All You Could Ask For A Novel

I BEGGED HER TO go out and do something that morning but she wouldn’t budge. She kept saying she wasn’t going anywhere until we were going together, and after a bit of arguing she admonished me to quit talking about it.

“This is what I’m doing,” she said. “I don’t have anything more important to do.”

So, like the girls we are, we started talking about boys.

“Aside from the a*shole you married,” I asked, “you ever get involved with any good ones?”

“One or two. The most romantic encounter of my life happened when I was fourteen, with a boy who never even kissed me. I still think about it all the time; I was just telling someone about it recently. Is that sad?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “You’re asking me if that’s sad? I’ve wasted my entire life pining for a jerk who left me for a chick who makes Kim Kardashian look like a Nobel laureate. I hardly think I’m qualified to call you sad.”

“What the hell is wrong with us, anyway?” Samantha said. “We’re two sensational women. How did we pick such losers?”

“It’s an interesting question.” I sighed, and gave it a moment’s thought. “I think I’m a good rationalizer. I rationalize around almost any deal-breaker if a guy is cute or funny or shows interest in me at all.”

“Give me an example,” Samantha said.

I sat up in bed. “Let’s make it a game,” I said. “I’ll tell you something about a man and you tell me if it should have been an absolute deal-breaker.”

She pulled a chair beside the bed and fell into it, lifting her feet so they were resting on mine, like two girls having a sleepover.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s start with an easy one. He speaks to his mother on the phone every single day.”

“Is his mother ill?”

“Perfectly healthy.”

“And he’s how old?”

“Mid-thirties.”

“Absolute deal-breaker!” Samantha exclaimed, and we burst into hysterics.

“I think my problem is that every person in my life is male,” I said, when we caught our breath. “If I had girlfriends like in Sex and the City, they would have warned me about that.”

Samantha rustled about in her seat, wrapped her lower legs around my feet and squeezed. “Give me another one,” she said.

I thought for a moment. “Okay, how about if he has a little dog and he refuses to have her fixed because he’s afraid it will hurt her, so the dog gets her period and he is constantly putting her into these little shorts and changing her maxi pad.”

“You’re making that one up,” Samantha said.

I laughed. “I swear I’m not.”

She jumped out of the chair and put her face by mine. “Are you kidding me? You dated a man who changed his dog’s maxi pads?”

“I did. The first time I slept with him he said he needed to stop at a pharmacy on our way back to his apartment. I assumed he was buying condoms.”

“But he was buying maxi pads?”

“That’s correct.”

Samantha was pacing the floor. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You were on your way to his place and he stopped at a drugstore to buy maxi pads for his dog, and that’s the night you slept with him for the first time?”

“Yes.”

“That is such an absolute deal-breaker I don’t think I can take any more. Nothing could top that.”

I smiled. “Sweetie, get back in that chair. I’m just getting warmed up.”

SAMANTHA

ABSOLUTE DEAL-BREAKER BECAME ONE of our favorites immediately. We laughed for hours that day—and so many others, too—over outrageous scenarios, some of which we’d lived, some we made up, the crazier the better. Through those weeks, seeing Katherine laugh was the most rewarding thing in my life.

We have expressions like “laughter is the best medicine” that we use over and over, but we don’t realize they are actually true until we need them. That one is true, for sure. When Katherine was laughing, she was healthy, she was whole. It didn’t happen enough because it isn’t always easy to find space to laugh when you are fighting for your life, but on the occasions you do, it makes all the difference in the world.

She was only in the hospital for three days. I was excited when we moved her back home; in fact, I think I was more excited than she was. We had wonderful, deep, far-ranging talks in her apartment in those days, we talked about her life and mine. We talked about men and work, about fashion and about family. And we talked about cancer, in a way that only those of us who know it can talk about it. Because until you know it, there is no good way to explain it so anyone else can understand it. It’s sort of like trying to recount to someone who wasn’t there the details of an event where you almost got killed, like the time the engine caught fire and your flight had to make an emergency landing, or the time you were camping in the woods and you came across a bear and you had to lie down and play dead and pray the bear sniffed you and strolled away rather than mauling and eating you. Any experience you are recounting to anyone can never be as scary as it was when it happened, because the very fact that you are the one doing the talking means you survived, when what made the whole thing scary in the first place is that you didn’t know for sure you would. So no situation can ever be as scary in the retelling as it was in the moment.

Except for cancer.

Cancer doesn’t just land like a plane, or walk away like a bear. Even for me it didn’t, and for Katherine it wasn’t ever going to. Knowing that makes every moment a little like the one on the plane before the landing when you are crossing yourself and holding the armrest so tightly you emerge with bruised fingers, or when you are lying silent on the ground while the bear sniffs your hair. Not that every moment I had with Katherine was like that, but those feelings are always there, no matter how hard you try to pretend they aren’t.

When she talked about cancer, she seemed more sad than scared; I think because she was so filled with regret. It’s one thing to fear illness, to fear dying, and another entirely to wonder why you did the things you did and didn’t do the ones you could have. I think when Katherine thought about the end of her life, she thought about how differently she would have lived it if she could have done it over, practically every minute of it since Phillip, and that made her sad.

But not nearly as sad as when she talked about Stephen.

“All my life,” she told me, “I never believed in love at first sight.”

“But you were wrong,” I said.

“I was.” She smiled. “The instant I saw him I knew. It was like being struck by lightning, except the feeling was warm and gooey and wonderful, like my insides turned to hot fudge. In one day I realized nothing in my life was what I wanted it to be. And, more important, I acted on it. I told him I’d be back in two weeks and I was really going to do it. I left my job, I was going to put my apartment up for sale, I was all in on this man. And then . . .”

Her voice trailed off there. Cancer does that sometimes, too. It makes it hard to finish your sentences.

“I’m going to go to Aspen and find him,” I said. “If you won’t tell me his last name I am just getting on a plane.”

Katherine got deadly serious then. “Listen to me,” she said. “I know you are saying that for all the right reasons and you’d be doing it for the right reasons, too, and if I were sitting where you are I might do the same thing. But I’m not, and you aren’t lying where I am. I need to know you aren’t going to go to Aspen, or try to find Stephen on the Internet or anything. I need you to promise me that. Because if every time you walk in the door I have to worry that he’ll walk in behind you, I won’t be able to go on with this.”

I exhaled deeply. “I won’t go,” I said.

“I need you to promise me.”

“I promise,” I said. “But if I can’t then you need to. You have to tell him what happened.”

“I can’t,” Katherine said. “I instructed my assistant to tell him I was no longer employed and she had no further information. I just . . .”

She didn’t finish that sentence, either. She didn’t really need to. It was pretty obvious that she was just too many things to list them all.

The assistant she was talking about was a hilarious and charming woman from Brooklyn named Marie, a year younger than I am and quite possibly the most provocatively dressed person who was not a prostitute that I have ever seen. She was Katherine’s most frequent visitor aside from me, and she often accompanied us, or just Katherine, to the chemo center. Marie was cheerful and noisy in just the right way; it wasn’t impossible to be sad around her but it was hard. She maintained a stunningly upbeat attitude through even the worst days. I loved her immediately, and it was clear Katherine loved her too. And Marie loved her back, in the most selfless way. She was no longer indebted to Katherine for anything, she just cared, and I think that made all the difference.

Then came a Wednesday when I caught a cold. It was just a little cold, barely more than a sniffle, but I knew they wouldn’t let me stay with Katherine at chemotherapy. When you are undergoing treatments, your immune system is practically defenseless; if anyone so much as coughs in the center, he or she is politely escorted to the exit.

So I air-kissed Katherine good-bye, assured that Marie would keep her company, and then I was outside, by myself. It was a hot, sunny afternoon and I needed some air. I felt like I hadn’t been outdoors in a month. The fresh air did away with my cold immediately, so I jumped on my bike, rode to Central Park, and spent three hours cycling as hard as I could. Every twenty minutes I took a water break and did calisthenics, right there in the Sheep Meadow, dropping to the grass and doing push-ups and sit-ups and jumping jacks, with who knows how many college kids sunning themselves and sneaking sips and hits of various drinks and drugs all around. It felt great. It reminded me that I must not forget how important my body is to my mind. There was more than enough time to take care of my body while I cared for Katherine. I could be someone else’s health advocate and my own at the same time.

I cycled home as it was turning dark, and switched on my laptop. As it warmed up, I dropped to the hardwood floor and did twenty more push-ups. I wanted a good dinner, lean protein, with a hearty grain on the side, and fruit and water. And maybe one glass of wine, too, because life is short.

Then the screen on my laptop sizzled to life and I saw my message icon blinking, and for just one moment it made me think of Robert’s inbox, and my fingers trembled as they hovered over the keyboard.

“Stop it, Samantha,” I said aloud, as a bead of sweat dripped off my nose. “You can’t go through life thinking every e-mail you receive is going to change your life.”



* * *



Person2Person

From: Brooke B.

To: Samantha R.

BreastCancerForum.org



* * *



So, I saw Dr. Marks at Starbucks and I mentioned you.

(Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him you told me about the dance and the Bee Gees song and how he didn’t kiss you or any of that. I was very subtle.)

He’s single and totally interested in seeing you.

Let me know what you want to do.

KATHERINE

I’VE NEVER GIVEN THIS much thought to shopping.

Marie is finally getting married. She wants a fabulous, black-tie celebration, she wants it immediately, and she says she won’t do it if I don’t agree to be her maid of honor. I suspect the rush is because she is secretly pregnant, which she will neither confirm nor deny.

“I don’t want this party to be about me,” I told her. “If the whole bank is there and I show up, it becomes the ‘Katherine is still alive’ extravaganza, which is not what the most special night of your life is supposed to be.”

“If it’s the most special night of my life,” she said, “then I can’t have it without my best friend.”

“You’re not doing this for me,” I warned her. “I don’t need a party.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” she replied. “I’m asking you to do it for me.”

So, I’m going. Samantha and I are going shopping later this week, since none of my couture is going to fit properly right now. I have lost eleven pounds since I began the chemotherapy, and while my hair has hung in better than I expected, I have taken to wearing a flowing brunette wig anyway, a shade darker than my usual, at my colorist’s recommendation. He said the shade works better with my pallid complexion.

Marie buzzed my ear off about the arrangements all through my chemo, and then she walked me home and we sat and chatted for a bit, and she hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when the doorman’s station buzzed my phone. That made me smile nostalgically. In all the time she worked for me, Marie never managed to leave the office without forgetting something: a pair of sunglasses, a set of keys, the book she was reading. It was nice to know some things never changed.

I pressed down the intercom button. “Ask her what she left behind, I’ll send it down in the elevator.”

There was a brief pause before my doorman spoke. “No, ma’am, actually, your visitor is a gentleman. He says to tell you his name is Phillip, and that you’d remember him from school.”

BROOKE

I SENT SAMANTHA AN e-mail because I wanted to meet her.

Running into a man I know she once loved gave me the perfect opportunity, but I would have found another reason anyway. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to see her. I wanted to see what she looked like, hear how she sounded. It’s a strange world we live in now where we can have relationships with people without ever seeing their faces and hearing their voices: it’s as though they aren’t real, just characters in a book and you can envision them any way you like. But Samantha was real and I knew that and I always knew I would reach out to her. It would have been unfair not to.

Besides, Dr. Marks is a total babe and he’s smart and seems to be sensitive. He’s a pediatrician, for crying out loud; how can you be that without being sensitive? He is exactly the sort of man I might have fallen in love with, even though he is so different from the man I married. Scott is all swagger, Dr. Marks is all sweet. And I love the swagger, but every now and again I think we could all use a little bit of the sweet, too.

He was loading up a latte with sugar and cinnamon when I saw him.

“Is everything all right with you?” he asked.

It took me a moment to realize what he was referring to. I had forgotten it was he who had initially made me promise to get my first mammogram, who had unwittingly begun what amounted to the worst experience of my life. I had forgotten, but apparently he had not, and as much as I didn’t like to be reminded, his remembering made me crush on him just a little bit more.

“I am fine,” I said, “thank you.”

“I’m glad,” he said, and he smiled. “You can’t be too careful.”

“I totally agree,” I said, and then I changed the subject.

I could see from the look on his face at the mention of her name that he had feelings for Samantha. I told him I’d come into contact (“a friend of a friend of a friend”) with a girl who mentioned she had known him growing up. His right eye narrowed when I said her name, and he smiled using half his face. That’s the way some memories work, I think. Some make you laugh, others make you cry, and the really good ones make half your face smile.

Now, after a handful of disasters, I have mostly given up on fix-ups, but this was too easy and it gave me the entrée I needed to invite Samantha to lunch, which I’d wanted to do for some time.

I’ll meet you in the city, I wrote to her. You name the spot.

I couldn’t have her to Greenwich. There isn’t anyone in this town I don’t know, and I wasn’t interested in answering questions about how Samantha and I had come to meet.

You see, I haven’t told anyone about my problem. Not my husband or my children, and certainly not all the women in town who live to mind one another’s business. I don’t really want to talk about why I haven’t said anything; in fact, I don’t want to talk about any of it at all. I have managed to hardly even think about it, to be honest. In all these weeks there was only one time that I broke down, at a dinner party at the home of our friends, the Robertsons; he’s a pompous hedge-fund guy and she’s an unapologetic trophy wife, but they throw lovely parties and I was having a good time until one of the guests, a tipsy blonde named Emily, suggested a topic over dinner.

“For all the husbands at the table,” she said aloud, “and then we’ll do the wives after, here’s the question . . .”

She paused, with an evil twinkle in her eye, as though she was about to say something so provocative the room would explode before she was through.

“If your wife were to die tomorrow,” she said, glass raised as though she were making a toast, “would you get remarried?”

To my horror, there was a murmur in the room as though everyone found the question to be suitable dinner conversation.

“I heard them talking about it on one of the Housewives shows,” Emily went on, “and I just thought it was so damned interesting!”

I didn’t.

I didn’t find it interesting. I wasn’t interested in answering, I wasn’t interested in hearing anyone else’s answer, and I certainly didn’t want to hear what my husband had to say.

I waited an appropriate amount of time before excusing myself to the bathroom, where I waited for what felt like an hour for someone to become concerned. It was Scott who finally tapped on the door.

“Baby, everything all right?” he asked.

“I’m sick,” I whispered, hoarsely and fast. “I need to go home.”

Through all of this, that was the only time I ever told Scott I was sick. He took me home and helped me up the stairs, and I assured him I would be all right, that I just needed a bit of privacy, and he went downstairs to make a sandwich and open a beer, and soon I heard the sound of a baseball game from the television in the family room, and everything was normal again, just the way I like it.

So, I’ve said nothing. And I plan to keep it that way.

Samantha chose to meet me at a restaurant called Michael’s. She said it was a place she has had good luck in the past.

I’m all for good luck, I wrote her, and we met at noon on a Thursday.

She looked exactly as I pictured her: Ivory-girl skin and athletic, pretty in a natural, effortless way. You can never guess exactly what a person is going to look like, but you can predict a few things about their appearance, and in this case I got all of them right.

I had practiced the speech during the ride down from Connecticut. “I just want to start by saying thank you,” I said, when we first sat down after an awkward hug. “It was very sweet of you to show such concern for me. The least I can do is buy you lunch, so I insist you allow me to pay, and then if you end up marrying Dr. Marks you have to invite me to the wedding.”

Samantha had an adorable little smile that just curled the corners of her lips. It seemed to me that her memory of him struck her in exactly the same way his memory of her struck him. All these years later and they’re still a little bit in love with each other.

“I’ll allow you to pay for lunch,” she said, “and we’ll see about Andrew Marks later, but first I need to know how you are doing.”

“I am doing great,” I said. “I’m wonderful. I feel healthy and happy and strong. I have my life back exactly as I want it and I’m not allowing myself to worry about things I can’t control, so let’s talk about other things.”

I didn’t expect her to be satisfied with that response. I just needed to put it out there so that when I really couldn’t talk about it anymore I could repeat it.

“Okay,” she said breezily, “I’m fine with that. You know I want to know and I want to help you any way I can. But I’m not going to beg you. If you want to talk about other things, that’s fine with me.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s talk about your old boyfriend.”

“Let’s have a drink before we do that.”

So we did. We had each finished a glass of wine and ordered seconds before we dug in.

“How in the world is it that this terrific man, whom every girl had a crush on in school, can be single after all these years?” Samantha asked. “One of two things must be going on. Either he is a total womanizer or he’s insane.”

I stifled a hiccup. “He could be gay.”

“That isn’t better,” she said.

“Well, I’m not saying he is. Maybe he’s sexually confused.”

“Are you trying to make a match or to make me run in the opposite direction?”

I laughed. “I’ve seen the way you look when I mention his name,” I said. “You aren’t running anywhere and we both know it. Do you want me to give him your number or your e-mail?”

“Can’t I call him?”

“Oh no,” I told her. “I don’t advise that at all.”

“Why not?”

“You’re much too cute for that. Let him pursue you.”

Samantha set her glass down and looked at me seriously. “You have a lot of beliefs that I find very unusual,” she told me. “They seem like they would come from a much older woman.”

“They do,” I said. “From my grandmother, and my mother as well, both of whom always told me the most fun part of being a woman is being a woman. My grammy used to say, ‘These rules seemed to serve just fine for thousands of years.’ Of course, she didn’t believe a woman should wear pants, either, so I took some of it with a grain of salt, but for the most part the message was received, and I’m not ashamed of it, no matter how dated it all may seem.”

Samantha raised her glass to her lips and just let it sit. “It’s funny,” she said. “If I had never met you and just saw you, I would guess you were my age. If I had never seen you but just heard you talk, I would guess you were my mother’s age. And the truth is you’re actually directly in between.”

“Forty years old and not the least bit ashamed of it.”

Samantha seemed to think a minute. “Forty years old and raised in Greenwich, I’ll bet you know someone I just recently met. Her name is Katherine Emerson.”

“Absolutely,” I said. I remembered her. “She was a year ahead of me in school. We were friendly when we were young but she pulled away as we got older.”

Samantha leaned closer, as though what I’d said had triggered something she’d been trying to remember. “You know, she talks about that sometimes. She says something bad happened with her father, but she hasn’t told me what it was.”

“I know what it was,” I said. “The whole town knew.”

Samantha just stared. I knew I would tell her, there wasn’t any reason to keep it secret, but I wanted to make her ask me. It was clear in her eyes she was desperate to know. I’m not sure why this lunch had become such a power struggle, but it had.

“How well do you know her?” I asked.

“I know her very well and at the same time I hardly know her at all,” Samantha said. “I met her the same way I met you.”

That, right there, stopped all this from being fun.

“Is she going to be all right?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Samantha said. “And I don’t want to violate her privacy about her father, but if it’s something everyone knew perhaps you could just tell me.”

I couldn’t see any reason to play games with this. “Her father went to jail when we were about twelve years old. I believe it was business related, not murder or anything, tax evasion or something. But he went away and then he got sick while he was in prison and never came home and Katherine was never the same after that. She was a really smart girl, as I remember, but I always assumed she hadn’t recovered from what happened to her family.”

“She hasn’t,” Samantha said.

“So she hasn’t done well?”

Samantha paused. “She’s incredibly successful, very wealthy. She lives a very glamorous lifestyle, but she hasn’t done well, not in any way that really matters.”

Then Samantha raised her hand and asked the waiter to come over, and asked him for a pen and paper. When he brought them, she scribbled something quickly and handed the paper to me.

“Thanks for lunch,” she said. “Let’s do it again soon. That’s my number, ask Andrew to call me.”

And she was up and gone, just like that.

KATHERINE

I HADN’T CALLED HIM Phillip in almost twenty years.

That wasn’t an accident, and it wasn’t as though he hadn’t noticed. Back when he first hired me, when he was a managing director, eighteen months after graduating from HBS, he told me everyone called him “Phil,” but that I was welcome to still call him by his full name.

“That’s all right,” I told him that day, “you feel more like a Phil to me now.”

So when his full name came up through the intercom, I froze.

“Ms. Emerson,” the doorman said hesitantly, after a moment, “shall I send your visitor up?”

Well, wasn’t that an interesting question?

On the one hand, the last thing in the world I wanted was to see him, and on the other, there was nothing I wanted more. Which hand takes precedence in a moment such as this? I swear, they don’t prepare you in life to make the decisions that really matter. In school they teach you how to add and how to play nice with other kids, and there are books to help you with everything from meditation to how to dismantle a nuclear device, but no one ever tells you what to do if you’re staring your own mortality square in the face and the man who ruined your life shows up at your apartment with a conciliatory opening line.

“Of course,” I found myself saying, “send him on up.”

Then it was like I was on autopilot, drifting from the living room to the study and glancing into a mirror. Not so bad. He hadn’t seen me since I began my treatments, since I quit my job. Could that really have been just a few months ago? It felt like a different lifetime.

I went to the sofa and sat with my legs crossed beneath me, took a deep breath and held it, then slowly let it out. Then in again, and held it, and out. Again and again, as deeply as I could manage.

May I be filled with loving-kindness

May I be well

May I be peaceful and at ease

May I be happy

When the doorbell rang, I pressed the button to allow Phillip entry, keeping my eyes closed, continuing to breathe all the while. I heard the door open, then shut softly. Footsteps on hardwood floors, loud, as only expensive dress shoes on wood can be. Then the footsteps stopped and I could faintly hear his breathing over the sound of my own, but I did not open my eyes until he spoke.

“Hi, Kat,” he said, in his scratchy baritone. “You are a sight for sore eyes.”

I took one last deep breath, let it out, then I opened my eyes. The man before me was one I did not recognize. For the first time in all the years I’d known him, from the boy who was Phillip to the man who was Phil, from the most impressive student at the finest school in the country to the shrewdest chief executive on Wall Street, I couldn’t see any of it. It was as though his spirit had vacated his body, leaving only the limbs and flesh behind. He was pale and wan, and his lips were severely chapped. He also looked heavier than I had ever seen him.

“My lord, Phil, you look like shit,” I said. “I’m supposed to be the one who’s dying, what the hell is the matter with you?”

I stopped him dead in his tracks with that. People don’t talk like that to him, not even me, not back then or any time since.

To his everlasting credit, he started to laugh. Not just a giggle, but a hearty, chesty laugh, the sort I hadn’t heard much from him since Harvard. Wall Street is not an especially funny place. It was good to see him laugh, he looked healthier, but he sounded awful. I could hear it in his chest, in the deep breaths he took between chuckles, in the wheeze of his inhale.

“You’re smoking again, aren’t you?” I said.

He threw up his hands. “Guilty as charged.”

I sighed and patted the sofa beside me. “Come sit down,” I said. “You look like you need to talk.”

And talk he did, though he didn’t sit down. The first thing he did was pull a cigarette from the breast pocket of his sport coat and fiddle it about nervously between his fingers. I watched silently until he fished a silver lighter out of his pants.

“In case you hadn’t noticed,” I said, “I’m having a few minor health problems.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and stubbed the cigarette out with the heel of his shoe, despite the fact he hadn’t lit it. “I guess that’s sort of just like me.” He paused. “I’m sort of an a*shole, aren’t I, Kat?”

I didn’t say anything. He waited, maybe because he wanted me to excuse him, maybe because he wanted me to yell, but I wasn’t going to make this easier for him. Whatever he had come to say he was going to have to say it without any help from me.

“When I heard you were sick it made me feel very bad, for a lot of reasons, and I wanted to do something to make it right. Maybe I’m just a scumbag, I don’t know, but I feel like if I do right by you then maybe I’ll sleep a little better at night.”

I stayed quiet. I had waited a really long time to hear whatever this was; I owed it to myself to listen to it all before I threw him out.

“So,” he continued, “the first thing I want to tell you is that I never accepted your resignation. I kept it a secret from the board, at first because I thought I would give you some time to change your mind, and then when I heard you were sick I went to the board and told them the rumors they had heard about your departure were untrue, that you were still one hundred percent a part of us and that we would support you in any way possible. That was unanimously approved, of course. So, I bring the warmest wishes of the board. Everyone is concerned about you, and if there is anything they can do they will act immediately.”

“That’s nice,” I said, but I knew the wishes of the board weren’t the important part.

“Of course, as a senior executive, all of your medical expenses will be handled, not a cent will come from your pocket, no matter how long it takes or how expensive it becomes. You have my word on that and full agreement of the board.”

“That’s very nice,” I said, though that still wasn’t the important part.

“And, because I did not accept your resignation, your profit participation remains intact, which means full compensation at your current levels indefinitely. And you and I both know that’s just a small piece of the puzzle.”

Now I got it, and I teared up even before he said it.

“With the unanimous approval of the board I have accelerated the maturation of all of your corporate options and bonuses. Effective the first day of next month, every penny you ever had coming to you will be fully vested at current market levels and will be transferred to your personal accounts with no conditions attached.”

All the money I walked away from. All of it. I left tens of millions of dollars in options on the table when I quit and didn’t care. But now I had it all back. Phillip gave it to me.

“You didn’t have to do that,” I said.

“I know,” he said, and now he sat down beside me. “But it seemed like the right thing.”

“Well,” I said, and patted him on the thigh, “that’s very nice.”

“It sort of feels like the least I could do. Like I said, maybe I’ll sleep better tonight.”

We sat beside each other in a comfortable silence, the distant sound of ticking from my antique grandfather clock clearly audible, echoing through the apartment. After all these years, I realized it was this I had missed most. The comfortable silence. I hadn’t thought of it in twenty years, perhaps because I never found it again. But being able to sit like this, two of us on a couch, my hand on his thigh, his hand over mine, listening to a clock ticking, not saying a word. It’s very nice.

Then, of course, he ruined it. “Kat,” he said, “I have the overwhelming desire to kiss you.”

I didn’t mean to laugh in his face.

I really didn’t. I’m sure it wounded his ego more than I meant to; in fact, I didn’t mean to wound him at all. The days when I wanted to see him beaten were gone. When I laughed in his face it was a natural reaction to his clumsy advance, nothing more, nothing less.

“Well, I didn’t expect this,” he said, the hurt evident in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t see that coming.”

He started to stand, but I grabbed his hand.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t go. Just sit with me. Don’t kiss me or anything, just sit here with me.”

He took a deep breath and sat back, crossed his legs, standoffish. He was such a child. An angry little boy not getting what he wants.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said, and he perked up a bit and faced me. “You’re thinking: If I give a girl fifty million bucks the least I expect is to get in her pants.”

That got him.

Suddenly he was laughing harder than I was, and wheezing that smoker’s wheeze, and turning a bit red, but it was funny and it was genuine and we were very comfortable sitting together. We laughed for a while, and then I took his hand and put it in my lap and held it with both hands, and we stayed that way quietly until he broke the silence by telling me the second thing he had come to say.

And this one, I really hadn’t seen coming.

BROOKE

I WISH I WERE the sort of person who underlined things in books. You know how people do that? They underline, or they dog-ear pages, or the really organized ones have computer files with quotes and paragraphs that touched them, moved them. I have encountered so many of those passages, all my life, but I never write them down. What a mistake that is. I so envy people who can quote great leaders and writers at the drop of a hat. It happens all the time. At a dinner party someone will say, “You know, it was General Patton who said blah blah blah . . .” I wish I could quote General Patton; that would be so great. Instead, I’m always the one saying: “I can’t remember where I read this, but blah blah blah . . .” Let me tell you, the blah blah blahs are always much more interesting when they have a name attached to them.

Like right now, for instance, I am thinking about how no two flakes of snow are identical. Isn’t that written in a poem somewhere? Didn’t someone attach some deeper meaning to it? If they didn’t they should have, because it is the most telling and important little fact about science I have ever heard.

No two things are exactly the same. No two people are, either. My twins are a perfect example. They are fraternal, not identical, but if they were identical they would have the same blood, the same DNA, the same fingerprints, but they still wouldn’t be the same. My children are different from each other in ways that go well beyond their genetic material, because no two people, no matter how identical, are exactly the same. Just like snowflakes.

That’s the part I think Samantha doesn’t understand.

She views her life in one way, I view mine in another. She has her values, her concerns, her beliefs, and I respect those. For whatever reason, she cannot seem to do the same for me. She behaves as though I am committing suicide, when I am doing nothing of the kind. As of this moment, I am cancer-free. And I am no fool, nor am I nearly as out of touch with reality as she has made up her mind I am. I talked at great length, enormous length, with my doctor about my decision and arrived at a conclusion I am comfortable with. And, not that it matters, but he tells me I am by no means the only patient he has known to make this decision. I could go through all the treatment options available to me, put everything and everyone I know and love on hold, and for what? In the best case, it would alter my chances of the cancer recurring by 10 percent. My chances of recurrence now are what they are. If I sacrifice my entire lifestyle, plus my husband’s, plus my children’s, they become 10 percent more favorable. Some people will do anything for that 10 percent. I will not.

When I was a girl, I had a friend named Amanda. She got caught up with the wrong crowd as we got a bit older and one night she got in a car with some older boys and there was drinking involved and then they ran into a large truck on the highway at two in the morning. The rumor that went around school was that Amanda was decapitated in the accident. I have always hoped that wasn’t the case, but either way she was dead before she turned sixteen. The lesson is that you don’t know what happens tomorrow. Would she have chosen differently if she’d known? Of course. But she didn’t. We choose based on what we know and we live with the consequences. If you told me undergoing treatments would guarantee that the cancer will never come back but not undergoing them will guarantee that it will, then of course I would do it. But my doctor couldn’t tell me that. In fact, he told me he couldn’t say with any certainty what would happen in either case. The numbers fluctuate based upon the science, and the genetics, and the advancements in research, and sometimes even socioeconomic status. And a lot of other things I don’t fully understand.

So I choose to live for today.

All I have is right now. I have all that I want, and no one can promise me I’ll have it forever no matter what I do, so I’m going to live it, love it, treasure it, for every second I can, and whatever comes next I’m prepared for it.

Samantha doesn’t understand. “Brooke, if they told me I increased my chance of survival by one percent I would go through anything,” she says to me every time we talk.

“I know that,” I always say, “but you are not me.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she says.

“It does to me,” I tell her. “You are living for tomorrow, and there’s nothing wrong with that because the best days in your life are in your future. But this is the best time in my life. I will never have this back again no matter what I do, so I’m not giving it up for anything.”

That’s around the time in the conversation I usually tell her we need to change the subject, because I’m not going to be able to be friends with her if we don’t.

“You see?” she’ll say. “You can’t take it because you know I’m right.”

But I don’t know anything of the kind.

In fact, what she is really doing is proving my point for me.

Samantha is the only person in my life who knows what I have been through, and she is practically incapable of talking to me about anything else. And that is exactly what would happen if I battled this publicly. It’s all anyone would talk to me about. It’s all they would see when they looked at me. It’s all they would think of when they see my kids, my husband. It would become my entire life, and that isn’t what I want. I want the life I have right now.

She’s also wrong because, beneath it all, she thinks this is about Scott. She thinks I worry that if he knew I was sick he wouldn’t love me anymore, or he wouldn’t want me sexually or he just wouldn’t be able to deal with the whole thing. She’s so wrong about that. My husband is a good man. He’s not perfect, none of them are, but if he knew what the doctors had told me he would absolutely force me to go through all the treatment and he would never take no for an answer. And that’s precisely why I don’t want him to know. I’m choosing today. I’m choosing to have and to cherish every precious moment of this life Scott and I have built for as long as I can have it. I hope it is for a really long time and I know it isn’t going to be forever, so I’ll just take whatever is given to me and be grateful for it. It doesn’t seem to make sense to Samantha and it may not make sense to you, but it makes sense to me and I think that’s all that really matters.

Anyway, tonight I am calling Samantha because it is an hour before her date with Dr. Marks and I am so excited I could burst. It’s been a long time since I’ve successfully fixed anyone up. And, as you know, I have a little crush on him, too, which makes this all the more thrilling in a different way.

“Yes, I’m getting a blow-out,” she said upon answering.

That was it. No greeting, just her complaint that I’d been nagging her about this date for a week. But, come on, the poor girl doesn’t have a mother to talk her through these things. Dr. Marks is a handsome, charming, single man; those don’t grow on trees. She cannot meet him in a nice restaurant with her hair up and nothing but lip gloss on her face. He is a man worth a little effort.

“You don’t have to be so cranky,” I said, though I didn’t really mind.

“Sorry,” she said, sounding frazzled. “I’m just running a little late. What’s up?”

“I just wanted to wish you a wonderful evening and good luck,” I told her. “I hope that the magic is still there, and I have a funny feeling it is.”

“Thank you very much,” she said, more quietly. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Are you nervous?” I asked.

“I am not nervous.” She hesitated. “I’m excited. There’s a difference.”

“I’ll accept that,” I told her. “Now remember, don’t drink too much, don’t even consider offering to pay for anything, and don’t forget not to say anything about my situation.”

Samantha huffed an exasperated sigh, loudly. “You know,” she said, “the best thing I could ever do for you would be to tell him.”

“I know you wouldn’t do that,” I said calmly. “I know you wouldn’t violate the trust I have placed in you. I was just reminding you because he’s the only person you know who also knows me.”

“How about Katherine?”

“Yes, okay, she would remember me, too,” I said. “Don’t tell her either. Now, you need to get going. Have a wonderful, romantic, memorable night. Don’t sleep with him on the first date, under any circumstances. And if you don’t call me first thing tomorrow morning with all the details I shall never forgive you.”