The Perfect Stranger (Social Media #2)(3)

Now that it’s almost over.

But he didn’t say it, and Meredith, who has spent decades finishing his sentences, didn’t either.

She just assured him, “You’ll find something here. Some other kind of work.”

“With decent pay? And benefits? If I don’t find something before our medical insurance runs out . . . I can’t believe this is happening to us.”

“Not just to us. Teddy’s in the same boat, and with a baby on the way,” she pointed out. Their firstborn, an accountant, lost his job and health care last year and has been struggling to keep a roof over his family’s heads and food on the table. Hank and Meredith have been giving him whatever they can spare—but that’s now gone from very little to nothing at all.

“Yeah, and then there’s my mother . . .” Hank was on a roll. “No long-term care insurance and she can’t keep living alone. And of course I get sole responsibility for her since my brother fell off the face of the earth.”

Hank’s only sibling stopped speaking to both him and his mother after a family falling out years ago.

It would have been easier if the old woman hadn’t fallen last weekend, accelerating the need to get her out of her condo and into the only available—though not necessarily affordable—facility.

Easier, too, if Hank’s mother wasn’t so damned adamant about staying in Cleveland. They could have moved her to Cincinnati years ago to make things easier on Hank—though certainly not under their own roof. Even if Meredith were healthy enough to be a caregiver—as opposed to facing the eventual need for one herself—her mother-in-law is downright impossible.

“She’s never living with us, no matter what happens,” Hank said flatly many years ago, when his mother was widowed shortly after their engagement. At the time, Meredith found the statement unduly harsh and started having second thoughts, wondering what kind of man would say such a thing.

That was before she got to know his mother—in small doses and from a distance, thank goodness.

“She’s probably going to live to be a hundred,” Hank says frequently—and dismally.

He’s probably right. But whenever he brings it up, Meredith duly points out that he’s lucky to have her, having lost her own mother when her kids were young, and now facing her own mortality at this age.

“I know. I just . . . I’m worried about having to deal with her while I’m trying to find a job, and worrying about health care . . . In the end, it always comes down to money we don’t have. Story of our lives, right?”

Money? In the end it comes down to money?

He doesn’t realize what he’s saying. That’s what she told herself. She knew he was just stressed, knew he loved her, knew that deep down his priorities were straight. He’s only human.

But—being only human herself—she couldn’t help saying, “Hey, you can always push me off a cliff and collect on my life insurance policy now instead of later. I mean, I’m a goner anyway, right? Why not put us both out of our misery—the sooner the better?”

His jaw dropped. “What kind of thing is that to say?”

“I’m sorry. I was kidding. Come on, Hank. Look at the bright side.”

To his credit, he didn’t say, “What bright side?”

If he had, she might have broken down and cried.

Instead, he’d hugged her and apologized. “I just want to make sure that we do everything we ever said we were going to do. No more putting things off—not because I don’t think you’re going to be around, but because . . . well, I don’t like to waste time. That’s all.”

Right. Because she doesn’t have time to waste.

Why dwell on the past when you can focus on the future?

That was the title of an optimistic blog post she wrote back when she was in treatment, still assuming she was going to beat this disease.

The piece was met with a mixed reaction from her followers, depending on their stage of the disease. Those who were in remission shared her mind-set. Those who were not—those with very little future left—didn’t want to think about what might lie ahead. They found comfort in reflecting upon happier times.

Now I get it. Now I’m sorry, so sorry. I wish I could have told some of them . . .

But it’s too late.

Too late . . . too late . . .

Meredith arches her back, stretching, trying to work out the kinks as a warm breeze flutters the peach and yellow paisley curtains at the window.

Through the screen she can hear only crickets, a distant dog barking, and the occasional sound of traffic out on the main road. The houses in this neighborhood may be of the no frills, cookie-cutter architectural style, but they’re set far apart on relatively large lots.

It was the quiet, private location that drew Meredith and Hank here well over three decades ago, when they were living downtown in a one-bedroom apartment with two toddlers and an oops baby on the way. This seventeen-hundred-square-foot house—with an eat-in kitchen, three bedrooms, and one and a half baths—seemed palatial by comparison.

They felt like they’d be living in the lap of luxury and promised each other they were going to grow old here.

But they’d outgrown it by the time the kids were teenagers with friends coming and going at all hours, and the house was showing wear and tear.