I showed up at the hospital to surprise my husband during his shift. But the second one of his coworkers saw me, all the color left his face. Then his eyes filled with tears. “He hasn’t said a word to you, has he?” Ben and I had been married eleven years, and for every one of those years, I had shared him with the hospital. He was a remarkably gifted surgeon.

I pulled out the wooden chair across from him and sat down in the faint glow of the oven clock.

“You were really ready to sign your life away on that porch today, weren’t you?”

“Yes, I was,” he said, his voice hardly louder than a whisper.

“Why would you give in to a man like Gregory Walsh?”

“Because I’m completely worn out, Hannah, from carrying this crushing weight all by myself for twelve months.”

His voice broke with deep sadness.

“I thought if I shouldered it alone, I could shield you and Emma from what was coming, but today I saw that I’d failed completely.”