It had merely ensured that we each carried the same terror in separate rooms, neither able to comfort the other, because neither knew the other knew.

Chapter 20 — What I Hid From Him

My knees went weak, and I reached out and gripped the edge of the cold prep table to keep myself upright, because Caleb was telling the truth, and I knew it was the truth, because I had lived the other half of it in secret for four months.

Four months earlier, a collection notice had arrived from an aggressive agency, demanding a sum of money I did not have for charges from Mark’s final ICU stay three years before, charges I had every reason to believe were the result of a hospital billing error, that the insurance should have covered and had wrongly denied.

I had been fighting it, quietly, desperately, through a pro bono legal clinic that helped people like me, filing appeals, making calls on my lunch breaks, trying to hold off disaster.