My Husband Faked Cancer to Destroy Me

The concrete was cold against my cheek. Colder than it should have been. Or maybe I was the cold one. I couldn't tell anymore.

Something wet pooled under my jaw. I didn't want to think about what it was.

My right eye wouldn't open. The left one worked a little. Enough to see the alley sideways—dumpsters, a crushed soda can, my photographs scattered like dead leaves. My father's face stared up at me from one of them. The paper was soaking through red.

Breathe in. Something scraped inside my chest. A rib, maybe. Or two.

Breathe out. The sound came wet. Bubbling.

I needed to move.

I didn't know why. The thought just surfaced, slow and dim, like something floating up from deep water. Move. Do something. Finish something.

My hand twitched. The fingers wouldn't close. I watched them from very far away, like they belonged to someone else, and told them to work.

There. A twitch. Then a curl.

The phone was six inches from my face. Six inches might as well have been a mile.

I dragged my arm forward. My shoulder screamed. Something in it was wrong—unhinged, loose. I bit down and tasted more blood. A tooth moved against my tongue.

My fingertips touched the phone. Slipped off. Blood made everything slick.

I tried again.

The screen lit up under my palm. White light. Too bright. Spiderweb cracks running across Niko's face in the lock screen photo. His arm around my shoulders. The beach somewhere. Both of us smiling.

I couldn't remember being that girl.

My thumb smeared red across the glass. The phone didn't recognize the print. It asked for a passcode.

Four digits. Our wedding anniversary.

I almost laughed. The sound came out as a cough. Hot copper filled my mouth and I had to turn my head to spit, and turning my head sent a white blade through my neck that nearly took me under for good.

Stay. Stay here. Finish it.

I typed the four numbers. Watched the screen unlock.

Messages. Niko's name at the top. He'd texted twelve more times since I'd turned the phone off. Little gray bubbles stacked up like gravestones.

*Where are you*

*Please*

*Elisa come home*

*I'm scared*

Scared. He'd typed the word scared.

I stared at it until my vision doubled.

Then I started to type.

My fingers were wrong. The letters came out backwards, scrambled. I deleted. Tried again. The keyboard kept blurring, the letters swimming apart and sliding back together.

I breathed through my nose. Slow. Slow. Pretend you are at the dining room table. Pretend you are writing a thank-you card. Pretend your hand is not shaking.

*I gave you everything I had.*

I stopped. Read it back. The letters stayed still long enough for me to see them.

*I have nothing left—*

My chest hitched. The alley tilted.

*not even the will to hate you.*

That part was true. I'd checked, somewhere between the second kick and the third. Looked inside myself for the fire I'd always been told I'd feel at a moment like this. Rage. Fury. The clean red urge to survive just to burn him down.

There was nothing in there. The room was empty. The lights were off.

*Goodbye, Niko.*

I hovered over send.

Above me, somewhere high up and far away, a woman laughed. The sound slid down the brick wall and landed next to my ear. Champagne laughter. Party laughter. Jazmine's laughter, maybe. I couldn't tell.

My thumb pressed down.

Sent.

The little blue bubble joined all the gray ones. Delivered. Read.

I watched the three dots appear under my message. He was typing.

I let the phone fall from my hand. It clattered against the concrete and the screen went dark.

I didn't want to know what he was going to say.

I closed my eye.

The cold crept in from my feet. Moved up through my knees. Settled behind my ribs like a hand reaching for something it owned.

Somewhere, far off, I heard footsteps. Running. A man's voice saying something urgent into a phone—get an ambulance, get Mr. Roberts, Jesus Christ, get here—

The voice sounded like it was underwater.

I thought: Keegan.

I thought: he always said he was watching.

The hand under my ribs squeezed. The alley got darker.

And then I was gone.

⸻

Inside, under the chandeliers, Niko lifted his glass toward a laughing stranger. His phone buzzed in his breast pocket.

He pulled it out without thinking. Smiled at whoever was speaking. Glanced down.

He stopped smiling.

The champagne flute slipped. I wasn't there to see it. I only know what Grace told me later, years later, when none of it mattered. The glass hit the marble and broke into a thousand pieces, and for a half second nobody in that ballroom moved.

Jazmine reached for his arm. Her fingers caught his sleeve. Her mouth shaped a word that might have been his name.

He tore free.

He shoved through the crowd like a man wading into water. Someone called after him. A waiter stepped aside. The service door banged open and he was in the back corridor, running, his polished shoes skidding on tile.

He hit the alley at a full sprint and stopped so hard he almost fell.

Nothing. Nobody.

Just a wet smear on the concrete, already going dark at the edges. A crushed phone glittering in the service light. A photograph of an older man, half soaked through, his smiling face bleeding into the pavement.

Niko stood there in his tuxedo, champagne drying on his lapel, and for the first time in three years something inside him went very, very quiet.

Then the quiet began to crack.