.”
He tried to grin. “Maybe. But still true.”
On the drive back to the house, I turned over the word temporary like a stone in my mouth. Six months. Now five. My marriage had an expiration date stamped on it like a carton of milk.
And yet, something bothered me.
The way Harrison moved some days—stronger than someone with a “terminal heart condition” should be. The way he refused to see his doctors, postponing appointments Richard scheduled. The way his pill bottles seemed to multiply overnight on the bathroom counter.
I tried to ignore it at first. It wasn’t my business, I told myself. I was there to fulfill a contract and save my brother’s life, not to micromanage a billionaire’s healthcare.
But ignoring things had never been my strong suit. Not as a teacher, not as a sister, not as a human being who tended to notice when something was off.
One night, the not-rightness wouldn’t let me sleep.
I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. The rain had finally stopped; the quiet felt strange after so many days of constant patter. I tossed, turned, gave up. Padding down the hallway in one of the oversized T-shirts I wore to bed, I headed for the kitchen, thinking a glass of water—or better yet, one of Mrs. Hartley’s leftover cookies—might help.
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard a thump.
It wasn’t loud, but it was wrong. A heavy, dull sound, followed by a strangled grunt.
I froze. Then I heard it again—a scraped gasp, the crack of something hitting wood.
I moved before I realized I’d decided to, following the sound along the hallway to the study. The door was ajar, a thin strip of light leaking out. I pushed it open.
“Harrison?”
He was on the floor.
His wheelchair lay on its side a few feet away, one wheel still spinning lazily. Papers had spilled from the desk onto the rug. Harrison was half-curled, one hand pressed to his chest, the other clawing at the edge of the desk as if trying to drag himself closer.
“Oh my God,” I said, the words ripping out of me. I dropped the glass I’d been carrying; it shattered harmlessly on the thick rug. “What happened?”
“Don’t,” he gasped, when I reached for my phone. “Don’t call…”
“Don’t call who?” I demanded. “Nine-one-one? The doctor? Harrison, you’re on the floor.”
“Help me up,” he whispered. His face was slick with sweat. His lips had a bluish tinge.
My heart hammered. Every sensible part of me screamed hospital. But his eyes were wild in a way I’d never seen before. I had a sudden vision of him being dragged into a sterile room, strapped to a bed, surrounded by strangers. He looked terrified of that more than he looked afraid of dying.
“Okay,” I said, forcing myself to breathe. “Okay. I’ll help you up.”
It wasn’t elegant. He was heavier than he looked, dead weight fighting against gravity and the limitations of my own strength. I braced my feet on the rug, got my arms under his shoulders, and tried different angles until, little by little, we wrestled him back into the chair. He slumped against the backrest, his breath rasping.
“I’m calling 911,” I said, grabbing for my phone again.
“No.” His hand shot out, surprisingly fast, clamping around my wrist. “No hospitals. Please.”
“Are you insane?” I snapped, the fear in my chest burning into anger. “You clearly just—”
“Medication,” he wheezed. “Top… drawer. Blue bottle.”
For a second, I hovered on the edge. Then training I didn’t even know I had kicked in: assess the immediate danger, stabilize, then argue.
I dug through the drawer until I found a blue bottle. The label was long and complicated; the instructions were clear. Two tablets as needed for acute episodes. His name was on the label. The prescribing doctor’s name meant nothing to me.
“How many?” I asked.
“Two,” he said, closing his eyes. “Under the tongue.”
His hand was almost too shaky to hold the pills. I helped him. We sat in tense silence for several minutes. Slowly, his breathing eased. The color crept back into his cheeks. His shoulders relaxed a fraction.
“You should be in a hospital,” I said when I could trust my voice not to shake.
“They can’t help me,” he said flatly, opening his eyes. They looked… old, suddenly. For the first time, I saw the exhaustion there. Not just physical, but something deeper. “All they do is run tests and make promises they can’t keep. I’ve wasted too much of my time in hospitals already.”
“But you’re getting worse,” I said. “Faster than they predicted, aren’t you?”
He looked at me then—really looked at me, like he had in that conference room on the day we married. Only now there was no corporate gloss, no privacy of an office between us. Just a man in a chair and a woman sitting on the floor, hair mussed from sleep, heart pounding.
“Yes,” he said finally. No excuse. No deflection. Just naked truth.
“How long do you think you have?” I asked, the words barely more than a breath.
He didn’t look away. “A month,” he said. “Maybe less.”
Something cracked in my chest. Until that moment, his impending death had been an abstract thing: numbers on paper, a timeline built into the contract I’d signed. I had come to this house believing I was here for six months. That I could grit my teeth and get through it, that grief would be a deferred payment.
Now the looming end was suddenly close and real, sitting inches away from me and wheezing.
“For what it’s worth,” he added, his voice weaker now, “I’m… sorry you got the short end of that deal.”
“You paid for my brother’s life,” I said. “I’m not sure there was a way I didn’t.”
We sat in silence for a while after that. The desk lamp cast a small pool of light around us; the rest of the room fell away into shadows. Through the windows, I could see the faint reflection of the ocean, a darker band beyond the lawn.
“Let me help you to bed,” I said finally.
He didn’t argue.
After that night, something shifted.
He started joining me for breakfast.
At first, it was simple logistics. Mrs. Hartley, I suspect, had a hand in it. I came downstairs the next morning to find two places set at the smaller kitchen table instead of the cavernous dining room. Harrison was already there, his wheelchair pulled up to the table, a half-eaten slice of toast on his plate. He looked surprised to see me in yoga pants and an old college sweatshirt.
“Good morning,” he said, as if I’d just walked into a staff meeting.
“Morning,” I replied, suddenly self-conscious about my bedhead. I poured myself coffee.
For several days, our conversations were what you’d expect from two people sharing forced proximity and a surreal circumstance: the weather, the view, the food.
“Mrs. Hartley could run a restaurant,” I said one morning after tasting her omelet. “A very exclusive one that would put half the city out of business.”
“She would hate that,” Harrison remarked. “She likes feeding people she knows. Strangers would annoy her.”
“You say that like she doesn’t already scold you like a child,” I said.
“That is because she knows me,” he pointed out.
Little by little, the topics shifted.
He asked about the school where I taught: the kids, the chaos of glue sticks and paint, the way some children came alive when you put a pencil in their hand and asked them to imagine something that didn’t exist yet.
“You must really love it,” he said after I told him about a student who’d spent a week crafting a cardboard castle with more attention to detail than most architects.
“I do,” I said. “Most days. Some days I want to scream. But then some kid who never speaks raises their hand and shares something, and I remember why I’m there.”
“Why did you become an art teacher?” he asked. “Why not an artist?”
The question hit a sore spot I kept mostly bandaged.
“I wanted to be,” I said. “When I was younger, I had this whole idea of opening my own studio. Big windows, smell of turpentine, pretentious conversations about color palettes.” I smiled faintly. “But then Mom got sick. And then Dad. And it just… didn’t seem practical. Teaching seemed… solid. Useful.”
“And the studio?” he pressed gently.
“I didn’t give it up,” I said after a moment. “I just… postponed it. Indefinitely.”
He picked at the crust of his toast. “Life has a way of turning ‘later’ into ‘never,’” he murmured. “If you let it.”
“You would know,” I said before I could stop myself.
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Yes,” he said. “I would.”
He told me, in return, about building Quantum Systems from his dorm room. The nights he’d slept under his desk. The thrill of solving a problem at three in the morning with nothing but coffee and stubbornness to push him through.
“It was like art, in a way,” he said. “Only my medium was code. I could build entire worlds out of logic and imagination. It… felt like magic, at first.”
“And then?” I prompted.
“And then it started feeling like responsibility,” he said. “When you employ thousands of people, when investors start talking about quarterly returns instead of innovation, it becomes… something else.”
“Did you ever want to walk away?” I asked.
“Every day,” he said simply. “And never. It is very hard to abandon the thing that has become your identity, even when it is killing you.”
I looked at him. He wasn’t talking about the company anymore.
One evening, I found him in the sunroom, staring out at the ocean. The sky was streaked with pink and orange; the water caught the colors and shattered them. He looked small in his wheelchair, wrapped in a cardigan against a chill only he seemed to feel.
“May I join you?” I asked.
He nodded.
I sat in the chair next to his, folding my legs under me. Mrs. Hartley had left a book on the side table: a worn copy of a classic novel. Without asking, I picked it up, opened to a random page, and started to read aloud.
After a few minutes, I realized he was not just tolerating it; he was leaning back, eyes half-closed, his breathing steady, listening.
We fell into a habit. Some evenings I read to him. Other nights, he told stories: about his parents taking him to the beach as a kid, about the first time he wrote a program that actually worked, about the strange emptiness of moving into a mansion at twenty-five and realizing that all the success in the world could not make a house feel like home on its own.
“You make this place less empty,” he said once, so quietly I almost pretended I hadn’t heard.
“You make it less intimidating,” I replied. “Otherwise I’d be terrified to touch anything.”
He laughed—a real laugh this time, rusty with disuse. “Touch whatever you like,” he said. “It’s just stuff. You are not a guest here, Margaret. You live here.”
“I’m not sure what I am here,” I said honestly.
He turned his head. His gaze rested on my face with a weight that made my chest flutter. “You’re my wife,” he said. “Even if this started as… something else. Even if it ends before we’ve had time to figure out what that means.”
Something in the way he said it made my throat go tight. I looked away, pretending to adjust my blanket.
As the weeks passed, his illness worsened. The coughing fits grew more frequent and lasted longer; sometimes he had to stop halfway through a sentence to catch his breath. He tired easily. Some days he barely left his room. Other days he forced himself to his study, refusing to relinquish control over certain aspects of the company even as his body betrayed him.
Richard came regularly, bringing documents, updates, and a quiet intensity that made me uneasy. He also brought Harrison’s medication sometimes—small bags from the pharmacy, bottles of pills, new prescriptions.
“Isn’t your doctor supposed to manage these?” I asked once, frowning at the growing cluster of bottles on the bathroom shelf.
“They do,” Harrison said, dismissing the question. “Richard coordinates.”
That bothered me more than I could articulate. A man with Harrison’s resources should have had a team of specialists hovering over him, monitoring every milligram he put into his mouth. Instead, there seemed to be a weird patchwork approach: different doctors, different pharmacies, overlapping prescriptions.
One morning, I found Harrison in the master bathroom, the counter littered with pill bottles. His hands shook so much that he’d knocked several of them over, scattering pills like confetti.
“What are all these?” I asked, picking up a bottle.
“Medication,” he said, irritated with himself, not me. “For the heart condition. Diuretics, beta blockers, something for the arrhythmia, something for…” He waved vaguely. “Whatever.”
I read the labels. The drug names meant little to me individually, but several of the warning stickers caught my eye. Do not combine with. May interact with. Risk of bleeding.
“Did one doctor prescribe all of these?” I asked, my frown deepening as I realized the prescribing physicians differed.
“Of course not,” he said. “That would be far too logical. Doctors like to mark their territory. Richard takes the prescriptions from each specialist and gets them filled.”
“The doctors… talk to each other, though, right?” I asked. “Coordinate?”
He shrugged, a small, tired lift of one shoulder. “Presumably.”
My unease grew.
I started paying closer attention.
Richard would arrive in the morning with a cup of coffee for Harrison and a small paper cup of pills.
“Here,” he’d say, in that smooth professional voice. “Time for your vitamins.”
Harrison would swallow them without even glancing at them, like it was a reflex.
An hour or two later, he’d seem more tired. A little paler. Sometimes he’d excuse himself from our breakfast mid-conversation, saying he needed to lie down.
“Does he always bring your medication like that?” I asked Mrs. Hartley one afternoon while she tended her rose garden.
“Oh yes,” she said. “He’s been wonderful about keeping track of all the pharmacy runs and refills. Harrison would forget completely if left to his own devices. He’s always been hopeless with anything that wasn’t work.”
“How long has Richard been with him?” I asked, trying to keep my tone casual.
“Ten years, at least,” she said, pruning a stem. “Started as a junior analyst, worked his way up. He’s Mr. Blackwell’s right hand now. Handles all sorts of things.”
“Like… legal stuff?” I asked. “Financial?”
“It’s none of my business what they do in that office,” she said, sniffing. “But yes. I imagine he’d inherit a good deal of responsibility if…” She hesitated. “If the worst happens.”
A good deal of responsibility. A polite way of saying power. Control. Money.
That evening, I watched Richard more closely.
He and Harrison were in the study, going over documents. I lingered in the hallway under the pretense of looking at a painting. Through the crack in the door, I saw Richard refill the little pill organizer on the desk.
“Don’t forget these,” he said, tapping Wednesday’s slot.
“Yes, Mom,” Harrison said dryly. He smiled faintly, his eyes already drooping with fatigue.
I told myself I was being paranoid. That weeks of living in a house built on a dying man’s schedule would make anyone jumpy.
But the feeling wouldn’t let go.
It sharpened into something fierce the night I woke to the sound of Harrison’s coughing again, only to realize that it sounded… different. Longer. More labored. I went to his room and found him slumped halfway off the pillows, gasping like a fish out of water.
“We’re going to the hospital,” I said before he could protest.
“I’ll be fine,” he croaked.
“No,” I snapped. “You won’t. You can barely breathe.”
His eyes rolled toward me, unfocused. Fear flickered there. Not of dying, I realized with a peculiar clarity—but of surrendering control.
“Please,” I said, softer now. “Please, Harrison. Just—let someone else take care of you for once.”
Something in my tone must have reached him. He nodded once, a jerky movement.
By the time the paramedics arrived, his breathing had eased slightly, but the episode had shaken us both. In the bright glare of the ambulance lights, with strangers strapping him onto a stretcher, he looked small and lost.
At the hospital, they whisked him into a room. Machines. Monitors. IV lines. A nurse asked me questions about his medications. I rattled off what I could remember, kicking myself for not having paid more attention sooner.
“Can you bring any of his prescriptions from home?” the nurse asked. “We need to make sure we’re not giving him something that will interact badly with what he’s already taking.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll go get them.”
On the way back to the house, a thought lodged itself in my mind. I almost dismissed it. Almost.
Instead, I took a detour.
At the 24-hour pharmacy on the corner, the fluorescent lights hummed. A tired pharmacist with her hair in a messy bun looked up as I approached the counter, a bottle clutched in my hand.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I… need to ask you about something.”
She took the bottle, flipped it over, and read the label. Her frown was immediate.
“This isn’t right,” she said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, my heart rate tripling.
“This drug isn’t used to treat cardiomyopathy,” she said, tapping the name. “It’s a blood thinner. A strong one. We prescribe it cautiously, usually in specific cases. And this dosage…” She looked up at me. “How long has the patient been taking this?”
“Months,” I said, my mouth going dry. “Four or five, I think.”
“At this dosage?” she repeated.
I nodded.
Her frown deepened. “In someone with an existing heart condition, long-term use at this level could cause serious problems,” she said. “It could gradually weaken their cardiovascular system, cause internal bleeding, make it look like their condition was worsening on its own.”
My hands trembled. “Could it…” I swallowed. “Could it kill them?”
“Over time?” She hesitated, then nodded. “Absolutely. It would be slow. Hard to pinpoint. It might look like the natural progression of their illness.”
The pharmacy smelled overwhelmingly of antiseptic and artificial lemon. I gripped the edge of the counter, forcing myself to breathe.
“Are there other medications involved?” the pharmacist asked gently.
“Yes,” I said. “A lot.”
“If you can, bring them all to the hospital,” she said. “The doctors need to see the full picture. It’s possible there are other interactions.”
Other interactions. Other pills. Other invisible levers being pulled.
By the time I reached the house, my thoughts were no longer fuzzy with fear. They were sharp, bright, terrifyingly clear.
I went straight to the bathroom and swept every bottle into a bag. Then, on an impulse, I went to Harrison’s study. The little pill organizer sat on the desk. Next to it was the bottle Richard had brought that morning. I added it to the bag.
On my way out, I nearly collided with Mrs. Hartley in the hallway.
“Is he all right?” she asked, her face pale, hands clutching a dish towel.
“He’s stable,” I said. My voice sounded eerily calm. “They’re running tests. I need to bring them his medications.”
She noticed the bulging bag. Her eyes widened.
“There’s… something wrong,” I said. “With these. I don’t think this is all just his heart.”
Her fingers tightened on the towel. “Richard—”
“Richard has been handling his medications,” I finished for her. “For years. And he stands to gain a lot if Harrison dies.”
The words hung between us, heavy and awful.
“We need to call the police,” I said. “Now.”
Mrs. Hartley stared at me for a moment. Then she nodded once, the decision hardening her features.
“Use the phone in the kitchen,” she said. “It’s more private.”
The next hours blurred into a strange collage. Police officers with weary eyes taking statements in the kitchen. A detective whose expression went very still when I mentioned the pharmacist’s reaction. A flurry of calls to the hospital, instructions to hold all medication until a toxicology report could be done.
At the hospital, doctors took blood, ran tests, spoke in low voices. One of them came back, his face grim and incredulous.
“We found elevated levels of several substances in Mr. Blackwell’s system that do not correspond with his prescribed medication,” he said. “Including arsenic.”
“Arsenic,” I repeated, as if he’d said confetti.
“Yes.” He exchanged a glance with the detective. “And a dangerous dosage of a particular blood thinner. Combined, they could certainly account for the worsening of his symptoms.”
Poison. The word slid like ice into my stomach.
“Are… are you saying…” My throat closed.
“We’re saying someone has been systematically poisoning him,” the detective said quietly. “Over a period of months.”
They arrested Richard Chen at his apartment that night.
Later, we would learn about the forged medical records, the emails to a rival CEO discussing the acquisition of Quantum Systems after Harrison’s death, the meticulous way he’d arranged things to make himself indispensable—and irreplaceable.
Later, we would hear the prosecutors stand up in court and say words like premeditated, attempted murder, fraud.
That night, all I cared about was the man in the hospital bed.
Without the daily doses of poison, Harrison’s body began to fight its way back. It wasn’t immediate; damage had been done. But as the toxins slowly filtered out of his system, his color improved. His breathing steadied. The tremor in his hands ceased its constant shiver.
Three days after they’d adjusted his medications, he opened his eyes and focused on me with a clarity I hadn’t seen in months.
“You look like hell,” he croaked.
I let out a laugh that came out mostly as a sob. “You’re one to talk,” I said, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand.
“What… happened?” he asked.
I told him.
I told him about the pharmacist. About the police. About the poison and the forged records and the emails. About Mrs. Hartley’s quiet fury. About Richard’s arrest.
He listened in silence. His face went very, very still.
“Arsenic,” he said when I finished. “That seems… melodramatic.”
“You always did have a flair for the dramatic,” I said weakly.
He huffed, then winced. “This explains… a lot,” he murmured.
“It does,” I said. “Including why the doctors here are now saying your ‘terminal heart condition’ was, in fact, a mild arrhythmia made exponentially worse by someone trying to kill you slowly.”
He stared at the ceiling.
“And you,” he said finally, his voice hoarse, “figured it out.”
“With help,” I said. “Linda, the pharmacist, deserves some credit. And Mrs. Hartley.”
His gaze shifted back to me. His eyes were wet—not the glazed, feverish sheen of illness, but something more human.
“You saved my life,” he said.
“Mrs. Hartley called the police,” I said.
“You paid attention,” he insisted. “You cared enough to question what everyone else took for granted. Without that, I’d be…” He swallowed. “I’d be dead by now. Thinking I just… ran out of time.”
I looked at him, at the man I had agreed to marry because I was desperate and he was dying. The man I had watched wheeze and cough and grit his teeth through pain he refused to medicate properly. The man who had listened to me talk about art like it mattered, who had told me about his parents with a boy’s grief still raw beneath a man’s stoicism.
Somewhere in the chaos of the past months, he had stopped being a stranger.
“That was not an acceptable outcome,” I said, trying for lightness and failing.
His fingers twitched on the blanket. I reached for his hand without thinking. He gripped mine, his skin warm and dry.
“I know our marriage was a… business arrangement,” he said, each word careful. “A transaction. I know I bought your presence with your brother’s life. I know that’s not… romantic, or noble, or anything anyone would dream about.”
“Harrison—”
“Let me finish,” he said. There was steel in his voice now, beneath the rasp. “I went into it expecting… civility. Maybe some conversation. I didn’t expect kindness. Or honesty. Or… this.”
“This?” I echoed.
He searched my face. “These months,” he said softly. “Even when I thought I was dying—even especially then—have been the happiest of my life. Because you were there. Because, for the first time, I felt like I wasn’t… alone. I had someone sitting beside me in the dark instead of shouting encouragement from the door.”
Tears burned behind my eyes.
“You make me want to live,” he said, almost whispering. “Even when my body was telling me it was time to stop.”
“Harrison,” I said, and then words failed me.
He squeezed my hand. “When I’m fully recovered,” he said, “if you want a divorce, I’ll give you whatever you need. The money for Tommy’s care is… already arranged. I’ll make sure you have enough to open that studio you talked about. You’ll be free to go, with no hard feelings.”
My throat tightened.
“But,” he continued, his voice suddenly unsteady, “if you wanted to stay… if you wanted to try making this… real… I would like that very much.”
I thought of the morning coffees. Of Mrs. Hartley’s knowing looks. Of reading to him while the sun sank into the ocean. Of the way my heart had lurched when I’d found him on the study floor, of the bone-deep relief that had flooded me when he started to breathe more easily.
I thought of how, without my entirely realizing it, my days had begun to orbit around his presence: the sound of his chair in the hallway, the rhythm of his breathing beside me on the terrace, the low rumble of his voice when he let his guard down.
The terrifying truth was that somewhere along the way, I had started to forget that this had an expiration date.
“I wore your ring because I had to,” I said slowly, watching my thumb trace the plain band on my finger. “At first. It felt like… a weight. A reminder of a bargain I’d made.”
His expression flickered.
“But now,” I said, lifting my gaze to his, “when I wake up and it’s there, I don’t think about the paperwork. I think about breakfast. And the way you complain when Mrs. Hartley puts too much jam on your toast. And the way you tilt your head when you’re trying not to laugh at something I’ve said.”
His hand tightened around mine.
“I’m scared,” I admitted. “I’m scared of choosing wrong again. Of building my life on something that could… vanish. I’m scared of needing you more than you need me. I’m scared of everything, honestly.”
“Me too,” he confessed. “Though I suspect you’re braver than I am.”
I let out a shaky breath.
“I’d like that too,” I whispered.
The relief that washed across his face was almost painful to watch.
“Okay,” he said, his voice breaking on the word. “Okay.”
The legal proceedings took months.
Richard’s lawyers did their best to paint him as a misunderstood caretaker whose actions had been misinterpreted. The prosecutors were more persuasive. So were the lab reports. So were the emails where he joked about “hastening the inevitable” and discussed projected stock values.
He was convicted of attempted murder, fraud, and several other charges I lost track of. The judge handed down a sentence that made the reporters outside the courthouse nod in satisfaction.
I didn’t go to every hearing. The whole thing felt surreal enough. But I went to the sentencing with Harrison and Mrs. Hartley. We sat in a row, watching the man who had poured poison into our lives stand and listen while a stranger in robes decided his future.
When it was over, when the gavel came down and the courtroom began to stir, Richard turned his head toward us. Our eyes met. For a second, something like regret flickered there. Or maybe it was only annoyance at having lost.
Harrison’s hand found mine.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Home.
The word tasted different now.
Harrison’s recovery was slow but steady, built on real medicine this time instead of a chemical assault. Physical therapy to regain muscle strength. Carefully managed medications to regulate his arrhythmia. Regular checkups with doctors who actually communicated with each other.
He traded the wheelchair for a cane. Then, on some days, for nothing at all.
The first time he walked from the kitchen to the sunroom without assistance, Mrs. Hartley cried outright.
“Show-off,” I said, blinking furiously.
He grinned. “Can’t waste all those months of you nagging me to stay alive,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tommy progressed through his own rehab. The foundation Harrison quietly funded—set up in part to formalize what he’d done for my brother, and in part to help others—covered the state-of-the-art physical therapy center. Tommy cursed his way through endless sessions of stretching, strengthening, learning to trust his leg again.
He married Sarah in a small church with fairy lights strung along the pews and wildflowers in mason jars. He walked down the aisle with only the faintest limp.
I stood beside him as his best man. Harrison, beside me in a suit that fit his newly restored frame, squeezed my hand when Tom turned to put a ring on Sarah’s finger and his face crumpled with joy.
In the front row, Mrs. Hartley dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief.
“I prayed for this,” she told me at the reception, pulling me into a hug that smelled like lavender and sugar cookies. “For you both to find each other. For him to have… this.”
“This?” I asked, glancing across the room.
Harrison stood with Tom and Sarah, laughing at something. He looked… younger. Not in his features, which still bore the marks of illness and time and experience, but in his posture. Lighter. Unburdened.
“A life,” she said simply. “Not just a company. A life.”
Later, after the cake had been eaten and the drunk relatives had taken over the dance floor, Harrison took me out onto the balcony of the small event hall. The night air was cool; the city lights twinkled.
He leaned against the railing, breathing in deeply.
“I sold Quantum Systems,” he said, like he was telling me what he’d had for breakfast.
I turned. “You what?”
“Not all of it,” he amended. “I retained a small stake. And a seat on the board, for now. But the bulk of it… is gone.”
I stared at him. “You spent your whole life building that company.”
“Yes,” he said. “And now I’d like to spend the rest of my life doing something else.”
“Like what?” I asked, my heart thudding.
He smiled. “Living,” he said simply. “With you, if that’s still something you’re interested in.”
Tears pricked my eyes.
“I signed up for six months,” I said. “I wasn’t planning on a lifetime.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” he said, lips twitching.
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said. “I’ll adjust.”
We did.
We bought a house by the ocean—not as big as the estate, but large enough for friends and future possibilities. It had white walls, wood floors, and a studio with north-facing windows. Harrison made sure of that last part.
“This is your kingdom,” he said, standing in the empty room with his hands in his pockets. Sunlight poured in, turning the dust motes into stars. “I’ll stay out unless invited.”
“You’re always invited,” I said.
I painted like I hadn’t since college—shelves of canvases stacked against the walls, the smell of linseed oil and turpentine in the air, music playing low as I lost track of time. Landscapes at first, trying to capture the way the ocean changed color every hour. Then people: Tommy and Sarah on the beach, laughing while trying to wrangle a kite; Mrs. Hartley sitting on the porch, knitting; Harrison reading in his chair, unaware of the way the light haloed his hair.
Harrison spent his days working on the foundation we started together. It provided financial assistance for accident victims without insurance, funded rehabilitation programs, and lobbied quietly for legislative changes. It was my idea, born from hours spent in that hospital waiting room watching families crumble under the weight of bills they didn’t understand.
“This matters,” he said once, flipping through a stack of grant applications. “More than any line of code I ever wrote.”
“Code built the company,” I pointed out. “The company built this.”
“Yes,” he said. “But this… builds people.”
Sometimes he would bring his laptop into the studio and sit while I painted, tapping away at emails or reviewing reports. Other times he would just watch.
“I could watch you paint for hours,” he confessed once. “You get this look on your face… like you’re pulling something out of thin air.”
“That’s what you did with your code,” I said.
He considered that. “Maybe,” he said. “But paint is prettier.”
We were not perfect.
We bickered over stupid things: the proper place for the coffee mugs, whether the beach towels belonged in the linen closet or in a basket by the back door, his habit of leaving shoes in the hallway where I inevitably tripped over them.
We fought, too, about bigger things.
He had spent so long handling everything alone that letting me share the load did not come naturally.
“You don’t have to fix every problem yourself,” I snapped one night when I found him hunched over foundation spreadsheets at two in the morning.
“I’m not used to asking for help,” he said stiffly.
“Well, get used to it,” I shot back. “Because I’m here. You don’t get to shut me out of the parts you think are ‘too much’ for me. That’s not how this works.”
He looked at me, really looked at me, and something in his expression softened.
“I’m still learning how to be… married,” he admitted. “It’s a steeper learning curve than code.”
“You’re doing okay,” I said, my anger deflating. “Most days.”
We navigated his lingering health issues together: the occasional scare, the checkups where the cardiologist reassured us that his heart was stable and his arrhythmia manageable. He still took medication, but now he knew exactly what each pill did. We kept lists in the kitchen cabinet, checked and double-checked. We asked questions.
We paid attention.
A year and a half after our wedding, we sat on the beach in front of our house, our toes buried in the sand. The sunset was putting on a show: gold bleeding into pink into streaks of purple. The waves sighed against the shore.
“Do you ever think about how we met?” Harrison asked suddenly.
“Every day,” I said. “Not the exact moment, necessarily. But the… circumstances.”
“Desperation and poison,” he said wryly. “Very romantic.”
“I was desperate,” I said quietly. “Scared. I felt like I was choosing between impossible options.”
“So was I,” he said. “Dying alone felt… worse than dying. In some ways.”
“Do you still feel like you’re dying?” I asked.
He looked at me. The setting sun reflected in his eyes.
“We’re all dying,” he said. “Eventually. But no. I don’t feel like I’m at the edge of a cliff anymore. It’s more like… standing in a field with a horizon I can’t quite see, but I know it’s there. And I’m not standing there by myself.”
He reached for my hand.
“Richard was poisoning me,” he said softly. “But loneliness was killing me faster. Then you showed up and made me want to live, even before we knew about the poison. You made me want… more time.”
“We have time now,” I said. “More than six months, anyway.”
“All the time we want?” he asked, one corner of his mouth quirking.
“As much as the universe is willing to give us,” I said.
He leaned over and kissed me as the sun slid into the ocean.
Three months ago, we received a letter.
It came in a stack of mail that also included junk flyers, a glossy catalog, and a doctor’s appointment reminder. The envelope was plain, the handwriting a little shaky. The return address was a town two states away.
I opened it at the kitchen table, balancing a mug of tea in one hand.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell,
My name is Emily Reyes. I don’t know if this letter will reach you, but I’m writing because I don’t know where else to turn.
My mother had a stroke six weeks ago. She’s only fifty-two. We don’t have insurance. The hospital has been incredible, but the bills are… more than I can comprehend. I work two jobs and it still feels like I’m drowning.
Someone at the hospital mentioned your foundation. They said you sometimes help people like us. I feel selfish even asking when I know there are so many others, but my mom is all I have. If there’s any way you could… I don’t know. I just want her to have a chance.
Thank you for reading this, even if you can’t help.
Sincerely,
Emily
I read it twice. The words trembled on the page, the fear between the lines as familiar as my own handwriting.
I took the letter into Harrison’s office.
“We’re helping her,” he said after reading it, as if that were the simplest decision in the world.
“We can’t help everyone,” I said, even as relief flooded me.
“No,” he said. “But we can help her. And as many others as we can manage.”
We funded her mother’s ICU stay, the rehabilitation, the speech therapy. We covered part of their rent for a few months so Emily could cut back on one of her jobs and actually sleep.
Last week, my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.
“Is this Margaret?” a young woman’s voice asked when I answered.
“Yes,” I said.
“This is Emily,” she said, her voice already shaking. “You helped my mom. She… she woke up last night. She’s talking. She’s… she’s still weak, but the doctors say she has a really good chance of recovery.”
I closed my eyes, gripping the phone tighter.
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“You saved her life,” Emily said, and then she started to cry. “You… I don’t know how to thank you.”
I thought about Richard in that hospital waiting room all those months ago, offering me an impossible choice. I thought about the envelope in my hand, my brother upstairs, the way my stomach had twisted.
“You’re the one who stayed,” I said. “You’re the one who wrote the letter. You’re the one who sat by her bed. You saved her life. We just… helped the doctors do their jobs.”
“I don’t… I don’t know how we’ll ever pay you back,” she said.
“You don’t owe us anything,” I said. “Just… pay attention to her. To what the doctors say. To how she feels. To the little changes. That’s how we save each other. That’s what matters.”
After we hung up, I stood in my studio, staring at a blank canvas. Tears slid down my face, one after another, dropping onto the raw fabric.
“What’s wrong?” Harrison asked from the doorway, his voice alarmed.
“Nothing,” I said, laughing and crying at the same time. “Everything’s right. That’s the problem. It feels… impossible.”
He stepped into the room, closing the distance between us. He reached up and brushed my hair back from my face with gentle fingers.
“Do you remember what you said to me in the hospital?” I asked. “About those months being the happiest of your life?”
“Every word,” he said.
“They’ve been the happiest of mine, too,” I said. “Even the terrifying parts. Because they led here. To this. To… us.”
He smiled—a slow, warm thing that still made my stomach flip.
“To us,” he repeated.
The rain comes sometimes, still.
It patters against the studio windows, traces paths down the glass. I watch the droplets race each other, collide, join forces, and slide out of sight. They no longer look like chaos to me. They look like tiny stories, each on its own journey, occasionally intersecting with others, changing course, gathering strength.
When I think back to that waiting room, to the envelope in my hand and the weight of impossible choices pressing on my chest, I sometimes feel like I’m watching someone else’s life.
And yet, everything that came after grew out of that moment.
Desperation, poison, loneliness, yes. But also attention. Questions. Refusing to let the obvious explanation be the only one.
We built a life out of all of it—the fear and the grief and the fragile hope. It’s messy and imperfect and never guaranteed. It’s also more beautiful than anything I could have imagined when I said yes to a dying man’s proposal in a lawyer’s office with a ficus as my witness.
It’s beautiful because it’s real. Because we choose it, every day.
Because love—the kind that matters—isn’t about perfect beginnings or easy paths. It’s about noticing when something is wrong, even when everyone else says it’s fine. It’s about asking hard questions. It’s about sitting on the floor of a study with someone who thinks they’re running out of time and saying, “I’m not going anywhere.”
It’s about saving each other, in small ways, over and over again.
We did.
We do.
Every single day.
