Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(12)

Then Ty left to work for another agency, and that was the end of that, until I ran into him on the street last spring. “Libby Miller, full of grace,” he said, breaking into an irresistible grin.

“Hey, Ty.” I blushed, knowing that this chance encounter meant I would have to work hard to keep his face from surfacing during intimate moments with Tom over the next month or so. “How’s the job going?”

“Well, the publisher doesn’t accuse me of being mentally disabled, so that’s a start,” he said. Then he smiled deviously. “And how’s that husband of yours?”

“Fine,” I stammered. “He’s fine.”

“Well, if that ever changes, look me up, Libby Miller,” he said, then strode away, like he hadn’t just stamped a question mark on my heart.



I had a conundrum. Even if I had the time to try, there was simply no way to save my marriage. Yet I didn’t want to die having slept with just one man in my preternaturally short life, particularly given what I now knew about that man. To be honest, I would have been happy with a frenetic make-out session (as getting naked would be tricky; I didn’t want to have to explain my bandaged abdomen). I just needed someone—someone who was definitely not Tom, but who was also not a random serial killer—to affirm that I was an interesting, desirable person with a perfectly healthy sex drive. I was pretty sure that person was Ty Oshira.

The problem was, I didn’t believe in cheating. And quickie divorce, as it happens, isn’t actually quick; I would have my passport long before I could expect to serve Tom with papers that would dissolve our union. (Tom had insisted on including “till death do us part” in our vows, even though I found this incredibly morbid. I hated that on this final item of business between us, he would probably be right.)

I was going to have to do things the old-fashioned way.

Now, I wasn’t planning to kill him. If I were going to meet up with God in the near future, I didn’t want Tom to beat me to the punch. Besides, all my stabby urges had been replaced by a wobbly melancholy. I was devastated when I woke each morning and remembered, yet again, why Tom wasn’t lying beside me. At one point I found myself simultaneously cursing him and reaching for the phone to call him and tell him all about how my terrible husband had wronged me, as if there were two versions of him: the imposter who had just hurt me, and the real Tom, who would curse imposter Tom and make it all better.

Beneath my morose feelings was a not-unwarranted sense of urgency; and even deeper still—and I know this sounds strange—a beacon of optimism shone through. I was going to die, which was extremely unfortunate, but presumably I would see my mother again soon, just as I’d been waiting to do my entire life.

Moreover, I could have been hit by a car an hour after Tom told me he was gay, and that would have been that. As much as I hated to admit this, even to myself, terminal cancer did offer one parting gift: a sliver of extra time in which to alter my narrative.

I put on my favorite outfit, a burgundy sweater dress and high-heeled leather boots that Jess talked me into buying last year. Then I removed my wedding band, which I should have done three days before. I dangled it over the toilet bowl, daring myself to let it hit the white porcelain and disappear in a whoosh of water.

Tom had picked out the ring for me. I didn’t see it for the first time until he was putting it on my finger at our wedding ceremony. “Do you really like it?” he asked me eagerly, moments after the pastor declared us husband and wife.

“Yes,” I whispered, running my finger over the smooth gold. It was neither thick nor thin, and unlike the lovely engagement ring that had been my mother’s and was now mine, the band was not ornate in any way.

It was, I thought at the time, exactly like the love Tom and I shared: simple and easy.

Now I knew there was nothing easy about our love, nor much else in life. I stopped waving my hand precariously over the toilet and tossed the ring in my makeup bag.



An hour later, I marched through the doors of Tom’s office.

“Libby! Long time no see!” said Alex from behind the reception desk. Alex was my kind of person: too smart for his job, but wise enough to know that complaining wouldn’t help him fly the coop any faster.

“Hey, Alex,” I said, reminding myself to smile. “Is Tom around?”

“Yep,” he said, then rang Tom, who was out to the lobby like a shot. While I fully own that I maimed him and kicked him out of our home, I was still shocked to see that—why, yes, he actually seemed irritated that I showed up at his workplace.

“Bad timing?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” he said, leaning in to hug me.

I bent back like the reigning limbo champion of Eastern Illinois. “No, no, no,” I chided playfully, well aware that Tom would catch the edge in my voice.

“Let’s go outside,” he said.

“Let’s not,” I said, directing him into the cube city that made up his workplace.

“Libby, what’s this about?” he asked under his breath as I walked to his desk.

If he was worried that I would out him to his coworkers, he needn’t have been. “I told you, I don’t want you at the apartment.”

“Uh, okay,” he said, fidgeting with the buttons on his shirtsleeve. “So . . . are you here to talk? I was hoping we could do that sometime soon.”