The Empty Jar(14)

“No, it’s not that.”

“Because I was just sparing you, Nate. When I saw the scan, I knew. I already knew it was bad. There was no reason for you to have to sit there and listen to her explain it. I didn’t want you to have to go through that.”

“But maybe I needed it. Maybe I needed to hear it. Maybe I wouldn’t have even considered asking you to take the treatment if—”

My heart skipping a few beats, I fumble when I ask, “Is-is that what you’re asking me to do?”

Fear grips me, stretching my every nerve as taut as the strings on a guitar.

He closes his eyes and shakes his head once. “No. No. I could never be so selfish. I just thought... I just… I wanted to know if there was any hope. Anything that could be done. Things she hadn’t told you or things you weren’t willing to discuss with her. Or with me.” Nate sits back and scrubs a hand over his face. “I guess that was just me hoping, hoping you’d missed something, hoping that I’d get different answers. I was just…hoping.”

I sit silently across the table from my husband, twisting my hands in my lap. I knew he was hurting, and I did everything I could to keep this from touching him. But the truth is, there’s no way to protect him from what’s happening to me. The only thing I can do, I’m already trying to do—make the very most of every day, every hour, every second we have left.

And hope that’s enough.

Reaching across the table with one hand, I curl my fingers around my husband’s. For the first time I can remember, they’re cold. Cold as ice. For years, I’ve teased Nate about being my own personal heater. I can curl around him on the couch or in the bed, at the drive-in or in the pool, and he keeps me cozy. It seems his body temperature is always at least a hundred degrees hotter than mine. He’s always warm. Every inch of him.

Until today.

His cool fingers chill me to the bone.

“This is the best thing for both of us. I promise. Sometimes it comes down to quality over quantity.”

Nate nods, his smile of acceptance tight and forced. “I know. Now, I know.”

“This trip will probably be our last good times together. When the pain gets too much, there will be drugs and oxygen and hospice. But we have this. We have today. Now. Let’s make this count. Let’s love enough for the rest of my life,” I suggest with a wry half-grin.

His next words stop my heart.

“No, let’s love enough for the rest of mine.”

I don’t reply.

I can’t.

I only rub the back of Nate’s strong hand with my thumb. I know at some point I’ll have to have the “you’ll find someone else, and you have my blessing” conversation, but I also know he’s not ready for that now.

Honestly, maybe I’m not either.

I want him to be happy. Of course, I do. More than anything. He’s my Nate. My soulmate. His happiness feels like my happiness. But the thought of him laughing with someone else, the idea of him loving another woman, the mental picture of him putting his hands on my replacement…

I can’t bear the thought of that.

Not just yet.

He’s mine.

And I’m his.

At least for a while longer.

Neither of us speaks as we finish our tea and scone. Enough has been said. Maybe too much. There’s such a thing as too much truth, and I think we’re at that point. For now anyway.

Neither of us can shield the other from the pain.

Neither of us can change the future.

Neither of us can make the other unknow what we now know.

Our only choice is to go forward, one step at a time, one day at a time, into the future. No matter how brief that future is.

Enjoying the scenery and each other’s company, Nate and I say very little as we tour the birthplace of Shakespeare and then the home in which he retired. We say even less when we visit the Henley Street Antique Centre. Neither of us wants to buy things for a future that seems so empty.

But we touch.

Every chance he gets, Nate touches me, brushing a strand of hair behind my ear, grazing my neck with his lips, rubbing the curve of my back with his palm. And I eat it up. I absorb it like nourishment for my soul.

We walk so closely that we bump shoulders, and when we stop, we stand so closely that I could fall over and never hit the ground. Nate would catch me without even trying.

He is a pillar of fire at my side—the heat I’ve always been drawn to, the one person in the world I’ve never wanted to leave.

As we walk the streets, hand in hand, I look around me and let my imagination take flight. Compared with tourist destinations in the U.S., being here is like being thrown back in time. Many of the buildings appear to be simply restored, still boasting their Tudor faces, as if time forgot to pass them by. The cool air carries with it the scent of literary history, smelling of old books, as though the spirit of Shakespeare himself is opening and closing books all over the cloudy sky.

Or at least that’s how it seems to me. But I want to be in a different time, a time when my husband and I are enjoying rather than escaping, when we are running toward something rather than away from it.

So I let whimsy take my mind to another place.

Glancing around, I can easily envision the women who pass us dressed differently. I can picture them made up in Elizabethan finery—brightly colored, heavily padded, and bejeweled. And the men, I can imagine them laced up from head to toe, the ridiculous clothing of that time making even the smallest of movements a challenge.