“How long does she have?”

I asked.

Brenda didn’t make me beg for the truth. “Days. Maybe a week if her heart holds out. The pancreatic cancer is fully metastatic. It ravaged her liver, then her lungs.

We’re keeping her comfortable, but there’s no reversing this.”

I braced my hand against the wall to keep from collapsing. “When was she diagnosed?”

“Four months ago.”

Four months of agonizing scans, brutal treatments, and sheer terror—and not a single phone call had reached me.

“Tell me about the Bahamas,” I said, my voice dropping to a glacial, deadly whisper. “Tell me exactly what her husband has done.”