I stood there for several minutes.
Then I went to the elevator.
I didn’t know what floor Lacey was on.
I didn’t know if I was allowed to see her.
I didn’t even know what I would say.
But before I could press the button, my phone rang.
Jeremy.
I stared at his name.
He was calling from home.
I answered.
“Hey, Jill-girl.”
His voice was warm.
Normal.
Like nothing had happened.
“Where are you?”
“At work.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re lying.”
Silence.
Not long.
Just enough.
Then he asked,
“What are you talking about?”
I looked at the hospital elevator.
“I know about Lacey.”
Nothing.
No breathing.
No words.
Just silence.
Then Jeremy whispered,
“Where are you?”
“Vanderbilt.”
Another silence.
And this one was different.
It sounded like fear.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“Jill,” he said, “please don’t go upstairs.”
I closed my eyes.
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know the whole story.”
I looked at the elevator doors.
“Then tell me.”
“I can’t do this over the phone.”
“Then come here.”
He didn’t answer.
“Jeremy?”
Finally, he spoke.
“Give me thirty minutes.”
The call ended.
I stood there holding my phone.
Thirty minutes.
For twenty-two years, I had been his wife.
For three years, another woman had carried his last name.
And somehow, I was the one standing in a hospital waiting for my husband to explain which life was real.
I looked at the elevator.
The doors opened.
A nurse stepped out.
She looked at me.
Then at the name on my visitor badge.
“Jill Tolley?”
I nodded.
She smiled gently.
“Lacey has been asking for you.”
My entire body went still.
“She’s been asking for me?”
The nurse nodded.
“She said you’d come eventually.”
I couldn’t speak.
The elevator doors began to close.
I stepped inside.
And for the first time in twenty-two years, I was going to meet the woman I had once believed I had defeated.
PART 4
The elevator doors opened on the seventh floor.
I almost stepped back inside.
The hallway was too quiet.
Not hospital-quiet, exactly.
It was the kind of quiet that exists when people are trying not to disturb someone who is dying.
A nurse pointed toward the last room on the left.
“Room 714.”
I nodded.
My feet moved before my mind could stop them.
Every step felt heavier than the last.
I had imagined meeting Lacey Burcham for twenty-two years.
Sometimes in angry fantasies.
Sometimes in guilty ones.
Sometimes when I was lying awake beside Jeremy and wondering what my life would have looked like if I had never interfered.
But never like this.
Never with her name on a hospital door.
Never knowing she was dying.
I stopped outside Room 714.
The door was open halfway.
I could hear a television playing softly.
Then I heard her voice.
“Is that her?”
The nurse looked at me.
I nodded.
The nurse opened the door.
Lacey turned her head.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
She was smaller than I remembered.
The girl from Kroger had been thin.
This woman looked fragile.
Her skin was pale.
A scarf covered her head.
There were tubes running from her arm to a machine beside the bed.
But her eyes were exactly the same.
Blue.
Sharp.
Tired.
And strangely kind.
She looked at me for several seconds.
Then she smiled.
Not a happy smile.
A knowing one.
“You came.”
My throat tightened.
“You asked for me.”
“I did.”
I stepped inside.
The nurse quietly closed the door behind me.
Lacey looked toward the chair beside her bed.
“Sit.”
I sat.
My hands rested in my lap.
She studied me.
“I wondered what you’d look like.”
I almost smiled.
“I wondered what you’d look like too.”
She laughed softly.
“I suppose neither of us got what we expected.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”
I looked down.
“So are you.”
She glanced at her own hand.
A thin gold band rested on her finger.
“Jeremy bought it at Walmart.”
I didn’t know what to say.
She smiled again.
“He wanted something simple.”
“Did you love him?”
The question escaped before I could stop it.
Lacey didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt.
Even though I had expected it.
Even though she was dying.
Even though twenty-two years had passed.
“Yes,” she repeated.
“I never stopped.”
I looked toward the window.
Outside, Nashville moved like nothing in the world had changed.
Cars.
People.
Traffic.
Life.
Meanwhile, two women who had once wanted the same man were sitting beside a hospital bed trying to understand what he’d done.
“Did he love you?” I asked.
Lacey looked down.
“He loved who I was when we were young.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.”
She took a breath.
“It’s the only honest answer I have.”
I looked at her.
“Then why marry him?”
She closed her eyes.
“When I got sick, I was terrified.”
Her voice became quieter.
“I wasn’t afraid of dying at first.”
“What were you afraid of?”
“Dying alone.”
I said nothing.
“My parents were gone. My brother lived in Arizona. My friends had families of their own. I had nobody who would sit beside me during chemotherapy.”
She looked toward the window.
“Then Jeremy found me.”
“Found you?”
“We ran into each other at the hospital.”
I frowned.
“Before that?”
“No.”
She smiled faintly.
“I didn’t even know he was still married.”
My chest tightened.
“He told you?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“He didn’t tell me the first day.”
She looked at me.
“He told me after I asked him why he kept coming back.”
I swallowed.
“And you still wanted him?”
“Yes.”
There was no shame in her voice.
No apology.
Just truth.
“I told him he needed to go home to his wife.”
I looked at her.
“You told him that?”
“Several times.”
I didn’t expect that.
“He refused.”
“Why?”
“He said he couldn’t leave me alone.”
I looked down at my hands.
“And the marriage?”
Lacey sighed.
“I asked him to do it.”
“You asked him to become a bigamist?”
Her eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
The word sat between us.
“I knew it was wrong.”
She swallowed.
“But I was dying.”
I couldn’t answer.
“I told myself I had already lost everything.”
She looked at her wedding ring.
“So I asked him for one thing.”
“What?”
“To let me die as his wife.”
I stared at her.
“And he agreed.”
“He did.”
“Did you know about me?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“From the beginning.”
My stomach twisted.
“He told you everything?”
“Not everything.”
“What did he tell you?”
She hesitated.
“He told me you were his wife.”
I laughed bitterly.
“That’s a pretty important thing to leave out.”
“He also told me he loved you.”
That stopped me.
I looked at her.
“What?”
“He said you were his family.”
I didn’t know what to do with that.
Lacey continued.
“He said you had been there for him for twenty years. That you knew every scar on his hands. Every habit. Every stupid joke.”
A tear rolled down her cheek.
“And he said he was grateful for you.”
I looked away.
I didn’t want to cry.
Not in front of her.
Not after all these years.
“Then why did he do it?”
She looked at me.
“Because I asked him to.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“No.”
Her voice was firm.
“It doesn’t.”
I nodded.
“Did you ever sleep with him?”
The question made the room go completely silent.
Lacey looked directly at me.
“No.”
I hadn’t expected the answer.
“No?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“He slept in a chair beside my bed most nights.”
I closed my eyes.
All those Tuesdays.
All those nights I had imagined the worst.
The truth was somehow stranger.
“I thought he was cheating.”
“He was.”
I opened my eyes.
She continued.
“Not physically.”
She looked at her hands.
“But emotionally?”
She gave a sad little smile.
“Yes.”
That was the truth I couldn’t escape.
Even if he hadn’t touched her.
He had built another life.
He had given someone else a part of himself.
And he had hidden it from me.
“I hate you,” I whispered.
Lacey nodded.
“I know.”
“I don’t even know if I mean it.”
“I know that too.”
I stood.
“I need to go.”
She didn’t stop me.
I walked toward the door.
Then she said my name.
“Jill?”
I stopped.
“Jeremy isn’t the reason I asked you to come.”
I turned.
“Then why?”
She reached beneath her pillow.
She pulled out a small envelope.
“My lawyer told me I needed to give this to you.”
I stared at it.
“What is it?”
“Something Jeremy doesn’t know about.”
My heart began beating faster.
I walked back.
She handed me the envelope.
My name was written across the front.
Jill.
Nothing else.
“What’s inside?”
“Read it after you leave.”
“Why?”
“Because if you read it here, you’ll ask me questions.”
“And you don’t want me to?”
“I want you to ask them.”
She smiled.
“But not until you’re somewhere you can scream.”
I took the envelope.
It was heavier than it should have been.
“Lacey.”
“Yes?”
“Why are you doing this?”
She looked at me for a long time.
“Because twenty-two years ago, I hated you.”
I didn’t move.
“I hated you for taking him.”
She swallowed.
“And then I spent twenty years wondering if I had been wrong about you.”
I couldn’t speak.
She continued.
“Then I got sick.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“And Jeremy told me the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That you weren’t the villain.”
I stared at her.
“What?”
“He told me what happened.”
“What happened?”
