I Came Home Unannounced After Four Years Abroad and Found My Wife Starved and Shaved in the Backyard. My Mother Said She’d Brought It on Herself. I Didn’t Yell

Chapter 9 — Eleven Months

“What illness does she have?” I asked the room.

My voice did not sound like my own.

Phedra’s hand came up and touched the center of her chest.

“Cancer,” she whispered.

Cancer.

And then the number came out, from one of them, I don’t even remember which: eleven months.

She had been sick for eleven months.