“No, but you promised me a lifestyle. A home. Travel. You told me Sarah was going to sign the deed over.”
“She will sign!” Victor insisted, his voice cracking.
Rita pointed toward the smoldering remains.
“Sign what?”
She hailed another cab and left without looking back.
Over the next several weeks, Victor searched desperately for Sarah.
He checked her sister’s apartment, called former teaching colleagues, and visited the community center where she used to volunteer.
No one gave him an answer.
When he contacted the insurance company, he received another devastating shock.
The home had been insured for $4.1 million, and the full claim payment had already been transferred directly to the sole policyholder.
Sarah.
“I am her husband!” Victor shouted into the phone.
“Sir, you are not listed as a beneficiary on the policy,” the claims manager replied.
“Where is that money now?!”
“That information can only be disclosed to the primary account holder.”
Driven by increasing panic, Victor went to see Lucinda, Sarah’s older sister.
Lucinda met him in the hallway of her apartment building and refused to invite him inside.
“Where is she, Lucinda?”
Lucinda stared at him for several long seconds.
“Do you honestly not know?”
“I’ve been searching for her for weeks!”
“Sarah canceled her phone contract,” Lucinda said coldly. “She donated most of her personal belongings.”
“Donated them to whom?”
“To a transitional shelter for young women aging out of foster care in South Boston.”
Victor felt a cold heaviness settle in his stomach.
“And the insurance payout?”
Lucinda pressed her lips together.
“That too.”
“All four million dollars?”
“Virtually all of it. The shelter director cried when Sarah signed the endowment paperwork.”
Victor leaned against the hallway wall.
“Where is my wife, Lucinda?”
Lucinda’s voice dropped.
“She didn’t walk away to punish you, Victor. She walked away because she is dying.”
Victor stared at her.
“What are you talking about?”
“She’s in a palliative hospice facility in Tlalpan.”
At the facility, Dr. Herrera handed Victor a thick medical file.
**Diagnosis: Advanced terminal cholangiocarcinoma—cancer of the bile ducts.**
**Date of first conclusive diagnostic scan: December 9.**
Victor turned deathly pale.
“That’s impossible. Her donor surgery was only three weeks ago!”
Dr. Herrera closed the file.
“Sarah knew approximately eleven weeks before the transplant that she had a terminal malignancy. She concealed her new symptoms after her initial donor evaluation had already been completed. She also refused pre-operative cancer treatment because beginning it would have disqualified her from donating.”
Victor dropped his bag of medication onto the floor.
“Why would she do that?”
The doctor looked down the quiet corridor toward Room 214.
“You’ll have to ask her that yourself, Mr. Vance. While she still has the strength to answer.”
Victor began walking toward the room without realizing that what Sarah was about to tell him would dismantle everything he believed about their marriage.
Sarah was awake.
The room was simple.
A single window.
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