My stomach dropped.
I stepped closer to the door.
“I can’t let her discover everything after I’m gone,” he whispered shakily. “She deserves better than that. But if I tell her now… she’ll break apart. She gave up her whole life for this.”
I couldn’t breathe.
Then came the sentence that shattered my world.
“How long did you say I have left, Dr. Samson?”
A pause.
Then Joshua whispered in disbelief:
“One year?”
I nearly collapsed.
The hallway tilted around me.
Everything suddenly made horrifying sense.
The urgency.
The adoption.
The pressure to leave my career.
Joshua hadn’t been trying to build a future with me.
He had been preparing me for life after his death.
And instead of trusting me enough to face it beside him…
He made the decision alone.
I wanted to scream.
Instead, I packed bags for myself and the twins.
Then I called my sister.
“Can we stay with you tonight?” I asked numbly.
She heard something in my voice immediately.
“Of course,” she answered. “Come now.”
That night at Caroline’s house, I completely fell apart.
I didn’t sleep at all.
