Life's Too Short

by Abby Jimenez

  A frantic, primal self-preservation instinct clawed around inside of me. An urge to fix it, make it right. Stabilize something.

  But there was only one thing I could fix. I could backpedal the damage I’d done here. At least this I could put back in order. This was in my control.

  “What do you need, boss?” Becky asked like she could sense my shift in resolve.

  “I need you to make a discovery request from the Minneapolis PD. I want the bodycam footage for the Bueller case.”

  I sat up and clicked open my briefcase. “I need you to call everyone in here. Order takeout for dinner and get me the Keller, Bueller, and Garcia files. We’re pulling an all-nighter.”

  CHAPTER 28

  TAKE THIS QUIZ TO SEE IF HE’S GHOSTING YOU!

  VANESSA

  Adrian didn’t come home last night. Or the night before that or the night before that. I mean, he did—sort of. He crawled into bed at 2:00 a.m. Then he’d get up and leave again at 6:00. He’d reply to my texts with one word.

  Sometimes he didn’t reply at all.

  I’d shown up with lunch yesterday to surprise him and found him in the conference room with a dozen other people, already eating sandwiches. He’d smiled up at me almost professionally. Like I was a client.

  He kissed me swiftly, promised to eat what I brought for dinner, and apologized for needing to go back to work. Then he led me out with a hand on my lower back, and I found myself in the lobby outside the elevators wondering what had just happened.

  I kept telling myself it was temporary. He was slammed with a big case—he’d gotten behind the last few weeks.

  But another part of me knew it wasn’t.

  I felt like he was trying to distance himself from me. It was like I was watching his life after I’d died. Like he was working himself to the bone to fill the void, mourning me, and I wasn’t even gone yet.

  I understood why he was struggling with my decision. He was pragmatic, a man of action. When presented with a problem, he researched it, looked at all the angles, and then argued his way out of it—and he wasn’t used to losing.

  He wanted to exhaust every avenue. Take me to every specialist, read about every case study, and enroll me in every clinical trial. But none of it would save me. None of it. The sooner he understood that, the sooner we could get back to living our lives—because right now we weren’t.

  I missed him. I missed him so much.

  Something had fractured between us, and I didn’t know how to fix it because I couldn’t give him what he wanted. So I just spent the days wandering around his apartment like a ghost, hoping he’d come back to me.

  Brent had thrown himself headfirst into BoobStick production, so he was busy. Dad got the job he interviewed for and was gone during the days now, which meant I couldn’t take Grace over there for lunch. Dinner was out of the question because I wanted to be here if Adrian came home at a decent hour. So I was alone. All the time.

  Just me and Grace.

  I was lying on the bed with her yesterday, her little hand wrapped around my finger. I wondered if she would remember me when I was gone, some tiny, internalized recollection of a brown-eyed woman who loved her once. I felt myself willing her to look at my face and keep it somewhere safe inside her. Then I realized that she’d have to put it the same place she’d put Adrian—because she’d be losing him too.

  I’d always thought of Adrian as a sentinel. A lighthouse in a storm. Safe and grounding and orienting. Constant. But he was crumbling under the weight of this. And I had the sad realization that if Grace was ours and he lost me like Dad lost Mom, Adrian would have disappeared on Grace too, back into his work, to cope with my loss.

  Dad, even with all his faults, had kept us all together after Mom’s death. We’d lost her, but we never lost each other.

  It was funny to think that Dad was stronger in this way than Adrian. Dad.

  Dad’s coping mechanism hadn’t been much healthier. But at least he was there.

  I needed something to do, so I completed my end-of-life checklist. Today I went to the funeral home and made my arrangements.

  I didn’t want an urn. I didn’t want to be part of the hoarded clutter in Dad’s house if he went back to it, but I fully rejected spending $7,000 on a casket and a burial plot when that money could go to ALS research.

  So I bought a cremation and opted for the cardboard box for my remains. I didn’t trust that Dad would spread them someplace meaningful, even if I spelled out exactly where I wanted to be laid to rest. I’d probably end up in the pantry next to the cans of expired corned beef hash and fruit cocktail. My guess was that Adrian would be too upset to carry this out. So I entrusted this final task to Drake and told him to sprinkle my ashes in the ocean.

  Instead of an end-of-life celebration, I put money down with my travel agent to book Dad, Annabel, Brent, Joel, and Grace on a round-the-world cruise. They could celebrate my life while celebrating the beauty that living has to offer.

  And then I was done.

  I’d planned it all. Set everything up. The only thing left was to make sure I had a plan for Grace.

  Annabel still wouldn’t take my calls at the rehab center. But at least she was at rehab.

  It was New Year’s Eve and I’d booked a room for Adrian and me at a bed-and-breakfast in Stillwater for the weekend. When I’d surprised him with it two days ago, he’d seemed excited—well, as excited as he could be at 1:15 in the morning after a nineteen-hour day at the office.

  I had high hopes for this weekend.

  Maybe he needed the space over the last week to process what had happened. Maybe by now the initial shock had worn off and he’d be ready to move forward. This weekend we’d relax, get some sleep. Get some time without the baby, reconnect.

  I’d made us dinner reservations at Ladeyra, my favorite wine bar. My plan was for us to ring in the New Year naked with a bottle of Dom Pérignon I’d brought, in the king-size bed in our room.

  I dropped off Grace with Dad and checked in at 4:00.

  Adrian said he’d leave the office around 5:00 to meet me here, but he hadn’t texted me yet for the address. I hadn’t told him where we were going because I didn’t want him to google it. I wanted him to be surprised when he saw this place.

  I’d booked us into the Agatha Christie suite at the Rivertown Inn in Stillwater. I’d stayed at bed-and-breakfasts all over the world, and none paralleled this one. Our room was decked out like an old-fashioned first-class train car inspired by the novel Murder on the Orient Express. There was a King Tut sarcophagus in the bathroom next to a huge hot tub for two. It had a private steam room and a rainfall shower. It was opulent and gorgeous and totally the escape we needed.

  There was a quote on the wall that I especially liked.

  I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all, I still know quite certainly, that just to be alive, is a grand thing.

  Agatha Christie, 1890–1976

  It seemed very fitting.

  At 6:00 Adrian still hadn’t texted. He didn’t answer my call either. I went to the inn’s cocktail hour without him.

  When I got back to our room at 6:45, he hadn’t called me back. But dinner wasn’t until 9:00, and I knew he had a jury trial starting on Monday and he was probably trying to wrap things up so he could relax this weekend. I decided to take a bath while I waited for him.

  A half hour passed.

  Then a full hour. I added more hot water to the tub.

  When he finally called, I could hear the wind in his car.

  “Hey, you on your way?” I asked, putting my toe into the dripping faucet. “You missed the cocktail hour. There’s a golf pro staying here with this girl. They’re married, but I don’t think to each other—”

  “Vanessa, something’s come up.”

  I dropped my foot away from the faucet. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m on my way to La Crosse.”

  My stomach
plummeted.

  “Wisconsin? Why?”

  “Garcia got arrested. I have to go down there.”

  I sat up in the tub. “Wh—what?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not going to make it tonight.”

  The disappointment lingered for only a moment before it turned into hot, boiling anger. Something inside me snapped.

  “If you want to break up with me, then just fucking break up with me,” I said.

  “What?”

  I shook my head. “You can’t even stand to be in the same room with me, can you? You can’t even look at me.”

  “It’s not— Vanessa, I don’t have a choice. I’m his attorney. I have to go down there.”

  “The only reason you have to go down there is so you won’t have to face a night alone with me. He’s got a whole firm of attorneys. You said it yourself, anyone can go, it doesn’t have to be you.”

  I could almost see him dragging his hand down his mouth, looking anywhere but at me.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly what we both know it is, Adrian. You’re running. Even when you’re with me, you’re not here. Stop ghosting me and calling it work. Please. Please. Turn around. Come back. And stop doing this to me.”

  There was a long pause on the other end.

  “And then what? I watch you let yourself die?”

  And there it was.

  So I was right.

  My chin quivered. “I can’t give you what you’re asking, Adrian.”

  “And I can’t give you what you’re asking either. I need this job. Right now it’s the only thing making me feel halfway sane.”

  “So being away from me twenty hours a day is what’s making you sane?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that—”

  “Yeah, you did.” I forced down the tears. “I get it. You’re still whiplashed and trying to figure it out, and you’re doing what you do when you feel out of control—you work. But you’re wasting precious time.” I shook my head. “It’s just an illusion, Adrian. The control is an illusion. No one can promise you forever. People die unexpectedly every day. They have car accidents and heart attacks and strokes and if all you do is live your life fixated on how it ends, you’re just living the end twice. We still have time and all these things that you think will save me won’t. Stop chasing it and just be happy. Be happy with me while you can.”

  He didn’t answer, but the wind in the background had stopped, like he’d pulled over.

  “This might be my last New Year’s,” I whispered. “Don’t you get that? Don’t you get that every single holiday might be my last one? That every day with me is a gift? Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

  “Of course it does.”

  “Then treat it like a gift! Come back to me. If not tonight, fine. If you have to work, I get it. Go do what you have to do. But then be in this relationship. Your knee-jerk response to finding out that I might be dying should be to spend every waking moment with me, not disappear.”

  He was quiet for so long I thought I’d dropped the call.

  “I can’t be helpless, Vanessa.” His voice was thick. “I can’t sit here and watch you die without knowing we did everything we could to prevent it.”

  I shook my head, and the tears that had been welling in my eyes spilled down my cheeks. “I can’t wait months for you to come to terms with this, Adrian. I don’t have months to spare. Especially if you’re not going to do anything to help you work through it. You won’t go to therapy, you won’t join a support group, you won’t even talk to me. And I’m not willing to be unhappy and alone while you act like I’m already dead. I’m just not.”

  There was a long, quiet pause.

  “I need you to tell me that you’ll seek treatment,” he said into the silence. “That you’ll get diagnosed, that you’ll do clinical trials, take the medications available. I need answers. I need a plan.” He paused. “This is my bottom line.”

  The words hung between us.

  “Your bottom line?” I whispered. “Your bottom line? You’re giving me an ultimatum?”

  He didn’t reply.

  I shook my head. “And what if I say no?”

  He waited a long beat. “Vanessa…I need to know you’re going to give us more time.”

  My heart shattered and disintegrated into a thousand tiny pieces.

  “Fuck you, Adrian. You don’t even want the time you have.”

  And I hung up on him.

  CHAPTER 29

  THIS GOODBYE WILL LEAVE

  YOU IN TEARS

  VANESSA

  Annabel’s rehab facility was a nice one. It should be. It was costing me enough.

  After I hung up on Adrian, I left the bed-and-breakfast and drove to Iowa.

  I spent New Year’s Eve at a Motel 6 a mile from where Annabel was staying. I checked the rehab’s visitors’ hours, set an alarm for the morning, and then downed half the bottle of champagne I brought out of a paper cup and went to sleep before the countdown.

  Adrian had called me back almost as soon as I hung up on him. I turned off my phone. There was absolutely nothing left to say.

  He’d given me an ultimatum. An ultimatum about how I’d live the rest of my life.

  He wouldn’t have even dated me if he’d known I might be sick. It was something I had been afraid to think about. It was something he’d vehemently denied. But now I knew that all of this, all his love, had been given in ignorance.

  I was clickbait.

  I was a deception. An enticing promise of worthy content. But when you really looked, it was nothing but false advertising. Not at all what you thought it was going to be. I’d sold Adrian on something that didn’t exist. I hadn’t done it on purpose, but he’d been misled nonetheless.

  I should have known he was too good to be true. I should have looked for the reason a man like that would be willing to love someone like me. It was because he didn’t know any better.

  And now he did.

  The implications were too enormous to think about. So I didn’t. I showered, grabbed a shitty coffee at the gas station, and went to see my sister.

  Annabel wasn’t expecting me, and I didn’t know if she’d see me. I checked in at the front desk and they buzzed me in.

  When she came out into the visitors’ area and saw me, she paused for a moment. Then she pressed her lips into a line and dropped into the chair across from mine.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She crossed her arms. “Hey.”

  We sat there in a tense silence.

  She seemed tired, but her eyes were clear. She wore a clunky sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Her blond hair was up in a messy ponytail. She looked thin. Almost gaunt.

  “Are you eating?” I asked.

  “The food here is shit,” she mumbled.

  “Do you want me to get you some protein bars or something?”

  She shrugged and looked away, picking at a small tear in the arm of her recliner.

  “How’s your shoulder?” I asked.

  “Fine, I guess,” she muttered. “They won’t give me anything so…”

  “Well, no. You’re in rehab,” I said sarcastically.

  She ignored me.

  “Grace is doing well,” I offered.

  She didn’t reply.

  “I called you,” I said. “A lot.”

  She pursed her lips. “I didn’t want to talk to you.”

  “And why?”

  “Because you’re a liar.”

  I scoffed. “And how’s that exactly? Because I refused to unconditionally fund your bender?”

  She leveled her eyes on me. Sharp blue eyes. Grace’s eyes.

  “So where’s your brace?” she asked.

  I blinked at her. “What?”

  She glared at me. “Your brace. For your hand.”

  I shifted in my seat. I’d never worn it in front of her. I’d never worn it in front of anyone except for Adrian.

  “I saw it when I came to see your apartm
ent. Before I had the baby.” She sat there, daring me to deny it. “So when were you gonna tell us? Were you just gonna, like, die and let us find out after?”

  A flash of hurt flickered on her face. A microsecond of vulnerability that she covered up with the hard expression she used for a mask.

  She knew. This whole time she knew.

  “Did you tell Dad and Brent?” I whispered.

  She shook her head. “No. But they know. We’re not idiots. We can see when you can’t even open a ketchup bottle.”

  I sat back in my chair.

  So this was why Dad had gotten worse. Why they both had. No wonder she went off the rails. No wonder she lost her shit.

  Defeat bolted into my throat and choked me.

  ALS’s grip would never let go. It just kept wrapping its tendrils around our ankles and pulling us down.

  And now it had Adrian as well.

  It had anyone who got close enough.

  I swallowed. “I’m not sure if that’s what it is,” I said.

  She scoffed. “Right.”

  We fell into silence again.

  She tugged at the ripped fabric on her chair. “Almost took a whole bottle the day I found out,” she said quietly. “Went right to the clinic. Got a script and everything. Didn’t fill it though. Kept telling myself that Mel would be disappointed in me if I took it while I was pregnant. It was the only thing that kept me from doing it, thinking Mel could see me.”

  I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees. “Annabel, if this is what…what it might be—I can’t keep Grace. I can keep her while you finish this program. But when you get out, you have to take her.”

  She looked back at me, and all I could think was how young she was. She didn’t look nineteen. She looked like a kid. She didn’t even look old enough to drive.

  “Give her to Dad.”

  I stared at her. “Give her to Dad?”

  “Or Brent and Joel.”

  “Wha…Brent will bail the second she has a diaper blowout! He’s not ready to have a kid.” I shook my head. “You have to take care of her, Annabel. She’s yours.”