Another day, a housekeeper came in humming while she tied off the trash bag. “Morning, Lila,” Thomas said. “Still that same song?”
She laughed without looking up. “My mama loved it, Tom.”
“I know.”
She stopped what she was doing. “You remembered?”
He just smiled and let her wonder.
That was the man I thought I’d married. Kind. Lonely. Running out of time and spending what was left of it noticing strangers.
Then, on an ordinary Thursday, with a cup of ice chips sweating in my hand, he asked me to marry him.
“Marry me, Sarah.”
I nearly dropped the cup. “Thomas—”
“I know how it sounds.”
“You’re very sick.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve known each other three weeks.”
He looked at me for a long time before he answered — long enough that I felt seen in a way I hadn’t been in over a year. “I know enough. I know you’re the kind of person who stays when it would be easier to leave. My last wish is to go out as somebody’s husband. Not as a nameless chart at the end of a hallway.”
