Terrence found us both standing together near the gate a few minutes later, still in uniform, his eyes going wide when he realized exactly who was standing beside his stepfather’s wheelchair.
“Adrienne.” His voice cracked on my name for the second time that evening. “You were on the flight?”
“Seat 14C,” I said. “I bought a ticket two weeks ago to surprise you for our anniversary. I definitely wasn’t expecting the surprise to go both directions.”
I definitely wasn’t expecting the surprise to go both directions.
We stood together in that terminal for a long time, the three of us, while Terrence explained the rest of it — the two months of careful, halting phone calls, the specialist appointment scheduled for the following morning, the diagnosis he’d been carrying alone because some part of him still believed grief was something you were supposed to manage privately instead of sharing with the people who loved you.
“I should have told you the moment I found out,” he said to me. “About the cancer. About reconnecting with him. I didn’t know how to bring you into something I hadn’t even fully let myself feel yet.”
I didn’t know how to bring you into something I hadn’t even fully let myself feel yet.
“I understand why you needed time,” I said. “I just need you to promise me this isn’t the new pattern. Whatever’s ahead with Walter’s treatment, we do it together, not with you carrying it alone the way you carried the silence for eight years.”
We do it together, not with you carrying it alone.
