Victor sitting beside me.
A young woman telling me I needed to take better care of myself.
I remembered being twenty-eight.
I remembered being newly married.
I remembered thinking I was too young to worry about such things.
And then…
I remembered Victor.
He had been listening.
Quietly.
Carefully.
I had forgotten.
He hadn’t.
The specialist continued.
“Your husband apparently sought professional guidance after that appointment.”
I stared at him.
“For how long?”
He looked down at the records.
“Decades.”
Emily covered her mouth.
“Dad did this for decades?”
The specialist nodded.
“He apparently arranged for the preparation to be made regularly and modified when necessary.”
I couldn’t speak.
All those years…
The bottle.
The packages.
The secret.
The strange taste.
The insistence that we drink together.
Suddenly, all of it looked different.
But there was still one question.
“Why didn’t he ever tell me?”
The specialist didn’t answer.
Instead, he reached into a folder.
“There was one more thing.”
He handed me an envelope.
My name was written on it.
My hands went cold.
“Who wrote this?”
The specialist looked at me.
“Your husband.”
I stared at the handwriting.
I knew it instantly.
Victor’s handwriting.
The same handwriting I had seen on grocery lists, birthday cards, repair notes, and little messages beside the coffee machine.
