All You Could Ask For

I don’t exactly know the etiquette here. I suppose my beginning sounds like something from Alcoholics Anonymous, where I have also never been, by the way, but I’ve seen it in movies and read it in books, you make your introduction to the group and then you tell them your problem. Perhaps it works the same way in a breast cancer support chat room. I really don’t know. I guess, like a lot of other things right now, I’m going to have to figure it out as I go along.

I think I should tell you who I am, because it’s important to me that you know that I’m not just a cancer patient. I hope no one takes that the wrong way. I know you’re all cancer patients, too, and I don’t want to minimize that, I really don’t, but that’s not who I am, just as I assume it’s not who you are. I assume you’re all somebody just like me, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s sister, maybe somebody’s wife. Maybe somebody’s boss. I’m some of those, not all of them. I’m not anybody’s boss, or anybody’s wife, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be either one. I mean, I wasn’t sure last week, before this bomb was dropped on me, and I’m even less sure now.

So who am I? I’m 28 years old. I was raised in Greenwich, Connecticut. I love sports, not so much watching them as playing them. I love to be outdoors, hiking, biking, running. I’m a good athlete. Just three weeks ago I finished the Ironman Triathlon in Kona, Hawaii. It was a 2.4-mile swim, 112 miles on the bike, and then a full marathon; I completed the course in 10 hours, 23 minutes, and 17 seconds. I have never felt healthier, stronger, better in my life. The idea that I might be sick could not have been further from my mind.

I came back to New York with my father two days after the race and began to get my life back together. (It’s a really long story how it had come apart. I won’t get into all the details today, maybe another time. I’ll just say that I married the wrong man. But there’s no need to feel sorry for me. I’ll bet marriage is a wonderful thing if you choose the right person, and maybe I’ll find that out someday, but I’m all right with it if I don’t, I really am. I felt that way before my diagnosis and I feel that way now.)

I was planning to go back to work as a television feature producer and I still am, but I couldn’t get in to see my old boss for a few weeks, so I was just taking a little time off. I rather liked the idea of easing my way back in. I went to visit old friends, ate in some fabulous restaurants, joined a new gym, started looking for an apartment. Everything was really mellow and nice, and after two months in Hawaii it was mostly terrific to be back in the hustle and bustle.

One of the things I needed to do was go up to Greenwich to see my gynecologist. I hadn’t been in over a year, between travel and my ill-fated marriage and a variety of other reasons too, among them being I had grown tired of the lecture the doctor is always giving me. You see, my mother died of ovarian cancer when I was just eleven years old, and my aunt Judith was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was thirty, so my doctor has been pounding into my head that I need to start having mammograms much younger than most women, and even advised I should see a genetics counselor, because my family history puts me in a high-risk category. And I appreciate her concern, I genuinely do, but when you’re young and healthy you’re just not thinking that way.

Part of the reason, ironically, was that I’d been feeling so good. I’d been treating my body so well in every other way: nutrition, exercise, training; consultation with medical doctors just felt like it fit. Plus, as I mentioned, I had a bunch of free time on my hands.

My gynecologist made the appointment for me at Manhattan Breast Radiology Center last Tuesday. I couldn’t have been less agitated about any of it. In fact, I felt empowered; it was just one more piece of my overall commitment to health. The entire time my boob was being squeezed flat in the machine I was contemplating becoming a vegan, and beating myself up for disliking the taste of carrot juice.

The exam wasn’t as bad as I feared. The worst part was not being allowed to use lotion or deodorant; I was paranoid I would smell. But the machine itself was fine really; a little uncomfortable, but certainly I’ve been more uncomfortable before. It didn’t feel like it took so long, either, and when it was done I got cleaned up and dressed and sat and waited, surreptitiously sniffing about my armpit the entire time. Then the radiologist came back in the room with a funny look on her face. It’s not a look I’ve ever seen before, but I could read it immediately. She had news for me, and she didn’t want her expression to give it away.

“Samantha,” she began, “we did a mammogram, an ultrasound, and we did some additional views, and here is what we found. You have what are called abnormal calcifications in your left breast. Knowing that you have the family history we spoke of, I think we should do a biopsy.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I said. I’d heard every word, I just didn’t have any idea how to respond. All I could think of was to ask her to repeat herself.

“You have a cluster of abnormal calcifications in your left breast. I can explain to you in as much detail as you like what that means—”

“You don’t have to do that,” I said. “I know what it means.” I didn’t. I had no idea what it meant, I just really didn’t want to have it explained to me. “Should I go get a second opinion?” I asked.

“Really, this isn’t an opinion,” she told me. “If you want someone else to look at your films before we do the biopsy, we can arrange that, but there isn’t any question about what we are seeing. I don’t want any of this to seem scary for you. It is likely that there is nothing at all to be concerned about, but considering your family history there is no doubt in my mind we should perform a biopsy.”

“When do we do that?” I asked. I rubbed my hands together. My palms felt cold and clammy.

“Let me make a quick phone call,” she said. “If I can get the insurance approval, we do it right now.”

And she did. She numbed the upper area of my breast with a shot, then dug a needle in and removed some tissue. It hurt, a lot. Even with the Lidocaine. And she told me we would know the results in forty-eight hours. That was on Tuesday, in the afternoon. I don’t think I slept at all Tuesday night, or Wednesday night either. I skipped the gym both days. I didn’t answer my phone, or respond to a single text or e-mail. Time moved achingly slowly. Whereas before I had been energetic and hopeful, I was suddenly lethargic and sad. Then the phone rang, nearly six o’clock Thursday evening. I didn’t recognize the number, so I answered it.

It was my gynecologist. Only people who have known me since I was little, as she has—I grew up with her son—call me that. I haven’t used the nickname in ten years. I don’t mind the name but her tone bothered me. She sounded like she was trying really hard not to alarm me, which alarmed me a lot more than if she’d just come out and said it.

That was when I went from lethargic to frantic. My hands were shaking. I held the phone away from my head and watched it quiver in my fingers.

“You have to tell me now,” I said, the phone still away from my mouth, “I can’t wait until tomorrow morning.”

I clicked the phone onto speaker and placed it on the floor, then I lay down flat on my tummy to hear what she had to say.

“Samantha, there are abnormal cells, they are cancer cells,” she said, her voice tinny and hollow. “We should talk about it in person, but you’re going to need to see a breast surgeon.”

“They are malignant cells, but they are noninvasive cells, which in regular English means they do not look like the kind of cells that will spread, but it needs to be taken care of. When we sit down to talk, I will give you the name of a breast surgeon.”

“Not at all,” she said, and as I listened I started to breathe deeply, in and out, in and out, just like at the beginning of a yoga class. “In the old days there were surgeons who would do everything, one afternoon they might do two gall bladders, fix a hernia, and then do a breast surgery. But now they have people who do only breast surgery. I will send you to one.”

I was starting to get it. I think I knew the answer before I asked the next question.

There was a long silence in the space between my knees and the phone. I filled it as best I could with my breathing. I was in no hurry to hear the answer.

“That isn’t going to be a decision I make,” she eventually said. “That will be a decision you’ll make in consultation with the surgeon. But, candidly, I would tell you I think that is going to be a possibility, yes.”

I did not say anything. I did not think anything. I breathed in and I breathed out.

“As you know, Sammy, you have this family history,” she continued, “and this history means you are at a disproportionately high risk for breast cancer. So, while you might consider just doing a lumpectomy, taking out only the affected area, I think it is certain the surgeon will talk to you about taking off your breast, and I would say that in my opinion that would be a very reasonable option.”

I put my hands on my breasts, cupped them, squeezed them. They’re small, always have been, but they’re firm and proud. I haven’t thought about them much, really, since I was a girl. I like them, I suppose, but I don’t think I love them and I surely know I don’t need them.

“Let me ask you,” I said, still cross-legged, still shouting toward the phone, “if I have the surgery and they take off my breast, would that be the end of it? Would that mean it was gone and I’m totally out of the woods?”

“The answer is not as simple as yes or no. I don’t want to make this complicated for you, but doctors can be like lawyers sometimes, we don’t like to speak in absolutes . . .” Her voice trailed off.

I opened my eyes, picked up the phone, turned it off speaker, spoke directly to her. “Dr. Leslie, I have known you since I was a little kid. You knew my mom, you’ve known me my whole life. I played spin the bottle with your son Elliot when I was in sixth grade and he was chewing grape-flavored bubble gum when he kissed me. What I’m asking you to do, even if it’s not what you’re supposed to do, is tell me the real truth the way you would tell a friend, not a patient, because I am scared to death right now and the only thing that will make me feel better is knowing the whole story, whether it’s good news or bad.”

She paused a second. “You know, Elliot is a doctor now,” she said. “He’s a resident at New York Presbyterian on Broadway. I’m sure he’d love to catch up with you sometime. Hold on, let me close my door.” It sounded like she set the phone down, then I heard some rustling, then she was back, breathing a little heavily, speaking a little more softly. “Okay, here’s the deal. We are dealing with a couple of ‘ifs’ here, so I can’t promise you anything. But if you do have only a noninvasive cancer, which means the kind that does not have a propensity to spread, and that’s all they find when they do the mastectomy, then, in essence, you are cured. We never like to speak in absolutes, and that isn’t just to cover our ass but it’s because sometimes things happen that we don’t expect to happen, things that shouldn’t happen. But the answer you are looking for is YES, if all they find is what I think they are going to find, then YES, in any way that really matters you are cured after they remove the breast.”

So that made my decision for me, right there, on the floor, the phone in my hand, her voice still registering in my ears but not in my brain. I had heard everything I needed to hear. There would be other questions but there would be time for those later, right then I knew what I wanted. I wanted to see the surgeon as soon as possible. I’d have gone that evening if I could have.

I don’t care about my breasts, and I don’t need any man who does. Any man I ultimately lose because of this will not have been worthy of me to begin with.

I am going to have this surgery and then I am going to resume my life with no hesitation. The key to life is having a plan, having a destination and then charting a course to reach it, and so I have. I can see the path and I can already see the end of it, I can see me at the end of it, and I love where I am and who I am when I get there.

I would consider it a privilege to have any of you who read this accompany me on my journey, and in turn I will walk with you as well, any of you, all of you, on yours. I await your reply. In the meantime, I am going to be absolutely fine. I have never been more certain of anything in my life.

It’s a stage you go through as a girl, at least where I come from. Some of the girls use their sixteenth birthdays as coming-out parties, debutante balls. I started to be invited to those parties around the time I was twelve. They were so glamorous, it was like being invited to the Oscars every weekend. I had to have a different dress for each event, which meant there were times when I needed two or three in a month, and that lasted about four years.

The next stage was when all my friends started to marry. That was another regular cycle, beginning when I was twenty-two. Scott and I must have attended thirty weddings and I was a bridesmaid in at least half of them. It became a ritual, choosing the bridesmaids’ dresses, complaining about the colors behind the bride’s back, organizing showers in strip clubs and tea salons. Hair and makeup and hosiery and tears; that lasted three years.

The next stage came very quickly after that. That one was babies. Jill Armel was the first of my group to become a mom. We were so young at the time, and clueless; four of us went to visit her in the hospital just hours after she gave birth. I’ll never forget what she looked like, exhausted and pale. She had been in labor for eleven hours. I asked her cheerfully: “How are you, sweetheart?” And she grumpily replied: “I haven’t peed in two days.” That woke me up a little.

It got easier from there for us, my group of girls, who, one by one, took turns trading in our horrible bridesmaid dresses for equally horrible maternity jumpers and overalls. I think I spent $4,000 in one year at Liz Lange Maternity and I wasn’t even pregnant. They were gifts. It was, once again, the stage of life I was in.

The stage that came next was awful. It began in a steady flow when we reached our thirties, all of us young moms, when one by one our parents started to die. I remember it was David Michel’s dad who went first, only sixty-one, cancer of the liver. He was an oncologist himself, very prominent in our town. I recall Mother could not bring herself to attend the funeral. “He was such a kind man,” she said, “I feel I knew him my entire life.” I certainly had. All the mothers and fathers of my group were like family to me, and, one by one, they started to go. A heart attack here, a kidney failure there, they came in a wave. They’ve slowed some since, they still come now and again, but not as often as they did back then.

And so, as I sit here tonight, introducing myself to you in a state of horror, shock, denial, fear, sadness, and guilt, what I cannot help thinking is that I hope I am not the beginning of the next stage for everyone else. I have this terrible image of my friends gathering for drinks ten years from now, reflecting on this stage of their lives, the stage when their friends started to die. And it’s me they’ll be talking about, the way I talk about Jill in the hospital. I can almost hear them now. “Brooke went first, breast cancer,” they’ll say, dabbing their eyes with tissue. “Poor thing, she was only forty.”

I don’t have any idea what the etiquette is here. I have prided myself all my life on knowing the proper thing to do. That was Mother’s favorite word when I was a girl, “proper,” she could use it in almost any context.

Please hold your fork properly, a girl without table manners is like spring without sunshine.

Table manners were a big deal. Starting when I was six, I attended lessons in etiquette where I was taught the proper way to behave at a social function. I was there while most of my friends were receiving religious instruction. For my mother, proper behavior was a religion.

I know some girls would have rebelled against a childhood like that but I did not. Quite the opposite: I liked it. I liked using the proper fork for the first course at dinner. I liked knowing the proper way to respond to an invitation. I liked all of it and I still do: life is much easier when you know the proper way to behave. That’s one of the things that make this so tough right now. I haven’t the faintest idea what the proper response is to being told I have triple-negative breast cancer. It’s happened so quickly I feel as though I’ve been watching it happen to someone else, like a character in a book, a character I feel really sorry for right now.

I’m a woman who has two doctors in my life, a gynecologist and a pediatrician, and of the two I see the pediatrician, Dr. Marks, by far more often. He’s young and handsome and funny and sweet; I’ve often thought he was the sort of man I would have an affair with if I ever had an affair. (Which I would not, by the way, not ever.) I happened to mention to Dr. Marks about a month ago, when we casually bumped into each other at the drugstore, that my husband had just turned forty and that I would be forty in a few weeks. And he, because he is this way, asked if I had scheduled my first mammogram. I said I’d thought of it, and he made me promise I’d call my gynecologist that same day. And perhaps because he was just so cute, I did as I was told. A week later I was in the office of Greenwich Radiology, with my shirt off.

“Can you tell they’re real?” I asked the technician, looking for a laugh as he maneuvered my chest in the least sexual way I could ever imagine.

“I’ve been thinking of getting implants,” I said. “Would that make this more difficult?”

“Nothing to be nervous about,” he said, as he squashed my breast into the machine, which was shiny and cold and smelled of the spray I used to use to clean the dust off record albums. “Nothing at all.”

If I really was a character in a book, then at the start of the next chapter the radiologist would be telling me he sees a shadow, something really small, too small for me to feel, he would be surprised if I could feel it. It’s a solid area on the ultrasound, which needs to be biopsied. He is asking me if I want to call my husband first. I say no. I’m not really listening. Or, I am listening but not hearing, it’s not registering. It is as though it is happening to someone else. There is nothing very real about being told you have cancer, even if you are a character in a book.

Then the radiologist is cleaning an area at the outside of my breast with a cotton pad, soft and wet and cold, and there is a needle in my breast, and I am having a sonogram-directed biopsy. It hurts, but not enough to make me cry. I’m not sure I could cry anyway. I am having trouble just breathing. And then, just like that, I am in my car, on my way home. There will be no results for forty-eight hours. Blessedly, my husband is away. He’ll likely call late tonight. I’ll deal with that when it happens. First I need to get through dinner.

The kids are home when I arrive. One of them needs help with homework, the other is upset because “Connor called me stupid.” These are real issues for them. They need me, and as always I am there for them. I help with the math, and have a talk about what are and are not appropriate words to use with our friends. “We don’t use the word ‘stupid,’” I am saying. “It isn’t proper behavior at school.” In my own head, I hear my mother’s voice.

I had planned to make salmon for dinner, but now I am in no mood for all the fuss, so instead I put a pot to boil on the stove. Pasta with olive oil, a little butter, parmesan cheese. I know both kids will eat it happily. I don’t even make a vegetable, which I normally insist they eat if they want dessert. Aside from that, I feel as though I am behaving perfectly normally until my daughter bursts that bubble.

I am seated at the dinner table. The children are on either side of me, eating. I realize I don’t even remember setting the table, straining the pasta, mixing in the butter, sprinkling the cheese, pouring the milk.

“I’m sorry, baby,” I say, with a smile that comes more easily than I would have expected. “I guess I just miss Daddy, that’s all.”

“I don’t know, sweetie, I thought I might not drink any wine for a little while.”

My two children exchanged looks. “Mommy,” Jared says, after a moment, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

That makes me laugh and it makes me cry, both at the same time, and I ask the kids to excuse me and I run to the powder room and turn the faucet on full blast. I am pretty sure it drowns out the sounds of my crying.

I don’t even remember going back to the table, or what I said, or how I explained my tears to the children. The next thing I know they are fast asleep in their beds, and I am in the small hallway that separates their rooms. I can see them both resting peacefully in the shadows. There is no sight on earth more beautiful than my sleeping children. They are perfect and they are all mine.

Then the phone rings. I am ready for the call. It will be Scott and I know what he’ll want. And I will give it to him. It doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, actually, quite the opposite. It sounds like something very normal, and right now normal sounds really good.

“Hey, big fella,” I say as seductively as I can manage, sinking between the sheets of the bed we share. “What can I do for you?”

The conversation doesn’t last long, it almost never does. Then I am alone in my room in the dark, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. And I am thinking of a book I love, with a heroine I love. The book is called The Hotel New Hampshire, and the girl is named Franny. And one time when Franny is sad and someone asks if they can do anything for her, she says: “Just bring me yesterday, and most of today.” And I realize now that is exactly what I want. Yesterday, and most of today.

THE NEXT CHAPTER BEGINS two days later, when the phone rings again. The voice on the other end is one I do not recognize.

For a moment I cannot recall any Dr. Downey. Then I remember the throat infection I had two years before. He is a primary care physician, and when my husband’s company switched insurance companies, I had to choose one, so I listed Dr. Downey. Even though I haven’t seen him since then, his name is on all my insurance papers. And so it is that the call I have been waiting so impatiently for comes from, essentially, a total stranger.

“I was hoping you could come into the office this morning,” he says. “I have the results of the test you took the other day and I think we should talk about them.”

Then I am in his completely unfamiliar office, staring at his completely unfamiliar face, listening to his completely unfamiliar voice. “We see breast cancer,” he is saying, “and we do see an invasive cancer. That means it is the kind of cancer that could involve your lymph nodes. We think it is localized but we’ll need some more tests to know for sure. I have the name of an excellent breast surgeon here in Greenwich and I recommend you visit him. Of course, if you have another surgeon you would prefer to see, by all means you should see him or her. But seeing a breast surgeon is the next step in this process.”

If I were you, this is the part where I would put the book down. I hate it when things like this happen to characters I like. I can’t count the number of books I haven’t finished because I didn’t like where they appeared to be heading. So if this was a book I was reading, I wouldn’t want to read any more. But when you’re the lead character, you don’t have that choice.

The next scene takes place six days later, first in the operating room, where the breast surgeon is performing a lumpectomy and a sentinel node, which is where they take out the lump in your breast and, while they are in there, inject a dye that makes its way into a specific lymph node beneath the arm. And then they take me to the recovery room and I wait. And wait. And the seconds feel like hours, much as they did when the twins were small and I was home alone with them, and there were days when they were crabby and uninterested and those were the days when time felt as though it stood still. The difference is now oftentimes I feel nostalgic for those days, but I am pretty sure I’ll never feel nostalgic for this one.

“Brooke, we got the lump out, it looks to be about a sonometer and a half—”

I like the look of this doctor’s face. Which is not to say he is handsome, but rather that he doesn’t look troubled. I am pretty sure his face would look different if he were here to tell me I was going to die.

“The important thing is all the lymph nodes appear to be negative,” he continues.

“Very good, yes,” he says. “You are probably only going to need radiation to prevent the cancer from coming back in your breast, which means we probably won’t need to do a mastectomy. What you will need to do is see a specialist to determine what other treatments may be options for you.”

“Of course you do,” he says, “you’re the patient. It’s your body and your life, so you’re the one who should make the decisions. Don’t ever forget that.”

I would not forget. In fact, those would prove to be the most memorable words I heard through this entire ordeal.

The next chapter takes place in a different office. Now I am listening to an oncologist who specializes in breast cancer explain what he means when he says “the breast, and the rest.”

“Your tumor is triple-negative,” the doctor says. “That means it does not respond to hormones, or a number of other drugs we commonly use, treatments you may have read about in the newspapers.”

I nod my head to affirm, even though I have never read about any cancer treatments in the newspapers. I avoid stories about cancer in the newspapers, and everywhere else as well.

“We are going to use chemotherapy,” he continues, “because that gives us the best modality to prevent this cancer from coming back somewhere besides your breast.”

“Wait, I think I don’t understand,” I say. “I had a small tumor in my breast. They removed that. It didn’t spread to my lymph nodes. Why do I have to have chemo?”

The doctor’s face changed, a little. He looked more professorial now, and I was his student. “Well, we know based on the pathology, based on the tumor’s size and other factors, that there is still the potential for the cancer to come back somewhere else. So we do the radiation for the breast, and the chemo for the rest. That’s why we call this approach ‘the breast and the rest.’”

I think about it for a minute, as clearly as I am capable of. I’m still not sure I understand. “But why do we have to do this now?” I ask.

“If we wait for the cancer to come back somewhere else, we have lost our window of opportunity. We can treat it if it comes back in your liver or your brain or your bones, but right now our goal is to cure it.”

I can’t really think of what to say after “but.” Or maybe I just have so many things to say after “but” that I can’t choose one. So I ask questions, lots of them. And the doctor is patient and supportive, but he never tells me what I want to hear. He never offers to give me back yesterday and most of today.

Finally, he says to me: “Brooke, I’ll say this to you as directly as I can and I hope you’ll excuse my language but this is the best way I can think of to explain this: the time to shit or get off the pot is now. Not in a few years or even a few months. The best way to affect the behavior of this disease, to minimize the chance of it coming back, is to have what we call adjuvant radiation for the breast and adjuvant chemo for the rest of you. The chemo will be directed at any microscopic cells we currently cannot see, with the goal of preventing them from ever becoming an issue.”

It is at that point that I tell him I need to go home. It is just too much right now. I understand what he is saying and I will come back soon, as soon as he wants, but right now I cannot talk about it anymore. And, to my surprise, he is not judgmental, he does not scold or browbeat me. There is understanding in his face, in his tone, and he calls in a nurse and instructs her to make time for tomorrow, regardless of what else needs to be postponed.

Tomorrow I go back. Tonight I have a babysitter downstairs with the kids. I called and asked her to spend the night, told her I think I have the flu. I wish I did. I never thought I’d wish that, but right now the flu sounds so good, so normal. I feel so far away from normal. I have no idea when I can expect to feel normal again. I want so badly to feel normal. I’ve never wanted anything more. I want yesterday, and most of today.

I’m from Greenwich too. I graduated from Greenwich Academy in 2001, did you go to GA? (Could this be a more awkward introduction? I’m sorry, this is my first person-to-person.)

My situation is a little different from yours. Actually, my whole life is different from yours—I don’t have a husband or children, and I guess it’s no guarantee that I will ever have either one. What I will be having is a double mastectomy next week. My doctor says I can still have kids; the only tangible effect of my surgery will be that I won’t be able to breast-feed, and that seems like a small thing to me now. I imagine it might not seem so small if I ever get there, but right now I’m really not thinking that far ahead. I’m just focused on today, for the time being, maybe tomorrow, not much past that.

I’m not writing to you because of our shared hometown. That may be the reason I was first drawn to your entry yesterday, among the hundreds of others, but it is not the reason I read it over and over, so many times I think I could recite it from memory. It is not the reason I feel I know you, even though we’ve never met. It is not the reason I am reaching out to you now. I am actually writing to say thank you, because you made me realize the refrigerator had stopped humming. And, as it turns out, that was the single most important thing that has happened to me through this whole ordeal.

You see, I am a crier. I mean, pathetic. The way most people behave at the end of the movie Old Yeller is the way I often react to television commercials. I have been known to weep after seeing a Subaru ad. I know it’s pathetic, but I can’t help it.

Which is why it is so interesting that I didn’t even notice that I never cried over my diagnosis. I mean, I bawl over a mom choosing her breakfast cereal, but I did not shed a tear when a doctor said to me: “Samantha, you have cancer.” I didn’t cry that day, and I hadn’t cried since. Not a single, solitary time.

As I said, I first opened your entry because of the hometown. It was probably the fiftieth post I have read since I joined the discussion last week. All of them have moved me, inspired me, made me feel less alone. They have done what I believe we are all here to do. But none of them did for me what yours did. You made me cry, and I thank you for that.

I read John Irving too. I have just about every one of his books, and when you quoted Franny saying she wanted yesterday and most of today, I remembered it. And I remembered her. And I realized that she was exactly right, and so were you. That’s what I want, too. It’s what we all want, to wake up and have it be yesterday, before all the tests and doctors and decisions. I want to remember what I worried about yesterday. Whatever it was, I would so welcome it today.

I got into bed with my laptop and read your words over and over, and I started to cry. And suddenly it was like that moment when the refrigerator stops humming, and you realize you didn’t even know the sound was there until it was gone. That’s how it felt. I hadn’t even realized I hadn’t cried until you made me. So I sat there, acutely aware of the silence that replaced the hum, and I cried really hard, by myself, sitting upright on my bed with your letter on the screen in front of me. I didn’t have tissues or anything but I didn’t even care, I just let the tears fall wherever they wanted.

I feel much more myself now than I did before. It isn’t quite like yesterday or most of today, but it’s better than it was, and I feel like it’s going to get even better still, maybe as soon as tomorrow. I feel I have you to thank for that, at least partly, because I needed to realize the refrigerator was humming and it took your letter to point it out.

Please do not feel an obligation to write me back. I know how much you have on your mind right now, you may not have time or need for a pen pal. I just wanted you to know, even if it’s just a voice deep in the wilderness, that your words were read and they made a difference.

I will be following however much of your story you choose to share in the weeks ahead, and please know that I am rooting for the heroine in your story from the bottom of my heart.

The water was super hot, as hot as I could stand it. I love baths, have since I was a girl, but I seldom indulge anymore; showers are so much more efficient. But this was not a morning for worrying about things like that. This was a time to reflect, and to feel, though I wasn’t quite sure I could. I’d been numb for days, increasingly so, worst of all in the last few hours. I awoke today devoid of any emotion, any feeling. I wanted to see if I could feel the hot water, and I could, but only a little. Not the way it is meant to be felt. More like the way orange juice tastes right after you brush your teeth: you can tell it’s there, but everything that makes it special is missing.

I surprised myself by sleeping soundly. I hadn’t expected to sleep at all, but last night I slept hard and long, waking with drool on my pillow. The babysitter spent the night and she’d handle the kids this morning and get them off to school. There was a part of me that wanted desperately to be downstairs with them, pouring milk over cereal, packing snacks into backpacks, giving goofy hugs and smiles and kisses. Mornings are the best time of day for children, before they have had their energy sapped by the rigors of their day. Mornings are the time when they have the most time and love for their mom. But the first wrinkled nose I saw at the bottom of the stairs was liable to send me into a fit of hysterics I could never control. Right now, perhaps it was better to be numb. Better to sample the hot water, see if I could feel that, and do it alone. There will be other mornings in the kitchen. There may never be another morning quite like this one.

As I dipped my toe in the bath, I realized that not only did I sleep last night but I dreamed as well, which is also unusual. I hardly ever dream anymore; as I say to Scott sometimes, I don’t have to dream. I already have everything I want when I’m awake.

But now, as I settled into the scalding water, pausing here and there as my body grew accustomed to the heat—feeling it, but only a little—I was thinking of the dream I had. And, when I finally submerged myself completely, holding my breath, clasping my fingers over my nose, I could see it all behind my closed eyes.

It began at the foot of my stairs, in the entryway from the garage. I was myself but as a young girl, thirteen years old, and I was with my grandmother, after whom I was named and who died when I was that age. I loved my Grammy desperately, and still sometimes feel sad that she never saw the house I live in today. Grammy would have loved it. It is decorated, to the most painstaking detail, the way Grammy would have done had she been alive. I realized now, in a way I never consciously had before, that in nearly every decision I make I consider how Grammy would have reacted. I realized this in the tub, with my head underwater. But not in the dream. In the dream I was thirteen years old, taking Grammy on a tour of a house she did not live long enough to see.

We stopped every two or three steps. There was no detail we ignored, no square inch that was not explained. The mirrors hanging on the walls at the landing of the back staircase, the sequential photos of the children in the rear hallway, the painting Scott bought from a street artist in Paris for less than a dollar. The cabinetry and the cookware and the wineglasses and the breakfast stools, the rug in the main entry, the furniture in the living room, the desk with the inkwell in the office. The runner on the main stairs, the chandelier above the great room, the painted colors of the children’s walls, the linens in the master bedroom. In my dream I proudly explained it all, as a docent might when giving a tour in a museum. And in the tub, I was realizing that every one of the choices had been made with Grammy’s silent approval. And it made my eyes fill with tears, just for a moment, even with my head beneath the water, because I realized it meant Grammy was still with me in a way I hadn’t been aware of.

The best part of the dream was showing Grammy all the pictures on the wall that separates the kids’ bedrooms: my courtship with Scott, my wedding, where the “something old” was Grammy’s diamond brooch, and then all the photos of the children, both of them named in her honor: Grammy’s middle name was Megan, her last name was Jarret, hence Jared. Had I done that on purpose? Megan I had, I knew that, but I couldn’t remember about Jared. All I could recall was saying to Scott: “All my life I have loved the name Jared.” And so it was. In the dream I had told Grammy the boy was named for her. And now, in the bath, for the very first time, I realized it was true.

The dream ended with Grammy smiling warmly, exactly as I most love to remember her, with the smell of her cookies somehow wafting in the air, and her saying: “I am so pleased that your life has turned out this way.”

And me, at thirteen, replying: “Me too. If I had seen all these pictures when I was this age I would have thought that I was going to have the best life of anyone in the world.”

“You do, darling,” Grammy said, in the last of the dream I could remember. “You have all you could ask for.”

I sit up in the tub and let the water rush through my hair, and I scrub my face hard with my palms. I am more awake now, though I still don’t feel very much. And I still think that’s probably for the best. I glance at the clock on the face of the radio my husband listens to while he shaves. The kids had gone to school by now. It is almost time to go see the doctor, but I desperately want to stay in the tub a few more minutes. I couldn’t possibly bring myself to rush. And so I lie back and let my head drift beneath the water again, and that is when I realize that it hasn’t once occurred to me through this entire ordeal that Grammy, my mother’s mother, died young from cancer.

I am going to be late for my appointment. I am writing now when I should already be there, and I am the sort of person who is never late for anything. But somehow today that doesn’t much seem to matter. It isn’t the proper thing to do to make them wait, but today that doesn’t feel as though it makes as much difference as it should.

Hi, Brooke, I am writing to you from room 324A at Greenwich Hospital, the same building where I was born and where you may have been as well. I’ve been thinking a lot about that this week, sort of a circle of life, which sounds cheesy but in my mind is a good deal more profound than that.

I spent a lot of time in this hospital as a girl. Not for any horrible reasons; my father was president of the board of trustees. I must have gone to a hundred fund-raising events with him. I remember some of them really well, mostly the Christmases. They always had wonderful events around the holidays, with tinsel and reindeer and visits from Santa. When I got older I was allowed to go to the grown-up functions, dinner dances in fancy dresses, with floral arrangements on the tables and live bands playing standards like “It Had to Be You.” The first time I ever slow-danced with a boy was in this hospital, at one of those parties. I was sort of a tomboy then, an athlete, I didn’t pay a lot of attention to clothes or my hair, and I didn’t pay a lot of attention to boys, either, maybe because I thought they wouldn’t pay a lot of attention to me. And then, when I was fourteen, I was here, at a dinner dance, and my father was away from the table, drinking scotch and talking business, and I was peeling the frosting off a piece of chocolate cake, when Andrew Marks came to the table. He was two years ahead of me in school and handsome and athletic and smart, captain of the basketball team and the debate team, which is a dream combination if you ask me. His father was the chief of pediatrics, so I had seen Andrew at many hospital functions over the years but had never really spoken to him. I didn’t think he even knew who I was.

Then, suddenly, he was standing over me. I don’t know how long he was there. People were always milling around at those things, and I was fixated on getting as much of the frosting as I could off the cake. But finally I realized someone was standing over my shoulder, and when I turned I could tell Andrew didn’t recognize me.

“Hello, my name is Andrew Marks,” he said stiffly and formally, as though he had taken classes in the proper etiquette for asking a young lady to dance and this was his first stab at it. “Would you like to dance?”

Like all girls, I had had crushes before, but that was the first moment for me, the first time I learned what it is like when your heart beats a little faster and your breath catches at the back of your throat. I wanted to tell him that he knew me, even if he didn’t realize it. I was the same girl he’d seen at these dances a dozen times before, only this time I was wearing a more grown-up dress and mascara and had gotten my hair blown out at a salon. But then I also didn’t want to tell him. There was something about being the mysterious, pretty girl that appealed to me. It was right there, in that chair, as I said the words “I would love to,” that I first realized it was all right to be a girl and also a jock. Maybe that’s why I remember the night so well.

At first, the band was playing “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees and everyone was out of their chairs in full boogie mode, even my dad was dancing with one of the divorcées in town who had been after him since the day my mother died. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about how well Andrew could dance, how handsome he looked in his suit. He was really tall. I’ve always liked tall men, beginning with that night.

When they finished the song, the next one they played was “How Deep Is Your Love,” also by the Bee Gees. You know that song, don’t you? I love that song, and had even before that night. I think it is the most perfectly romantic song I know. When the band began to play it that night, in the ballroom in this very hospital, I felt myself sweat a little beneath my arms. People started leaving the dance floor all around us; lots of people who were willing to boogie were not going to stay out there together for a slow song. Were we? I didn’t know. And when I looked up at him I could tell he didn’t know either. And I could see that he wanted to, and I knew I did, so I knew ultimately we would but I would leave it to him to make the decision for himself. I just stood there, sweating, trying to smile away the awkwardness until he mustered up the nerve, and when he did it wasn’t really much, just an embarrassed shrug of the shoulders, and a look that seemed to say “I’m up for this if you are,” but that was enough for me. I took a very deliberate step toward him, and then he opened his arms and I stepped between them and he pulled me in. And then it was as though there was no one else at that party, no one else in the room, no one else in the world, just Andrew Marks and that song and me.

So that was the night I learned that I like being pretty. It didn’t matter to me at all before and it has ever since. It still does, now, even as I lie here in this bed, wearing a stained cotton gown that ties in the back, thinking about the dress I wore the night I danced with Andrew Marks. It matters to me, even as I contemplate what life is going to be like for me from now on.

There’s no doubt it was the right thing to do, it was an easy decision to make, but somehow typing out the words isn’t quite so easy. Just looking at them now is hard, reading them in the dim backlight of my laptop. They removed my breasts. I have a gene that dictates I am at a disproportionately high risk of breast cancer. If not for the gene, the doctor said he would have considered just a lumpectomy, but I think I still might have asked to have the surgery. I want this out of me and I don’t want it back.

Next up is reconstructive surgery. And then, for all intents and purposes, I am cured. So, my emotions are in a peculiar state this evening. Because of my breasts, but also probably because of the drugs. And what I find most interesting is that when I woke up from the surgery, my first thought was of you. I needed to go to the forum and find out what has happened to the heroine in your story.

You don’t know me at all, and I understand that I have absolutely no right to intrude on your experience, but I can’t help myself. You didn’t respond to my person-to-person and I fully understand that, but if you can please update your story, I can’t explain why, but I need to know.

I cannot tell you the excitement that raced through me when I logged on this morning and found my icon flashing. No one has ever written to me on the forum before and I just knew it was going to be you. (And, by the way, I don’t have very good past associations with surprises in my e-mail. I’ll tell you that story someday. Major drama.)

It hasn’t been the easiest day. The good news is my reconstructive surgery was a complete success, and the surgeon does not foresee any complications. Everything is as good as it can be under the circumstances. Still, I feel tired and sad, and a little worried about ever feeling as good as I did just three weeks ago. I was a serious athlete. Now I am a patient. I know I should feel grateful, I know how much worse this could have been, but I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time feeling lucky right now.

Your note cheered me. I cannot believe Andrew is your doctor. I knew he had followed in his father’s footsteps but I had not heard he was still in Greenwich. I lost track of him while he was at Yale. He’s not on Facebook—one of the very few people I grew up with who is not. I think the last time I saw him was at his father’s funeral, maybe ten years ago. The whole town was there. I saw Andrew from a distance but I never got the chance to talk to him.

I’m not at all surprised to hear that he is good-looking. He always was, and never more than that night with the Bee Gees in our ears and me in his arms. We danced for a while, through three or four more songs, and when the next slow dance began (“Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” by Elton John), my father came barging over and announced loudly that it was his turn to dance with his daughter. I could see a funny look on Andrew’s face. He knew my dad (everybody knew my dad), and I think it was at that moment that he realized who I was. And I looked up into his eyes, afraid I’d find regret or embarrassment, but there was neither of those. Andrew just looked very content, and very handsome.

He bowed formally and raised my hand, offering it to my father with an overdone flourish. It was very corny and funny, the sort of thing that could have come off cheesy but I had such a crush on him he could have gotten away with anything. So I danced with my father and then I went back and sat down and continued to pick at the frosting on my chocolate cake. And Andrew never came back to ask me to dance again, or to say good night, or anything. I went home and ran a hot bath and lay in it for a long time.

At school that Monday I found a note in my locker, handwritten in red ink on a sheet of loose-leaf paper with holes on the side where it had been ripped from a binder.

I still have it. I love everything about it. I love that he took the time to find out which was my locker, and I love that he used the word “splendid,” which I’m not sure I have ever seen used in any context since. I still remember it as one of the sweetest encounters of my life, even if nothing ever came of it. There is something endlessly romantic about my memory of the whole thing; in fact, if you told me you had it all on videotape I would refuse to watch, because I’d be afraid it wasn’t quite as perfect as I remember. And I still think of Andrew as my first boyfriend, even though I’m afraid I can’t tell you for sure if he’s an excellent kisser.

I’m not at all surprised. His father was the only man in town more handsome than mine. Is he married? Does he have a family? Does he seem happy?

You may or may not know the answers to any of those. I realize he is your children’s doctor, not necessarily a family friend. Frankly, it’s you I want to know about. I apologize for prying when it is so clear you don’t want to share, but I’ll ask one more time and then I promise to leave it alone.

I found a naked photo of another woman in my husband’s inbox. And it happened on my honeymoon. So I was married for two days.

I’ll tell you, though, maybe in a way you could look at it as though you are lucky. You say you’re having a hard time feeling lucky, and I understand that, but in a way you are, because you found out more quickly than most that you married the wrong man. Some women don’t have the good fortune of discovering that in two days. For some it takes two years, or two decades. And it isn’t always so obvious. A nude photo of a woman seems less like a sad surprise than a sign from above, like a flashing light with a megaphone attached, blaring: “You married an asshole, run away before he ruins a lot more than two days of your life!”

I have been married a long time. People often ask me about my marriage, and I always tell them the same thing: being married to the right man is hard work but it is the most wonderful thing in the world. Being married to the wrong man is the worst mistake a woman can make. I know that to be true, not from personal experience but because I have seen it. I have practically lived it with some of my closest friends. I won’t get into any names or specifics, but just understand any number of men in the swanky suburbs turn gay when you least expect it, or become addicted to prescription drugs, or develop a sudden longing to travel the world with a backpack. Or, worse, sometimes they just become distant, because they are disappointed in themselves or envious of the husband across the street who just put a six-figure addition on his house, so they drift away emotionally, blaming the women closest to them for their own shortcomings, projecting onto their wives feelings of inadequacy that most times the women don’t even feel.

Men are complicated, Samantha, but they are also very simple. If yours was such an asshole that he was cheating on you within two days of your wedding and clumsy enough about it that you caught him, the best thing that ever happened to you is that you found out when you did. Because the alternative would be finding out after you had twins and a joint mortgage and reservations to go on safari in Africa. That would be much worse.

What I’m saying is I understand that you are struggling to grasp how lucky you are right now, but if you were able to read it instead of live it, you might decide that where you are is actually a fairly wonderful place. Even if you are wearing a hospital gown instead of a pretty dress.

You know, I have had a lot of people say a lot of things designed to make me feel better these last few weeks: my father told me there isn’t a medical procedure known to man that will not be considered if I desire it, a nurse told me the nice thing about reconstructed breasts is I can choose the size and they will always be perky, and my best friend from college said, “Dude, you’ve always been hot and you always will be.” I appreciated all their support, but none of them made me feel lucky. You just did. Thank you.

I hope you can sense the energy in my exclamation points. I slept more, and better, than I have since all this began. I awoke feeling strong and optimistic. I am going home either today or tomorrow. The end of this is in sight for me.

I also want to tell you I totally respect that you don’t want to share what is going on with you right now. I know how hard and how personal this is for me, and I understand that unlike me you have a husband to share your feelings with, to cry with, to laugh with, to hold you, to make you feel lucky.

You don’t need me. I understand that, and I won’t ask you again. But I do want you to know that I will help in any way I can if you ever do.

Let me tell you about me. When I was first out of college, I worked in marketing for Donna Karan, and I enjoyed the work and the people and mostly the clothes, but to me it was not a career, it was nothing more than a job. I have never had any interest in a career; I never saw the point. What would I do? Sell something? Market something? To what end? Nothing I would be selling or marketing would be really important to me, certainly not in the way my family is.

So that is who I am. And I don’t mind at all telling you what is going on with me. What is going on is I am living my life, nothing more, nothing less. And by the way, you are right that I have a lot of people in my life to care for me and I have a wonderful husband to share my feelings with, and he often holds me, and he always makes me feel lucky, and in all the years we have been together I have never kept a secret from him. But I haven’t told him about this and I’m not sure I ever will. And if you try to tell me I have to, you will never hear a word from me again.

No you didn’t, you told me not to tell you what to do, and that’s fine. All I’m doing is asking a question because I am totally confused.

I’ve had a lot of people say things that could have hurt my feelings. A friend of my father’s once told me my ass was too small. A soccer coach once told me I was a pretty good player “for a rich girl.” When I worked in TV, a news director once said he was sending me on a story because I “wasn’t as likely to get hit on” as another field producer we had. I once made out with a boy all night at a fraternity party and then he called me by the wrong name. And, of course, how can we forget: I caught my husband cheating on me during my honeymoon.

The point is that I can ignore or laugh off almost any insult, but for you to tell me I couldn’t understand your situation hurts my feelings. Tell me what happened. Help me understand it. I want to be there for you but I can’t if you won’t let me.

I was turning forty, so I went for my first mammogram upon the advice of a handsome young pediatrician who once slow-danced with you and made your insides turn to Cream of Wheat. I did not expect to hear bad news, so I was completely unprepared for what I was told.

The sort that does not respond to certain treatment options, triple-negative they call it, invasive cancer, the kind that can spread. The kind that can end your life. None of it made sense. It was like a dream, a bad dream. Life was no longer in color, it was black-and-white. I could listen to my kids but couldn’t hear them. I could watch them but couldn’t see. For the first time in my life I could not feel my own children. I couldn’t feel anything.

My husband was not aware of any of this. He is a Wall Street executive and was in China for three weeks, departing the day before the mammogram. I scheduled it that way, figured I’d have nothing much to do that day. I had that wrong.

So he was in China while all of this was going on, and would be for several more days. He called twice each day, without fail, and I told him nothing of this. When he is away he takes great comfort in knowing we are safe and comfortable. He calls once in the morning and once at night, and there is simply no room for bad news.

Then I was back in the doctor’s office, and he was explaining why I would still require radiation and chemotherapy even after the lumpectomy, and the good news that the disease was confined to the breast.

“This is very simple, Brooke,” he said. “We can minimize the chances of this disease coming back. The statistics are very clear, I can show you the numbers if you like. You substantially reduce the chances of recurrence if you have the adjuvant therapy, radiation and chemo. If the disease comes back, I cannot cure it. I can manage it, but I cannot make it go away forever. So we need for it not to return, and this is the way we maximize our chances of that.”

I had only one question, but I was embarrassed to ask it, so I found something else to say instead.

“Doctor, I made a mistake when we talked before, when I told you I had no family history. That was wrong. I forgot about my grandmother. She had cancer. She died from it when she was in her late fifties.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “No one ever told me.” Because no one ever did.

“You were a teenager when she died,” the doctor said, with a quizzical look, “and no one ever told you what she died from?”

That’s when I began to cry. I said I would go home to think about it, even though the doctor was telling me there was nothing to think about.

“It may be a hard thing to do,” he responded, “but it should be an easy decision to make.”

So I sat in the tub again that day. I find myself spending an increasing amount of time there lately. Maybe because I feel a constant chill, and the hot water warms my insides. Or maybe because I feel unclean, as though something is all over me, or inside me, and nothing makes me feel more clean than a hot bath.

He was so happy to see me. He told me he felt he’d been gone for years, that he felt he’d missed so much, and I said I felt the same way. He was desperate to squeeze his children and then his wife, in that order and in very different ways, so he did and it felt wonderful to be wanted. We snuck upstairs while the kids were busy with homework and did it in the closet, with me bent across a dresser and him fighting to stifle his moans. He squeezed me tightly the entire time, and I felt it all in a way I hadn’t been able to feel anything while he was gone. And then ten minutes later I was washed up and back downstairs helping with math problems. And it was just like it was supposed to be. It was my perfect life back again. I just couldn’t spoil it, not that night. Sometime soon, perhaps, but not that night. It was a night for perfect, and there is no room for cancer in that. So that was ten days ago. And everything is pretty well back to normal. My husband wants me first thing every morning before he dashes to the train, my children need lunches fixed and hair braided and arguments settled, my dog needs walking and tenderness, and offers unwavering affection in return, and when I have time to myself you will find me in the tub, soaking in the hot water, able to feel it now, perhaps not in all of its intensity but certainly more than I could a week ago. I had a lumpectomy and it left behind a scar, nothing huge, nothing my husband has noticed yet. If he does and asks, I will tell him I had a cyst removed. But there is no space for cancer in my life and I don’t want to create any, because it would change the way things are and I don’t want them changed. I have worked my whole life to make everything perfect, and I’m not at all prepared to have cancer come in and screw the whole thing up.

And when I am alone, when I am in the tub, I alternate between crying uncontrollably and feelings of intense joy, because I have what I begged for when this all began. I have yesterday, and most of today. What more could any woman possibly ask for?

You’re an intelligent woman, Brooke, no one could construct a life as perfectly in tune with her own wishes as you have without being very smart, but maybe in the same way that I could not see how lucky I was to quickly discover my husband was a scumbag, I don’t think you can grasp how deeply in denial you are. You cannot just pretend you don’t have cancer. Life doesn’t work that way. A specialist has told you that you need chemotherapy and radiation; you can’t just overlook that because you wish it were not true. You need to get fully well, you need to do that for your husband and your kids and, most important, yourself.

Do you worry that your husband will not be able to handle this? Do you worry that it will strain your marriage? Do you worry that he won’t love you anymore? Because it almost sounds to me like you do, and if that is the case I can answer your question about what more a woman could want. A woman could want a husband who can handle this.

What on earth has given you the impression you can help me? And, while I’m at it, where on earth do you get the nerve to judge me and judge my marriage? I don’t want to remind you that one of us in this conversation has been married a little longer than the other, so it seems if there is marital advice to be given, I’m the one who should be giving it.

You don’t know me, and you don’t know anything about my life. The fact that we were born in the same town does not make us alike. I thought perhaps it gave us the ability to understand each other, but it is clear to me you don’t understand me at all.

When I was in middle school, we went on a survival trip in the woods and I sliced my hand on a tree branch. The counselors tried but could not get the bleeding to stop, and so they told me I was going to have to come out of the woods to get it stitched up. But even though I have hardly any tolerance for physical pain, I was not going to be the one who let my team down. I gritted my teeth and doused the cut with alcohol to prevent infection, refused to scream, despite a sting that would have stopped an elephant in its tracks, and stitched it up with a needle and blue thread I found in my backpack. It was not until after we had won the competition that I went to the hospital, where the doctor looked at my hand, laughed, and told me to come back in a week to have the stitches removed.

As for my husband, what you are really asking is: How wonderful can this man be if he can’t handle what is happening to me? And my answer is that I never said he couldn’t handle it. It is me who cannot handle it. There is a big difference.

So, I ask you not to reply to this message. If you do, I am not going to read it. I need some time to make up my mind how to proceed and I already know where you stand. I am not telling you I never want to hear from you again, but I am going to have to first get past the way your last message made me feel. When I have done that, I will let you know, and I will tell you then what I have decided to do, and you can think of it whatever you wish. I don’t know how long this will take, all of it is just as new to me as it is to you, so I’ll just be in touch when I’m ready. Until then, be healthy, be strong, and please leave me alone.

I am in such desperate need of someone to tell me I am all right, that the last three weeks of my life aren’t the beginning of the end of me. I am looking for someone to talk to, to understand. Do they have that here?

My name is Katherine. I just turned forty. And I just finally met the man who was going to change my life, to give me exactly what I am telling you I need now, a partner and a lover and a friend. Someone to take care of me in a way I’ve never been taken care of before. I waited all my life for him, and then a week after he showed up my life imploded. I suppose this is what they mean when they say it wasn’t meant to happen. I hate to think of it that way.

I have worked on Wall Street for twenty years, and without getting into detail I’ll simply say I’ve done very well. Money is not going to be an issue for me, even now. I suppose I should take some comfort from that, but right now comfortable just isn’t in my vocabulary. I have never been less comfortable. Never.

In the dog-eat-dog world in which I’ve lived my whole life, I have never allowed myself either of two things that I now regret. The first is weakness. I have not allowed myself any weakness at all. I have always felt that showing any sign of vulnerability would destroy me completely, and as a result I have lived in a rather solitary world. The other is that I’ve never allowed myself to get over the one man who broke my heart. Perhaps the two are related. Perhaps allowing myself to get past him would have opened the door to a new man, a real relationship, and you can’t have one of those without allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and so there we are, back at the beginning again. You can’t have love in your life if you aren’t willing to suffer for it, and so rather than take that risk I have chosen instead to suffer for a man who hasn’t loved me in two decades. It sounds so stupid, which is infuriating, because I am so far from stupid, but this is the way I have lived and that is why in addition to being afraid I am also regretful and angry. There is nothing more debilitating than regret, and no anger worse than that which is directed at yourself. And I have all of that going on now, in addition to cancer.

What happened is I turned forty and decided I needed a vacation. That may not sound like much, but I never take a vacation. I have worked practically 365 days a year every year since I got out of business school, because I never want the assholes I work with to feel like they are outworking me.

But this year I turned forty, and I went on a blind date, and I won’t bore you with the details of that except to say it was bad enough that I decided I needed a vacation. I went to the mountains in Colorado and fell in love, first with the mountains and then with a man named Stephen. I met him on a hike and then he took me to dinner. He took me not to a restaurant but to a joint, one where they served burgers rather than filet mignon, and the silverware came wrapped in a paper napkin and you ordered your drinks from a bartender, not a sommelier. Oh, and his dog came with us and waited outside. I loved every second of it. I ate burgers and french fries and coleslaw and pickles, I drank three beers and three Cokes and we played darts and watched baseball on television. When we were done, he said he wanted to show me his favorite place in Aspen and he gave me the leash and we walked, the three of us, down a huge hill toward a park just as the sun was setting over the mountain. We walked through a huge grass field where some kids were kicking a soccer ball and a group of teenagers rode skateboards. We kept going, through the soft grass, talking so easily, without awkwardness or long pauses. It was all so easy, in a way it rarely is when you are with a man you hardly know but are aching to sleep with.

We crossed a small bridge with a stream rushing past and then turned into a park, and our feet began to crunch on a gravel path that split into four directions. He pointed to the path on the left and told me to lead the way, he’d be right behind. He wanted me to see it quietly and by myself. He unleashed the dog and she ran ahead, and Stephen pointed and said, “Just follow her, she knows the way.” But I was much too conscious of how my ass would look if I walked before him, so instead I put my arm through his and said, “Let’s go together,” and we did, right into the John Denver sanctuary.

And that was when I entered the most stunningly peaceful, gorgeous, spiritual place I have ever been. There is gentle, rushing water, a trickle from the mountain stream, with large stones that you can sit on spaced deftly about a grassy field, and much larger stones standing proudly, engraved with the words to his songs. And the lyrics, if you do not know them, are beautiful, more like poetry than music.

We sat on the ground in the middle of it all and I closed my eyes and breathed deeply in the mountain air, and then I opened them and Stephen’s face was an inch from mine and he kissed me without asking permission. And I grabbed the back of his head and kissed him back, as hard as I could. We made out right there on the grass, with just enough sunlight left to see and the sound of the stream in our ears. And I thought to myself that I’d never had sex in a public place, but if that’s where this was headed I was in. I absolutely would have done it right there. I would have done anything he wanted, with no concern at all for what anyone might see.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. He kept kissing me for a while and then he scooted closer and wrapped a big arm around my shoulders and squeezed me. He felt so strong, so very good. His hands smelled a little of ketchup and his breath smelled a little of beer, and his shirt smelled as though he had sat in front of a whole lot of campfires in it, and he just held me that way until it was too dark to see the lyrics carved into the stones anymore, and then he kissed me again and popped up to his feet.

“What do you think of it?” he asked, looking around, and I knew he meant the sanctuary but I was referring to absolutely everything when I responded.

I surprised even myself with my answer: “You can take me anywhere you want.”

He lives in a stunning house on Red Mountain, with startling views, immaculate décor, and a fully lived-in vibe. When we entered, he excused himself to go to the bathroom and as I waited I decided I wanted to marry him. I ran at him the instant he came back. There was never any chance we would make it to a bed.

I was still floating when I left in the morning. Veritably floating. It was almost ten when we piled into his jeep and went back into town, and he dropped me off with a long kiss and said he’d call me late in the afternoon and I knew he would.

I picked up a warm chocolate croissant and café latte from the Main Street Bakery and savored them as I floated back to my room, where the moment I had most been looking forward to was waiting for me. My girlfriend, who was traveling and staying with me, had not heard from me since I’d texted her the previous afternoon that I had a date.

She’d replied: IF U DON’T CUM BACK 2NITE I’LL KNOW U’RE EITHER GETTING YOUR HEAD CUT OFF OR YOUR BRAINS FUCKED OUT!!!

Well, I threw open the door as loudly as I could, hoping she’d be exactly where I found her, seated in the living room, reading a trashy magazine.

“I’m back, sweetheart,” I said, loud and sassy, “and my head is still on!”

I told her the entire story, and I think she was even happier for me than I was for me. And, really, is there anything better than that? If there is, I can’t think of it. I can’t think of a single time in my life that I was happier than I was right then, telling my friend Marie every detail of the fabulous sex I had just enjoyed, while drinking the last of my latte and tasting the butter and chocolate on my lips. What more could you ask for?

That is a meditation I have taken great comfort in over the years. I have strived to live by those words, used them as a beacon during my dark moments, but I had never really felt I had achieved them until that day. That was the day everything would change, because finally I was filled with loving-kindness, I was peaceful and at ease, I was happy. The only trouble was I wasn’t well. I just didn’t know that yet.

I went back to New York to quit my job, tidy up my affairs, and move back to Aspen for good. Maybe I would marry Stephen, maybe not, but either way I would hike and ski and ride horses and meet other men if this turned out not to be the right one. I was ready. I was expecting to be back in Colorado within two weeks.

When I arrived home, my first appointment was with my therapist, who applauded loudly when I told her my plan. I think she had a tear in her eye; I know I did.

“This is the best decision I have ever known you to make,” she said, “regardless of how it turns out. I will miss you very much, but I hope we will never see each other again.”

Before I left her office, I mentioned, almost off-handedly, that my back had been bothering me, more and more of late, enough that it was beginning to interfere with my exercise. I told her I’d been putting off seeing a doctor because I feared it was some sort of nerve issue or degenerative disc, which might require surgery, which would keep me off my treadmill for longer than I thought I could bear, but now the pain had risen to a level where I felt it was going to limit me sooner rather than later.

“Go see your doctor before you leave New York,” she told me. “Start your new life without anything like that hanging over you.”

I saw my doctor the following day. She said I needed to see a physical therapist, that I could probably get an appointment before the end of the month.

“No, Sheila,” I told her, “I’m leaving town much sooner than that, and I don’t plan to be back for a while. We need to figure this out right now.”

She told me she didn’t think there was any way to figure anything out so quickly, but in the interest of skipping a step or two, she would take X-rays and send me for an MRI. She also wrote me a prescription for a painkiller, which she described as “Aleve on steroids,” and told me to take one if the pain got in my way. I took two that night, with a glass of white wine, and fell asleep looking forward to quitting my job.

I woke up feeling great. The painkillers were magical; I hadn’t felt so loose in months. I ran effortlessly and without pain on my treadmill for forty minutes before breakfast. I had a noon appointment with the radiologist, which left just enough time to summon my CEO and offer my resignation. (I should tell you that I was more eager for the opportunity to tell him to his face that I was finished than I was anything else. That’s a long story. A good one, by the way, filled with sex and betrayal, but I don’t have time for it right now.)

“I need to see Phil immediately,” I announced to his troglodytic assistant, loudly enough that anyone in the hall might hear.

“Oh, um, well,” she said, along with a lot of other meaningless words people use when they are startled and helpless.

“That’s insightful,” I said bitchily. “Just push the button and tell him I’m on my way in.”

What happened next was like a scene from a bad sitcom. The assistant, Danielle, rose from behind the desk and started to run to the door that separated her small office from the huge one she was there to protect. I was closer to the door than she was but she had a fairly good angle of pursuit and she wasn’t fooling around. In fact, she would have beaten me there had it not been for the five-inch heels on her Jimmy Choo Lizzy Leather pumps. (I’ve worn those and trust me they are not meant for running.) The woman took three quick steps toward me and then went sprawling face-first into the carpet, landing with a thump directly between me and the door. All I had to do was step over her, which I did with great relish.

But before I did, I knelt beside her. “Everything you may have heard about Phil and me is true,” I hissed, with a smile, “and if you already knew that but insisted on torturing me all these years anyway, all I can say is fuck you.”

Then I went inside and told the man who almost ruined my life that I wasn’t working for him anymore. Now, you tell me, can a day possibly start any better than that?

I AM FEELING A little tired and a little sad at the thought of writing about what happened next. If there is anybody out there who wants to know, I will tell you. Write to me. I see there is a Person2Person feature here. If you use it, I will, too. I could use someone to talk to, someone who understands, someone who knows a little bit about days that start really well but don’t remain that way. Because right now I feel like I’m the only one.

I’m here to listen. I’m here to cry with you or laugh with you, whichever you need. I’ll be here on the lousy days and on the better days, and I promise you there will be those. And I will be here on the day you come out the other side of this, as I have, and I can promise you it is an even more glorious feeling than you imagine it to be.

My name is Samantha. I was first drawn to your profile because we are from the same town. I grew up in Greenwich, though I haven’t actually lived there since high school; I’m twenty-eight now. My life story isn’t so interesting, not nearly as much as yours. I don’t have a dreamy man waiting for me in Aspen, or anywhere else for that matter. I was married once, but that was brief and ended badly. I was diagnosed a few months after my marriage dissolved, and at the time I was feeling healthier, both physically and spiritually, than I ever had before and I am headed back to that now. In fact, I am going to be better for this. I actually believe this is going to wind up being a wonderful blessing in my life.

You see, nothing I have done has ever felt especially significant. I have been supported by my father all my life, and for a short time by my husband, and nothing I have done ever felt as though it really mattered.

I was diagnosed with noninvasive cancer in my left breast. I was given a few options but immediately chose to have a double mastectomy and reconstruction. I wanted every shred of the disease out of me, and I was perfectly comfortable going to those lengths to assure it. When I woke up from the surgery, the first face I saw belonged to a nurse I had grown to like, named Jenny, a cute young woman, no older than me, maybe a year or two younger. She was kind and reassuring and made me feel like everything would be all right. I told her so before they wheeled me into the operating room and she smiled and promised me she’d be sitting by the bed when I woke up and sure enough she was. And she smiled at me, and as soon as I saw her dimples I knew it had gone well. And her first words to me were: “Congratulations. You no longer have cancer.”

I can’t repeat those words without crying and I don’t think I ever will. I’m choking up now as I type them. But what I decided that night, in that bed with those words still in my ears and the tears still on my cheeks, was that somewhere in the midst of this I had found my calling. I want to dedicate myself, however I can, to making other women feel the way I felt then. I don’t know all the ways that is possible yet, this is all new for me, but this is my start. I read the message you posted and here I am. What I am offering you is whatever I have that you need. An ear, a shoulder, a ride to the doctor’s office, or the hospital, or the airport, or a Broadway show. If I am able to make one moment of this suck a little bit less for you, I will feel I did my job.

It’s a modest plan, I know. I think of it as a support group without the group. Right now there is only me. I reached out to one other woman here, also from Greenwich, and we had a nice exchange for a while and I’m hopeful that we will go forward together, but for right now I am a group of one inviting you to make it two. How to do that is fully up to you.

I am moved by your compassion and the generosity of your spirit. As a rule, I don’t have a whole lot of faith in the intrinsic decency of mankind, but you have taken a step toward changing that tonight. It may have been a small step for you, but it was giant for me.

I spend almost no time in Greenwich these days. My mother is still there, rattling about the halls of the house in which I grew up. Honestly, it feels more as though she haunts the place than lives in it. My mother has become the sort of person you can sometimes forget is in a room. It’s not the most cheerful time when I see her, and thus I hardly ever do.

I live in Manhattan and quite nicely, though I was—and am—ready to chuck all of it and dash to the mountains. I was about to do it. I was so excited.

The first thing I discovered is that I am a tad claustrophobic. I don’t know how better to discover that than lying still in a tube like a sausage with the walls closing in while a horrific clanging deafens you. So that was pretty terrible. I just kept telling myself it was temporary, that I just needed to breathe and keep my eyes closed.

I went home after forty minutes of cylindrical torture and treated myself to a really fine bottle of wine, and waited to hear why my back was hurting me so. I was prepared for nerve damage, disc trouble, stress-related muscle fatigue, arthritis, even a tiny broken bone in a place I couldn’t find with my fingers. In fact, now that I think of it, I believe that is what I was expecting, a broken bone. An arduous rehabilitation. An admonishment to back off significantly from all my exercise. I drank a toast to my treadmill and how little I was going to miss it. So long as I could climb the occasional mountain, I was sure I would be fine.

Then the phone rang, and a voice on the other end said, “Katherine, I need to see you tomorrow.”

What’s funny now is that I didn’t recognize the voice at first. I thought it was Phil, my CEO, to whom I had resigned earlier in the day. I cackled into the phone at the very thought. I thought he was calling to say he needed me back, the firm could not survive without me, to remind me of the tens of millions of dollars in stock options I was leaving on the table, and oh by the way his wife just left him (which she did) and he realized it was, in fact, me he’d loved all these years and he was begging me to marry him.

Then the voice continued, “There are some things on your MRI that concern me and we’re going to need to get you to see an oncologist.”

But the gravity of the moment did not strike me so quickly. I hardly ever get sick, so I really don’t speak doctor. I suppose I was aware that an “oncologist” meant “cancer,” but I didn’t put it together quite so quickly.

“What are we looking at, doc?” I asked, still thinking it was back trouble. “Something serious?”

That was when I knew we weren’t talking about a herniated disc. I sat down and watched my knees begin to shake. I was gripping the phone really tightly. I didn’t want to let go, and I didn’t want to stop talking, either. I would be alone the moment he hung up and I really didn’t want to be alone.

“We need to talk now,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “You’re scaring me.”

“Okay, that’s fine,” I told him. “Then all you need to do is tell me right now this isn’t something very serious and I don’t need to be that worried about it. Because, frankly, calling me at six o’clock in the evening and scaring the living shit out of me and then going on about your day isn’t my idea of bedside manner. If this is serious, doctor, I want to know and I want to talk about it right now.”

“I have concerns, Katherine. No one is saying you are dying,” he said. “I’ll be outside the Madison Avenue entrance in ten minutes.”

A half-hour later, Dr. Armitage walked into my apartment with my driver behind him. My eyes went right to Maurice. I wanted to see his face, the way I always look at a flight attendant if there is trouble on an airplane. If the attendant looks calm, all must be well, right? But Maurice never looked at me, never lifted his eyes off the ground. He just shuffled to a chair and sat quietly, staring at his feet.

“I asked Maurice who your closest friend is,” the doctor said. “He said it was him.”

“He’s right,” I said, though the words caught in my chest. “Why does he need to be here?”

“We need to talk about what we found on the MRI, and some of it might get a little complicated,” he said. “Having another set of ears is always helpful.”

“Just tell me,” I said. “This drama has gone on too long. I can’t wait anymore.”

Dr. Armitage took off his glasses. “We see some things that concern me,” he said, “some abnormalities. It appears to be some kind of tumor on your spine.”

There was a lovely gentleness in the way he told me. Even though his expression was stoic and I was aware that he was making a speech he probably makes every day, there was still kindness in his voice.

“It is quite unusual for a tumor to arise in the spine,” he continued. “These things typically come from other places, most frequently breast cancer. Either way, I think you need to see an oncologist right away. I’ve spoken to my friend Dr. Richard Zimmerman, he’s the best in the city. He will be able to see you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m going to give you something for the pain and something for your anxiety, and the best thing you can do is try to relax tonight as best you can. And call me if you have any questions at all.”

Maurice did. “Doctor, she has a prescription for Ambien. More than anything I think it would be best for her to sleep tonight. Would it be all right if I gave her one of those?”

“Absolutely,” I heard the doctor say, but I was already fading away. I would have slept without the pills. And I did, right there on my sofa, with all my clothes and jewelry and makeup on. Maurice didn’t move me, though when I woke up I found myself tucked beneath a soft blanket with a pillow from the bedroom beneath my head.

The next afternoon I met Dr. Z, the kindest man in the world. He explained to me, in his heavy Brooklyn accent, that he became a doctor because his beloved mother died of breast cancer and he decided, at her funeral, to dedicate his life to helping other women fight the disease. And I thought to myself that sometimes you meet the best people in the worst of circumstances. I wish I’d known that a long time ago. It doesn’t make any of it better, really, but in some ways it does.

After Dr. Z’s introductory speech, he brought out the MRI results and laid them on a table. Then he asked me to remove my shirt and bra and gave me a breast exam.

“Did you notice this lump?” he asked, as he kneaded an area just to the side of my right nipple.

I was too ashamed to tell the real answer, which was that I hadn’t noticed it at all. I know I’m supposed to give myself breast exams, but I do not, never have. I know that is stupid, but if you think about it it’s no more stupid than wasting twenty years of my life pining for a man. We do a lot of stupid things. That’s what I was thinking as he continued to manipulate my boob between his thumb and forefinger. For a really intelligent woman, I do a lot of stupid things.

Dr. Z leaned back when he was done and pulled off his eyeglasses. “Okay,” he said, his tone unchanged, nothing to read into at all, “here’s what we need to do. We need to get some blood work, we need to do some more tests, we should biopsy your breast lump, and we may need to do some other biopsies as well.”

“I’m sorry, doctor, but I thought we were worried about my spine and my bones.”

“Most cancers start somewhere else and they travel,” he said. “For example, it’s very uncommon to have liver cancer. Usually, cancer of the liver starts somewhere else, like in the breast.”

“So in this case, what you’re telling me is I have breast cancer that has spread to my bones?”

I thought I saw just a little bit of emotion then. He seemed to swallow especially hard before he answered. “That’s what we need to find out. We’re going to send you for a biopsy, we’re going to get a CAT scan of your chest and belly, and we’re going to do a bone scan. You’ll be back by the end of the week and we’ll go over the results.”

I could go on and on about the subsequent tests I took and the chalky fluid I drank and the Ambien-fueled nights that passed, but there isn’t really much point in any of that. By Friday I was back with Dr. Z and he was telling me, in a matter-of-fact tone, that I have breast cancer that has probably spread to my spine.

What was amazing about that moment was that I had no reaction whatsoever. You know how when you see someone in a courtroom be pronounced guilty and sentenced to life in prison, they don’t ever seem to scream or cry or even flinch? I’ve always wondered how they manage to remain so stoic, but now I understand. It is because they already know. Just as I did. I knew what Dr. Z was going to tell me before I set foot in the office.

“What I’m saying is that you have a disease we cannot cure,” he said. I could tell he’d made this speech many times. “That does not mean we can’t treat it, we can often treat it for years, but based on what we know now this is not a disease that we can cure.”

“You should know, Katherine,” he went on, “that miraculous progress is being made in research every year, every day, every hour. We will treat this, we will make this as comfortable as we can for you, we will see to it that you will live your life however you choose to, and we will be comforted by the fact that five years ago there was a lot less we could do for you than we can today. And by that, I mean that there is every reason to believe that next year there will be more we can do, and even more the following year. So that is the game we are playing.”

I closed my eyes and asked, “How much time do you think we have to play it?”

“Okay, then I’ll tell you that if you are asking me when you are going to die, I will tell you that if I knew I would arrange right now to take that day off, because there’s a lot of paperwork involved. And then you’d smile—just as you are right now—and I’d tell you I’m not giving any thought to when you are going to die. The only thing either of us needs to be thinking about is how you’re going to live.”

So, Samantha, that is my story. I haven’t been back to see him yet. I will go, probably tomorrow or the next day. I just haven’t been able to manage it yet. I haven’t been able to do anything. I haven’t left my apartment, have hardly eaten, barely slept. I can’t really describe the way I feel. But I can tell you that I’m afraid I can’t do what the doctor is asking. Because I am so alone. I don’t have a husband, a boyfriend, a sister, or a priest. I can’t involve Maurice in this. He’s a wonderful man but he’s my driver, and I can’t put all of this on him. You can’t ask people who work for you to do things like this, because the truth is you don’t know how they really feel about you and it’s probably better that way.

And while I don’t know if I can face this alone, I know I would rather try that than involve my mother. I haven’t told her a word of this and I don’t plan to. If I die, she’ll find out when someone invites her to the funeral.

So, what I’m saying is that I just don’t know that I am ready to go back to the doctor and hear all of it and ask the questions and get the answers and begin the treatment all by myself. I’m sure I will change my mind tomorrow or the next day. I’ll go back because I have to. But it would be a lot easier if there was someone with me. To take notes. And ask questions I don’t think of. And maybe hold my hand. No one has held my hand in a long time. I know we have never met, and so I am a little embarrassed to say this, but right now I think you may be the best chance I have. Probably because you’re the only chance I have. So if you want to meet in the city tomorrow, maybe I could buy you lunch and we could talk, and who knows what might happen next.

SAMANTHA

I HOPE I DIDN’T do too blatant of a double-take when the maître d’ led me to the table. It’s just that if you had given me the choice of any of the women in the restaurant—Michael’s on the East Side—I think Katherine would have been the last one I’d have guessed. She looked so healthy, so well put together, she didn’t look at all unwell or uncertain, or un-anything. She isn’t a beautiful woman but she is striking, and younger than I expected.

“I’m Katherine Emerson,” she said, rising, as I approached. She had a deep voice, not masculine, more like she might sing opera in her spare time.

She extended her hand and I shook it. Her grip was firm, the way my father shakes hands, but when it was time to let go she didn’t. She held my hand a beat longer than I know she normally would have. That’s what having cancer does. It makes you hold someone’s hand a beat longer than usual, no matter how fabulous you look.

“It’s funny,” I said, as I sat opposite her at a sunny two-top with a gorgeous centerpiece of white lilies, “I feel as though I should be saying that to you. I know that makes no sense, but somehow I feel like I’m the one who should be grateful.”

I laughed a little. Katherine did not, she didn’t even smile. Actually, she didn’t look like she smiled much, even before she had cancer.

“Here’s my story,” she said. “I’m a single woman. I quit my job the day I was diagnosed, literally the same day. The timing of that didn’t work out so well for me, but there isn’t much I can do about it now. I had plans to go out West to be with a man I just met, and that doesn’t seem to be in the cards now either. In a nutshell, I am all alone and I have to deal with this, and something inside of me is saying that if I don’t have someone to encourage me, then at some point I’ll just decide it isn’t worth it. So, I guess that’s what I’m looking for, someone to tell me it’s worth it on days when I’m not so sure.”

I heard a clinking sound and thought for a moment someone had dropped some change on the ground, then I realized it was Katherine’s silverware. Her demeanor was placid, her voice calm, her facial expression stoic, but her fingers were in a frenzy. She was puttering with the left side of her place setting, the forks rolling frantically in her hand, and I don’t think she even realized it, or heard the clinking, or anything. It made me think of when I was a little girl in the country and my father and I saw ducks swimming on the pond, and my father told me ducks were his role models.

“Their feet are paddling like crazy beneath the surface,” he said, “but you’d never know it.”

I reached out and put my hand over hers, and I heard her breath catch. She let her hand go limp beneath mine, and when she looked up again into my eyes, she was entirely different.

I hadn’t realized it at first but she is a small woman. I suppose I didn’t notice because her appearance is so striking, her presence so magnified, but everything about her is small. Her hands are tiny, her fingers as narrow as tightly rolled dollar bills. Her facial features are small, her eyes, her teeth. And, looking closely, I had a sense her shoulders ended a long way before her blouse began. She was what my mother would have called “petite,” and with my hand on hers, her face told me she didn’t mind that I knew it, even if few other people did.

“Let’s talk about something else,” I said cheerily, giving her hand a squeeze and then taking mine back. “There’ll be plenty of time to figure all the rest of this out.”

“You know, I always wondered what I was missing by working all the time,” she said, slurring only slightly. “I realize now I wasn’t missing anything. Trips to Paris, London, Aspen, maybe, but you can’t do that all the time. This week I have been sitting in my apartment watching television. I have over eight hundred channels and there isn’t a single thing worth watching.”

“The people?” she exclaimed. “They are the worst part! I have to believe the stupidest people in the world are the contestants on these game shows. Because if there are actually stupider people out there, we are doomed as a civilization.” She refilled her glass.

“Please.” She took a gulp of wine. “I was watching Family Feud this morning, the old version, when Richard Dawson used to kiss all the women—which is so gross, and could be a whole other reason I hate game shows—but anyway, after this woman gets finished kissing Richard Dawson he asks her to name a country in South America, and she says ‘Spain.’ And I’m thinking, ‘All right, she’s not Magellan, but it’s not the end of the world.’ Then her idiot brother is next in line and Richard asks him to name a country in South America and he looks up, totally cross-eyed, with an expression like a dog going to the bathroom, and he says: ‘You know what Richard? I really thought she was right, I’m going to have to say Spain too.’”

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said, shaking her head, though I could see my laughter was contagious, it was spreading toward her, and then she started to chuckle too. “I guess it is funny, if you think about it.”

“It’s hilarious,” I said, “and it’s so sad. I feel sorry for the people on those shows, they try so hard. It makes me cry sometimes.”

“I see,” she said, shaking her head. “Well, we’re going to get along just great.”

“That’s right,” I said, using the linen napkin to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes. “We’re going to be BFFs.”

What is there not to like? She’s a sensitive, sweet, intelligent person. If she were a man, I would have fallen in love with her before the cork was out of the second bottle. Maybe I did anyway. Maybe you can fall in love with someone without wanting to make love with them. If you can, then I did. I fell in love with Samantha the first time I met her.

The only thing I told myself before she arrived was that I would have to be fully honest with her. It seems the time for playing games in my life is over, and even if it isn’t, there certainly isn’t anything to be gained by playing them with her. So I would answer her questions with truthfulness, whatever they might be, rather than the defensive posturing that has characterized pretty much every relationship of my adult life.

When finally we had stopped laughing over the tragic game-show contestants, I sighed deeply and tried to steer the conversation back to what I really needed to talk about with her. “I have been doing a little research on the Internet about the disease. There is so much out there that I feel somewhat overwhelmed. I don’t know what’s credible and what’s not.”

“I did the same thing,” Samantha said. “I felt the same way. I was all over the place. The truth is I got the most out of the social sites, like message boards and Facebook.”

“I’m not even on Facebook. I think that’s why I’m always behind on all the gossip,” I said. “I don’t know why I haven’t signed up. I guess I just figured if I haven’t heard from you in twenty years it’s probably for a reason.”

Samantha laughed at that, but I didn’t. That wasn’t honesty. That wasn’t what I promised myself I would bring to this lunch. That was my typical use of humor as a defense mechanism, and what good was that doing me here?

“Actually,” I said, glancing away, “that isn’t the reason. In all honesty, I think I never signed up because I was afraid no one would friend me. Even now I don’t want to go on and talk about my diagnosis. I guess I’m afraid there’d be no one who cared.”

I kept my gaze away, waiting for her reply, but she didn’t say a word. It was quiet for so long I finally had to look at her. She is a very pretty girl. Her eyes are deep blue and she has the sort of cheekbones people would pay anything to have surgically implanted. But her best feature is her compassion, her humanity. You can see it in her face. It oozes from her.

I cleared my throat a time or two. I was afraid I might begin to cry. I wanted to keep talking but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Not at all,” I said. “Just talk to me. Tell me about yourself. All I really know is that you weep during game shows, and, frankly, if I’m going to put my life in your hands I’m going to need to know more than that.”

She seemed to get my sense of humor, which is nice, because I happen to think it is my best quality. Not when it is being used to deflect or to compete, in those cases my humor probably does me more harm than good, but in the right moments saying something funny is the best thing you can do for a conversation. I could tell Samantha could appreciate that.

Then, to my shock, she told me the story of her ill-fated marriage. I hope my genuine reaction wasn’t evident in my face, meaning I hope my jaw didn’t actually hit the table. It all just seemed so unlikely, so unlike the woman Samantha is. She seems so stable, so together. I don’t know what type of person you expect to have her marriage annulled after three days, but whoever that is she is the opposite of the woman who was sitting across from me.

“All I can say,” I told her, when she finished her story, “is that this guy has got to be one of the most irretrievably stupid people on the planet to let you get away. And while I realize I barely know you, I mean that from the bottom of my heart.”

“I’ve never been married,” I told her. “I was close one time. At least I thought I was, maybe I wasn’t as close as I thought. Actually, my history with men is something of a horror show. You’re either going to laugh or punch me when I tell you some of the crap I have put up with.”

I took a deep breath. “Well, I once was dumped in the midst of a session with a couples therapist. I suppose being in couples therapy before we were married should have been a sign, but somehow I missed it. Another time, I cooked dinner for a guy, he arrived, we had sex, then he broke up with me, then he asked if he could still stay for dinner because if he left he would hit traffic, and I let him.”

“Then there was the time I tried to break up with a guy and he talked me out of it, and we went home and had sex and then, while he was smoking a cigarette in my bed, he told me I was probably right and we should break up.”

She was laughing again. Not the contagious, hysterical way she had earlier, but the knowing laugh of a woman who understands what complete scumbags men can be.

“But I didn’t almost marry any of those. They were like buses or trains, always another coming along if you miss one,” I said. “Phillip was different. We went to business school together. We studied together, traveled together, never actually lived together but may as well have. I don’t know that he was ever in his own apartment in the two years we were together. When we were close to finishing school, he told me about another woman he had met in Cambridge, a townie. She was stunning and she was easy. Not just in a sexual sense. She was easy on him. She thought everything he said was brilliant and funny, she thought every idea he had was genius. I did too, of course, but I was his equal and she wasn’t, and he acknowledged that there was something he liked about that. She worshipped him, and it was fun to be worshipped.”

“I remember where we were sitting when he told me. In a diner, in a booth in the rear. He was drinking a vanilla milkshake and I was having coffee. I listened to every word, and then I said to him: ‘Listen, I love you as much as you will ever be loved and I will marry you this minute if you ask me to, but I am a Harvard-educated woman with plans to do exactly what you’re planning to do when we get out of here, so play me or trade me, Phillip, but don’t ask me not to be your equal.’”

“I went home and waited. Three days went by, four days, five. I didn’t hear a word. Then he called. It was a Saturday. And he said, ‘I miss you so much it aches. Can I come see you? I have something important to say.’ And I cried with joy, because I knew what it was going to be. He was at my door twenty minutes later, and he carried me into the bedroom and made love to me before either of us said a word, and in the afterglow I could see tears in his eyes and so I started to cry again and I almost told him he didn’t have to ask me, because I knew, and I loved him, and I wanted to get dressed right then and run to City Hall and get married that night and decide what to tell our families about it afterward. Then he lit a cigarette and sat up, and his first words were: ‘Christ, Kat, I am going to miss you so fuckin’ much,’ and all the blood just drained out of me. I didn’t even get angry, not immediately, or even sad. I just got small. I felt so small it was as though you wouldn’t even be able to see me, as though I practically disappeared. And in some ways I guess I’ve stayed that way for almost twenty years.”

SAMANTHA

I can’t imagine going into an office every Monday and asking Robert how his weekend was. I don’t care how much money was involved, there isn’t any amount that would make that worth it.

What I admire most about Katherine is how aware of herself she is. She has an excellent understanding of herself, and she is acutely aware of how unhealthy her life has been since Phillip and even more aware of the crisis she is facing now. She understands what she is up against, and she is strong. I could feel her strength that afternoon and I grew to admire it more and more in the weeks that followed.

Perhaps the hardest thing for a strong person to do is admit to needing help, and what I think Katherine learned during our time together was that it was not a sign of weakness but rather of great courage to accept me, to lean on me, to allow me to be her health advocate, which is exactly what I became, right there over a second bottle of Burgundy.

Three days later, we were perfectly sober as we approached the entrance to the massive complex of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where Katherine would spend two days on the nineteenth floor to have special biopsies performed, receive second and third opinions on all her diagnoses, and then begin her chemotherapy treatment program. Katherine had told me about the nineteenth floor at our first lunch. Apparently, it is an open secret among the rich and famous, like the island David Copperfield owns. It is a special floor for the world’s premier cancer patients. There isn’t anything different or superior about the treatment, the difference is in the way you are treated. Katherine told me to expect the Four Seasons, but when we arrived it felt more like a motel you’d find on a deserted stretch of road off a highway in a bad neighborhood. Even having money and knowing we would be going to nineteen didn’t save us from being caught waiting in the general area on the first floor, which was overrun with people trying to be admitted.

Katherine was anxious enough without having to wait three hours because of a paperwork snafu and a nurses’ shift change. She kept trying to quiet me down, and then I thought to myself: If she is comforting me then what exactly am I accomplishing? Why am I even here? And so I took matters into my own hands. I ducked into a supply area when no one was looking and stole a gurney. I beckoned Katherine and before she could balk I said: “Lie down.”

Then I was wheeling Katherine past the nurses’ station and past security directly to the only bank of elevators I could see from where we’d been waiting. I pressed the button and held my breath. And, to my great relief, the first thing I saw upon entering the elevator was a placard on the rear wall.

“We’re in business,” I whispered to Katherine, who seemed to be quite comfortable, stretched out on the gurney, her head resting on two pillowcases I had rolled together. “Going up!”

But then the button didn’t light up. Not when I touched it with my thumb, my forefinger, tapped it with a nail, or stuffed my entire palm inside the circle. Nothing. The doors just shut and then we sat there. It’s actually quite amazing how jarring it is to feel an elevator not move. It’s another of those things, like a refrigerator humming, that you don’t notice until it stops.

She didn’t open her eyes but she broke into a wide smile. “You’re funny, you know that,” she said. “Wake me up if we ever get to nineteen.”

We stayed in the elevator long enough for me to arrive at an idea. I unzipped my purse and dumped the entire contents on the floor. Then I kneeled down and waited, and as soon as I heard the bell chime and the doors open, I shouted, “Oh, shit!”

Two women in lab coats entered the elevator. “Everything all right?” one of them asked.

“Oh, I just dropped everything on the floor,” I said, frantically gathering my things. “Would you mind hitting nineteen for me?”

From where I was kneeling, my head was right by Katherine’s. And as I heard someone slide a card through a slot and felt the elevator begin to move, I could hear her laugh.

When we got off the elevator, a security guard had to buzz us in, which he did with only a mildly suspicious glare, and then the nurse spent ten minutes scolding me because we hadn’t followed protocol. I just kept apologizing and played dumb, happy because Katherine seemed to have fallen asleep, and also because no matter how browbeaten I was I was relieved no one asked anything about the gurney.

Ultimately, we were led into a suite that, in my wildest dreams, I would never have imagined could be found in a hospital. It was every bit as fancy as my honeymoon suite in Hawaii, with marble in the bathroom and two flat-screen televisions, comfortable leather chairs, lush carpeting, and a menu that read as though it was taken from a Fifth Avenue bistro. Cornish game hen, rosemary potatoes, sautéed broccoli, apple tart with crème anglaise, raspberry sorbet.

“Pretty swanky,” I said, as the door shut behind the attendant who’d led us in.

Katherine popped up off the gurney and strode confidently to the window. “Thanks for getting me here.”

She was in a small wooden chair, looking out over the skyline. The day was cloudy and dramatically gray above the sea of skyscrapers.

“Three grand a day,” she replied, her back to me, staring out the window. “Insurance doesn’t cover it.”

“I wouldn’t have gotten here without you,” she said, still not looking back at me.

I went over and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Pretty comfortable place to spend a couple nights,” I said.

I turned and immediately saw it, the one thing in the room you wouldn’t find in a luxury hotel. The bed. It looked like one you might find in any hospital room. I felt a lump in my throat.

“I’m going to Barneys,” I said, “and buying out the bedding department.”

“No,” she said, and put her hand on mine, held me there. “Just stay with me.”

KATHERINE

SAMANTHA SLEPT IN THE room with me that night. They made up a sofa for her with fluffy pillows and a down comforter. It looked more comfortable than the bed by the time they were through. That made me feel good. I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable.

The following morning, Dr. Z was in my room early. I asked Samantha to stay and hear what he would say, partly because my head hasn’t been right since this all began, and also because I just didn’t want to be alone.

Dr. Z reiterated the program we would begin that day, told me I would only be in the hospital a few days, and explained that I would then begin my treatments at the chemotherapy center near my apartment. Samantha, bless her, took notes the whole time. I listened with my eyes closed.

Then Dr. Z asked something that stirred me. “Katherine, is there anything you are excited to do?”

“Well, some people want to go on a safari, others want to learn to play the piano. It could be either of those or anything in between.”

A bit of panic spread through me. “Are you telling me if there is something I haven’t done I’d better hurry up and do it?”

“Not at all,” he said, and placed his hand on my foot gently, reassuringly. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I mean I like to work with a goal in mind. The next few weeks aren’t going to be a lot of fun, so if we can say, ‘Nine more days until I see a giraffe in the wild,’ it usually makes it a little easier.”

I lay back again and looked over at Samantha. She was staring at the doctor, her hair matted down where she’d slept on it, a pencil between her fingers.

“Of course. It isn’t mandatory,” Dr. Z said. “Sometimes it just helps.”

When he was gone, Samantha came and flopped down beside me on the bed. At that moment I felt as though I had known her all my life.

“Did that scare the shit out of you?” I asked. “Because it scared the shit out of me.”

“Yes, that scared the shit out of me,” she said. “But when he explained it I felt a lot better, and I believe he was telling the truth.”

She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth and her hair. It took her all of two minutes to get herself together. When she emerged she looked terrific, healthy and pretty and radiant.

“You are very naturally beautiful,” I told her, as the sun shining into the windows illuminated her from behind. “I am very envious.”

Samantha laughed. “Are you kidding? You’re twelve years older than I am and I bet people think we’re twins. You’re the one who looks fabulous.”

“Sweetheart, it takes me an hour to look like your sister. You were in and out of that bathroom in a minute. If you only gave me that much time, people would think I was your grandmother.”

“That’s not true and you know it,” she said, and rubbed her chin as though she was thinking it over. “Or maybe you don’t know it. That’s why I’m here, to make sure you do.”

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.”

“Aside from the asshole 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.”

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.

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

“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.”

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.”

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?”

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

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.

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.

“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 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.”

(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.)

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.”

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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.”

“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?”

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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.”

KATHERINE

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.”

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

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.

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.

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.

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 asshole, 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.”

“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.

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

“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 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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

KATHERINE

The words hung in the air like the echo of a firecracker. Phil was beside me, our hands intertwined, his knee touching mine. It was the closest we had been in a long time. I wasn’t going to kiss him. That was out of the question, though it didn’t mean there wasn’t a part of me that wanted to. Despite myself, despite everything that happened, I had to admit that even now he was just my type. He is strong and smart, decisive and dynamic. Perhaps he is everything my father turned out not to be. I never really thought of it that way but suddenly now I did. Suddenly now, sitting on the couch, near enough to smell the cigarette smoke in his hair and see the tiny spot beneath his jaw he missed when he shaved, I figured it out. He’s everything I wish my father had been. Oh, the money I could have saved on therapy if I had seen that before.

Anyway, Phil didn’t look so good but he still looked good. He still has those huge, strong hands, muscled from a childhood spent helping his father carry milk crates in Brooklyn. You can file the nails and cut the cuticles, but the muscles in a man’s hands will always betray him.

And I’m still a woman. Maybe that’s the most important thing I figured out sitting here. It’s easy to forget sometimes when you’re sick, when you become so accustomed to undressing in front of nurses that you stop bothering to close the door, when the attractive male doctor wants only to know how many times you’ve moved your bowels this week, when you’re afraid to fuss with your hair because so much of it remains in the brush when you do, when you take to wearing men’s boxer shorts rather than your usual underwear because they are so much easier to manage and more comfortable. I hadn’t been in my closet in three months, I realized, but as Phil held my hand I knew I would again, perhaps the moment he left. I wanted to dress like myself. I wanted makeup. I would buy that long, blond wig Samantha has been trying to talk me into. All of a sudden, Marie’s black-tie wedding party, which I’d been dreading, sounded pretty good. And, frankly, so did the idea of having sex with Phil.

But then he asked that question about his marriage, and I felt everything inside of me that had begun feeling warm quickly go cold. Gently, I pulled my hand away from his and tugged the collar of my sweater closer to my ears, and I kept my hands to myself the rest of the time we were together.

“I heard that you and Holly separated,” I said flatly. “I’m sorry I didn’t send a note but I’ve been a little busy.”

“That’s not what I mean,” he said, shifting a bit uncomfortably. “What did you hear?”

I didn’t have any desire to hurt him, I really didn’t. Despite all the horrible things I had wished upon him over the years, here was the perfect opportunity to hurt him and I didn’t want to do it. Maybe because he looked so vulnerable. Maybe that was really all I needed, not to see him suffer, just to see him in a place where he might. I didn’t need to tell him what I’d heard just to humiliate him, but the truth is the truth and there didn’t seem much point in hiding from it.

“I heard that Holly was having an affair,” I said slowly and carefully. “That was the rumor that ran around the office. But I’m aware of how inaccurate the grapevine can be, so I assumed it probably wasn’t true.”

I couldn’t quite place the look in his eyes. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Thank you,” he replied, and then paused and took a little breath. “But there’s more to the story than that.” He pulled another cigarette from the package and held it, unlit, between his fingers. “I don’t have any idea why I’m telling you this, but for some reason I want you to know. Maybe it’s because of everything that happened between us. Maybe it’s because I think it will make you happy. Or maybe it’s just because I need to tell somebody and for some reason I feel like, in spite of everything, I’m still closer to you than anybody else.”

I just stared at his face, and started to feel a little angry. After all these years, why the hell was he talking like this now?

“You’re about to become the only person besides my doctor who knows about this. There are confidentiality laws that dictate he has to keep it between us. No such laws govern this conversation, of course, but I trust that you understand I am telling you this in confidence and it will stay between us forever.”

“My marriage has been in major trouble for years,” he said. “And to tell you the truth the reason why is the same reason I chose her instead of you.”

“Holly didn’t challenge me so much,” he said. “When I took her to restaurants, she thought they were the most special evenings in the world. When I talked about going to Europe, she acted as though it would be like flying to the moon. You were different. You had more than I did coming in and just the same vision for the future as me. I felt like anything I could give you, you already expected. She appreciated it all so much more. Somehow that made her much easier for me.”

I’d heard those words before. I’d heard myself say them, but coming from him I found they left me feeling disappointed. Twenty years of my life boiled down to nothing more than this: Holly was more impressed to have whatever Phil chose to give her than I would have been.

“At first it was fine,” he continued, “because of the kids. When they were small I was always working and she was always with them, so the time we had together was usually reserved for sex. But when Daniel was ten or eleven, and Michael was away at boarding school, then it became just her and me, and there was nothing there. She didn’t push me. She didn’t challenge me. And where I once thought that made her the perfect wife, suddenly it was the opposite.”

I cut him off, sharply. “Phil, nothing about this story interests me so far, and I am having really serious doubts about it getting any better. I thank you for taking care of my money, that was a wonderful gesture on your part and even if you did it solely to assuage your own guilt over all the bullshit you put me through, I still appreciate it. And, frankly, I have come to realize in the last few months that it wasn’t you that put me through all of it anyway. It was me. All you did was dump me, and worse things than that happen to people every day. The fact I chose to let it define me for so long was my problem, not yours. And in the very same way, the fact that you chose to marry a vapid whore is your problem, not mine. So I hope you don’t mind if I don’t cry over the fact that she cheated on you. She probably saved you half of everything you own, which she would have gotten in the divorce if you had just told her to hit the road. So, it’s been great seeing you again, let’s do it again real soon. I think I’m done for the evening.”

I stood and started toward my bedroom. I was a step from escaping when he said, “Kat, I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but the truth is it wasn’t her cheating on me, it was me cheating on her.”

“I’ve been running around for years. Started probably the second year of our marriage, even though I was happy at the time. As crazy as it sounds, I just did it because I could. I kept it away from work, but that still left plenty of other options, on airplanes, in hotel bars, at health clubs. I could get any woman I wanted and I did, and I never gave it a second thought. I didn’t view it as a referendum on my marriage or my feelings for my wife or even on my own morality, it was just something I did because there didn’t seem to be a compelling reason not to.”

“Not if you’re a narcissistic sociopath, I can see that,” I said. “Go on.”

“In recent years, it changed. Not the frequency of it but the meaning. I was completely disillusioned in my marriage. I started looking for more from these other women. It wasn’t just a little flattery, a little jewelry, a lot of sex. I wanted to talk. I wanted to have dinner. I wanted it to matter, and that was when I knew it had to change.”

He paused. I turned to face him. He was still seated, looking smaller than I could ever remember. Phillip is a big man, in every way. But not on that couch. Not today.

He continued, “The question was, what to do? I wanted out, but getting out was going to cost me about a hundred million bucks. And then, before I could figure it out, I noticed this thing on my dick. Just a little thing, you know, like a pimple. It got bigger and bigger in just a couple of days and then—”

“I finally went to the doctor and, of course, it was herpes. The doctor asked me how I thought I got it and I told him I had no idea. And he asked what I meant by that and I said it could have been five or six different women, and he asked if one of them was my wife and I said that was probably the least likely.”

Phil ignored me and kept going. “I asked the doctor what I should do and he said I had better explain to my wife how it happened because she was about to find out anyway. And I told him she would probably leave me, and he said: ‘Phil, unless you can convince her that she was the one who gave you this, I’d say you’re completely fucked.’ And it was like a lightbulb went on over my head. I went straight to the bar at the St. Regis and had three drinks, and then I went home and started screaming at her: ‘How could you do this to me? I trusted you and now I’m totally humiliated!’ I tried as hard as I could to convince her I had no idea how else I could have gotten this disease and I laid it on thick. And after about ten minutes of nonstop cursing, I’ll give you one guess what she did.”

He smiled. “That’s exactly right. She broke down and told me she’s been sleeping with her tennis pro for two years, and she’s apologizing like crazy and begging my forgiveness, and I’m drunk enough that I sort of forget how we got there in the first place, so I’m yelling, ‘You bitch! You betrayed me!’ And right there in the living room I told her I wanted out of the marriage, that I would make sure she and the boys were always taken care of but that if she went after any of my money I would let the whole world know what a whore she is.”

He was breathing heavily, that smoker’s wheeze. I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t. I was genuinely speechless. I just walked over and sat next to him again on the sofa.

“Not proud,” he said, “that isn’t the right word, but I’m happy that it’s over, and I’m happy it didn’t cost me half of everything I have worked my whole life for.”

And there was nothing else to be said. I reached over and touched his cheek, left my hand there for a moment, and then I got up and walked away.

“Thanks again for the money, Phil,” I said over my shoulder. “I need to get some rest. You can see yourself out.”

SAMANTHA

He offered to come into the city, couldn’t have been nicer about it, said all the right things about not wanting to inconvenience me and how he comes in all the time and how many more options there are, but I wanted to. It had been too long since I’d eaten dinner in Greenwich. And something about eating dinner in Greenwich with Andrew Marks sounded especially good. It sounded like going home again. Which they say you can’t do, only they’re wrong, you can go home again a little, and this night seemed like the right time.

I borrowed a car from my old boss. I realized, as I slid behind the wheel, that I hadn’t driven a car since I’d been back from Hawaii—you don’t drive much living in New York—then it dawned on me that I hadn’t driven a car while I was in Hawaii either. Nor in L.A., where Robert had a driver who delivered us everywhere we needed to be. So, as I eased into the light traffic on the West Side Highway, I figured I hadn’t driven a car since the last time I was on some shoot somewhere, a year ago at the very least, maybe more. How very strange.

Greenwich has changed since I was a girl. There’s an Apple store where the Gap used to be, and there’s a new restaurant in the space that was occupied by that little Italian place I loved with the tables where you sat outside, the name of which I can’t remember anymore. The auto dealerships are still in the same place, though I think some of them have changed brands. The little movie theater is gone and there’s a multiplex at the other end of town. It’s all a little different, but it’s also the same. My favorite pizza shop is still where it used to be, with the statue in the window of the man in the white suit flipping the dough over his head. The florist at the beginning of Main Street is still open and, in fact, seems to have grown. And, of course, the hospital is still standing proudly at the end of town. I drove straight there and parked and just walked around for a little while. Of all the places that made my hometown feel like home, this was the most important.

The restaurant Andrew suggested was one I used to go to all the time on my birthday or my parents’ anniversary, a special-event sort of place. My mother loved it. I remember the chairs seemed so big I would sit with my feet curled beneath me like I was on a couch. My father took me a few times after Mother died, too, but mostly I remember how sad we were then, and how people would stop at our table and say hello and tell us how sorry they were and wish us well. I guess that was why we stopped coming. But I always liked it anyway. You can’t hold it against a restaurant that you spent a few sad nights there. It wasn’t the restaurant’s fault.

I gave my car to the valet and stood out in front for a moment, taking it all in. The awning outside was new but the place looked just as I remembered. The maître d’ was wearing a tuxedo and he looked familiar; I think he was the maître d’ the last time I was here. I’m not positive, but I think so. Either way, he greeted me graciously and escorted me to my table, where Andrew was waiting.

Much like the auto dealers and the shops and the town itself, Andrew looked the same but a little different. His hair was still wavy and chestnut brown, but thinner, and his shoulders were still broad but he didn’t stand as tall or stiffly as I remembered; he stooped a little, as though being so tall had become an inconvenience over the years. He still had that smile, relaxed and confident, and his teeth were terrific, and his eyes alert and energetic. He was a very handsome man, even if he wasn’t the high school basketball star anymore. It would have been silly to expect him to be that anyway; none of us are the high school basketball star anymore.

It would also have been silly to expect the sight of him to make me feel just as it did the night he asked me to dance, not because he wasn’t the same but because I wasn’t. Your heart doesn’t flutter like that of a fourteen-year-old girl’s when you aren’t fourteen anymore. It was as though I was expecting him to appear before me and suddenly we would be in high school again, and the Bee Gees would start playing and we would dance and it would be exactly as it was. That was an unreasonable expectation—that’s the part they mean when they say you can’t go home again. You can’t have the music and the dancing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a perfectly lovely time.

“What made you choose pediatrics?” I asked. We were drinking a very crisp white wine, which he’d ordered in French.

“I always knew I’d be a doctor,” he said. “I spent so much time in the hospital as a kid, it felt like home. I’m sure it was the same for you.”

“As for the specialty, I originally considered surgery. I spent two years in the ER and I hated it. The hours are ridiculous and the drama is off the charts. The work is fulfilling but I was emotionally spent every day. I think I would have had a nervous breakdown before my thirtieth birthday. With pediatrics the hours are reasonable and the calamities are few and far between. Plus, I like the kids. Some of them I’ve treated since they were a day old. And you get to know the families. That is probably the best part, you really become a part of the community. I think I know half the moms in town.”

Our entrées came and we ate quickly, and we laughed some more, it was relaxed and easy and fun. It was as though we had been the best of friends, which was strange, because in truth we had not. We hadn’t really known each other that well in high school, or afterward, but we were from the same place. That can go a long way sometimes.

Our plates had been cleared and Andrew was sloshing red wine in his glass when a different look came over his face, as though he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure about it. It was the same look he had that night, forever ago, when he stood before me and wanted to dance to a slow song but struggled to ask.

It wasn’t really a question, not technically. It was a statement, but there was a question connected to it even if he didn’t ask it.

Life is funny sometimes. It throws you curveballs at the most unusual times. One minute you’re rekindling romantic feelings with a boy you adored in high school and the next you’re forced to explain why you were married for three days to a man who will very likely someday be the governor of California.

“I didn’t mean to bring up an uncomfortable subject,” Andrew said, looking concerned he had ruined the mood. “I just wondered if I had heard that wrong. You know how the grapevine can be. You don’t have to go there if you don’t want to. I’m sorry if it’s a bad subject.”

“It isn’t,” I said, “there’s no big secret or anything. I was married, briefly, to the wrong man. In retrospect, it was a good thing that it happened the way it did. I could have wasted years of my life with him; instead I only wasted a couple of days.”

I meant that. I wasn’t sorry and I didn’t want him to be either. He looked very concerned that he had spoiled the evening, while I was only concerned that there wasn’t anything I could say to ease his mind. And then I thought of something.

“I have a much bigger regret than that in my life,” I said. “Do you want to know what it is?”

I leaned closer to him. “I really regret that I never got to find out if you are as good a kisser as you seemed like you would be.”

THE FIRST WORDS OUT of Samantha’s mouth when I answered the phone in the morning, ahead of any greeting, with a whirring sound I could not immediately place in the background, brought a huge smile to my face.

“I love it,” I replied. “I don’t even care what the question was, I just love when the answer is yes.”

“The question was, is Andrew Marks as good a kisser as he looks like he’d be. You asked me that once and I couldn’t answer it. I can answer it now.”

I dropped onto the sofa and curled up and she started talking. I love stories like these. She said they went from the table to the bar, then to another bar for a nightcap, and then, both too drunk to drive, called a taxi to take them to Samantha’s father’s house. At that point, a hint of an icy feeling went through me. I cut her off.

“You’re just driving home now,” I said, horrified. “You spent the night with him, didn’t you?”

She laughed and laughed, assuring me that her promise not to have sex with him on their first date had remained intact. I didn’t believe her at first, I’m still not sure I do, but I can’t very well call her a liar, there isn’t much point in that.

“In fact,” she went on, “one of the things we talked about was whether or not this could truly be called a first date, considering we had what was sort of a date one time before.”

“The statute of limitations on this sort of thing varies from situation to situation but in no case is it thirteen years,” I told her. “That means if you had sex with him last night he is within his rights to assume you are a slut.”

“Brooke,” she said, sounding a bit annoyed, “I cannot have this conversation with you if you are going to have this attitude. I have no reason to lie to you about this. I didn’t sleep with him and that’s the end of it.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I listened to the wind whizzing by. It sounded like she was flying down the expressway.

She didn’t have to think about it for even a second. “He remembered the song.”

I knew what she meant, but I asked anyway, mostly because I knew she’d love telling it even more than I’d love hearing it.

“We were talking about that night when we danced, and I told him it was the first time I had ever danced with a boy, and he made a joke about hoping he had been gentle, and it was all very comfortable, and then he started talking about the things from the night that he remembered, and when he got to the part about the music slowing down, I thought to myself there was no chance he would remember the song. But he did. He said: ‘When “How Deep Is Your Love” came on . . .’ and honestly I have no idea what he said after that, I just leaned in close to him and said: ‘I wanted so badly for you to kiss me that night.’ And we stood up and he held me just the same way, and we made out standing there in my father’s living room.”

“Samantha,” I told her, “I’ve heard a lot of stories, but that is the most romantic first kiss of all time.”

SAMANTHA

I forget who said that, but I read it somewhere, and it’s true. This morning, the light is just right everywhere, and everything is fabulous. The sunshine reflecting off the Hudson River as I passed the George Washington Bridge, in particular, was gleaming with endless possibilities.

On these sorts of days, even a chemotherapy center seems brighter, cheerier, and it helps when the patient is in good spirits, which Katherine clearly was. I could tell the moment I arrived. There was a twinkle in her eye, almost as bright as the sun on the river. Something had happened, and she was excited to tell me, but first she wanted to know about Andrew.

As I recounted, in intricate detail, every second of my evening and long night, I found myself looking around the room more than I ever have before. I’ve been in this center with Katherine more times than I can count, but I suppose I have usually been so focused on her that I’ve blocked out everything around us. I haven’t paid much attention to the large, open room with the lounging chairs and intravenous drips positioned behind each one. Or the nurses’ station in the center of the room, and the rotation of friendly, supportive nurses, one cheerier than the next. Or the table with food and drink, pastries and finger sandwiches, juices and coffee. The food is for the visitors, but I’ve never eaten anything. Neither has Katherine; usually her treatments leave her nauseated and sleepy, and cold. She always has a large cashmere blanket draped around her shoulders and a quilt over her legs. Today I helped myself to coffee and glanced around at the other patients. Some were dozing, others reading, some were listening to music; not many of them looked sick. They looked alive, and Katherine did, too.

After I finished the story of my date with Andrew, Katherine lowered her reading glasses to the tip of her nose, like a teacher about to ask a tough question.

I shushed her and looked around. But no one was staring at us. If any of the patients had heard her, it wasn’t obvious.

“Please, Samantha,” she said, mimicking my tone, “I have more important things to worry about right now than maintaining the proper decorum.”

“To answer your question,” I said, “it wasn’t the right time and it wasn’t the right place.”

“Listen to me,” she said. “After all the history, I think doing it in your father’s house would have been the perfect place, and if he’s as good-looking as you say he is then I’m not sure there could ever be a bad time.”

“Well, aren’t we all riled up this morning?” I said. “What’s gotten into you?”

So she told me about her visit from Phillip, and the money and the herpes and his clumsy, pathetic advances, and when she was finished there was only one conclusion to be reached.

“My goodness, Katherine,” I said, “we need to celebrate, and you need a little action.”

Then it hit me. “Saturday night!” I said, slapping my forehead. “Marie’s wedding! Black tie, fancy-schmancy, perfect occasion for a little flirting. We have to shop for your outfit tomorrow.”

“It would be perfect, you’re right,” she said. I saw the arrival of the wistful look that occasionally came over her and heard it in her tone. It was the “but” in everything. That’s what living with cancer means, more than anything. There’s always a “but.”

“Well,” I said, moving it along, “I hope you’re ready to shop tomorrow, because you are going to be the hottest thing at that party.”

It looked to me like Katherine was holding back tears. “Thanks, Samantha,” she said.

That’s another way I knew she was sad. Katherine is one of those people who doesn’t use your name much when she talks to you. When she does, it usually means she’s sad.

So I changed the subject. “Kat,” I said cheerily, “I would like to ask you the single most inappropriate question in the world.”

Katherine tilted her head a little to the side, the way a dog might if it hears a sound it cannot identify. Then she leaned back in her chair and laughed out loud.

“That’s not what I mean,” she said reassuringly. “You’ll find out what I mean, and how much money Phil gave me, very soon. Long before anything happens to me.”

I DIDN’T WANT TO tell Samantha about my plans yet. There would be time for that soon. If there is one thing I have learned in two decades in the corporate world it is that the best time to announce plans is when they are complete. Anything earlier than that leaves too much room for error. So it wasn’t time to announce it yet, or even to tell Samantha. But that wasn’t far off.

First, I had to get ready for this wedding party. It was honestly sweet of Marie to make me her maid of honor, and to make such a fuss over my presence, including planning the event for the very weekend when I would be finished with my first round of treatment. Today is my last chemo for the time being—certainly not forever. I don’t know that I will ever see a day when I have no more treatments ahead, perhaps until the time when there are no more options and hopefully that won’t be any time soon. But for now I have a break, and Dr. Z told me to expect to feel great three or four days after my last round. He told Marie the same thing, and she planned her own wedding around that, and I can’t think of a kinder gesture.

But it puts a lot of pressure on me. I am assuming practically everyone I know will be at this event, all the people I worked with all these years, and almost none of them has seen me since I became ill. In that way, there is no getting around the fact that this party will be as much about me as it will about Marie. I told her as much, and I told her no bride should ever sacrifice her night that way, but Marie just smiled. And, while she won’t admit it, I think she wants it that way. She wants this night for me, and she knows if she or anyone else tried to throw this party for me I would never allow it, so in my heart I believe she has staged this, for the most part, to force me to attend. And while that is the most beautiful thing, it is also a great deal of stress for me.

I confronted her with it only one time. “Marie, I feel like you’re inviting me to my own funeral,” I said.

She was very calm. “Boss, this is my wedding night. I’m not thinking of it any other way. So you can see it however you want, but I’m asking you to do this for me.”

So now Samantha and I would spend a day at Bergdorf Goodman, putting together the most sensational outfit anyone would see all year. Hell, if this is the last time a lot of these people are going to see me, you’d better believe they are going to remember me looking fabulous.

Before we could shop, however, we had today to get through, one last afternoon of chemo, and I had been preparing for it.

“Let’s change the subject,” I said. “I came up with a few new Absolute Deal-breakers.”

“Perfect,” Samantha said, sliding her chair closer to mine. “We can apply them to some of the men you are going to meet at the party Saturday night.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is it an Absolute Deal-breaker if he named his dog after Jeffrey Dahmer?”

“I agree,” I said. “Next, is it an Absolute Deal-breaker if you are seated next to an attractive stranger on an airplane and he makes very pleasant small talk, then pulls out an iPad and watches porn?”

Samantha smiled. She looked awfully pretty today. “How much effort does he make to conceal the porn from you?”

“I feel like if he wants you to see it then he is a pervert and trying to gauge if you’re interested in something quick in the bathroom. But if he’s hiding it . . .” She thought about it for a moment. “No, you’re right, he’s out, porn on an airplane is an Absolute Deal-breaker.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Okay, I’ve got one more great one for you. I was up all night thinking about this one. How about if you’re dating a guy and you’re having a discussion about the parameters of the relationship and he asks if you would consider it cheating if he got jerked off by a male massage therapist.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s just trying to be prepared for any situation that may arise.”

“He’s out,” Samantha said definitively. “That is an Absolute Deal-breaker.”

“I figured you’d say that,” I told her, “because you’re a pretty tough judge.”

I looked at my watch. One hour remaining. The hours pass awfully slowly in this room. The days can sometimes fly by, and every now and again the minutes move quickly, but the hours are eternal. I was trying to think of another deal-breaker when Samantha mentioned a name I hadn’t heard in a long time.

You don’t forget Brooke, neither the name nor the girl. Brooke was the most social girl in Greenwich, legendarily so. We didn’t have girls like Paris Hilton in my school, but Brooke was the closest thing. She was a year behind me, and she was iconic, fashionable and friendly, and beautiful and sweet. The boys adored her, the faculty worshipped her, the younger girls idolized her, and even the girls who envied her had to grudgingly admit she had it together.

I am ashamed to admit it, but the very idea that after all these years Brooke Biltmore remembered me was a little exciting. I guess we never really do leave high school.

“Her kids are patients of Andrew’s. It’s a long story, but I met her and she seemed around your age so I dropped your name and she totally remembered you,” Samantha said.

I had to work to keep the pride from showing on my face. “How does she look?”

“That’s right,” Samantha said. “She’s married, don’t know much about her husband, but she has twins, I’m not sure how old.”

“Exactly the same,” I said. “Gorgeous, with a successful husband and perfect-looking twins.”

“You strike me as the sort of person who wouldn’t care for a girl like that.”

“You are correct,” I said thoughtfully, “but to be fair, she was all right. There was something decent about Brooke that made it impossible to hate her. She was a good person. She was much more real than the average debutante. I’m glad to hear things have turned out well for her.”

Samantha got a strange look when I said that, one that suggested maybe things weren’t as good for Brooke as they sounded, but I didn’t ask. If she wanted to tell me she would.

That’s what I mean. That’s what I liked about Brooke. Do you think Paris Hilton could tell you which girls in school were really smart? Even if Brooke had more admirers than anyone else, she still knew I was the smart one.

Now the look on Samantha’s face was even more uncomfortable, and I couldn’t read it at all. Maybe it was connected to Brooke not doing so well. I had to ask.

That feeling. The nervous gnawing in the pit of my stomach, the slap in the face, the redness in the cheeks that followed. It had been a really long time but now it was back. Because, like I said, you really never do get out of high school.

“You never told me about that,” Samantha said. She sounded hurt, and I understood. Not because she had the right to know anything she wanted, but because she felt, as I did, that we shared everything. Only I hadn’t shared this.

“It just didn’t seem relevant anymore,” I said. But that wasn’t true, not at all. When your father goes to jail it is always relevant, even if you live to be a hundred. “Do you want to know the story?”

“That came out wrong,” I said. “I mean it isn’t a lot of fun talking about it, so I never do, but it’s important to me that you know I’m not keeping anything a secret.”

I cut her off. “Sit back and relax,” I said. “It’s not a quick story.”

The story is about my mother’s brother—Uncle Edward—who was an enormously rich man and a total cretin. He made his money in real estate, buying decrepit buildings, throwing out the poor people who lived in them, tearing down the buildings, and putting up town houses. It’s perfectly legal, and I suppose you could argue he was improving neighborhoods, but I always wondered where all the poor people went. I asked him about it one time, and only one time.

My father worked for him, in a management role that left him a lot of free time, so my dad was always around when I was a girl, which was terrific. But it was pretty obvious he didn’t love his job, and the summer I turned eleven I found out why. We were at my uncle’s house in Southampton. We visited once per summer, not more and not less, and it was clear my parents never enjoyed themselves, but I certainly did. The house was sensational. It had a pool and a trampoline and my cousins had a playroom bigger than our house. I used to love it there, until the day I discovered the air vent.

It wasn’t actually me who discovered it. My eldest cousin showed it to me. His name was Richard, and I thought he was cool because he looked a little like John Travolta and because he smoked. Richard showed me an air vent in the downstairs playroom where he could sneak a cigarette, blowing the smoke into the air duct. It was genius, and utterly cool.

That year when I turned eleven, I decided I wanted to try it. I knew where to find cigarettes, my uncle kept his on the kitchen counter, and I knew where to go to smoke them. I can still remember my heart beating as I snuck two cigarettes out of the pack and tucked them into the waistband of my sweatpants, then tiptoed down the stairs. There was no one in the playroom. My father and my uncle were the only ones in the house and they’d locked themselves in my uncle’s office, telling me they needed to talk in private and were not to be disturbed.

I slid open the vent that covered the air duct and stuck my head inside, but before I could strike a match I heard voices. They sounded tinny, with a hint of echo, but I recognized them immediately and was easily able to make out what they were saying.

“After the way you’ve treated me all these years,” my father said, “if you think I’m going to get you off the hook you must be out of your mind.”

“Let me tell you something,” my uncle said. “You’ve been riding this gravy train for years. This is the first time I’ve ever asked you to do anything and you will do exactly as I tell you.”

“Or else what? Are you threatening to cut your own sister and her family out of the business?”

A few months later my father went to prison upstate, sentenced to four years for tax evasion. I never told anyone that I knew what happened, and I never read what was in the newspapers. But I did learn two valuable lessons that day. The first is that money without power is worthless. And the other is that there isn’t really anything so cool about smoking. I left the two cigarettes right there in the air duct and shut the vent behind me. For all I know they’re still there. And I never did try a cigarette, not in my entire life.

When I finished the story, Samantha was stone-faced. I could tell she didn’t know what to say.

“The jail wasn’t so terrible. Visiting him was like going to a mediocre restaurant for lunch, except that you wouldn’t normally drive upstate to eat at a mediocre restaurant, nor would you leave your father there after you paid the check. That was the worst part. It wasn’t seeing him in there that was so bad, it was getting back into the car without him when we left.”

“I hardly remember. It feels like a different lifetime, like it happened in a dream.”

That was the hard part. “He never came home. He died of a heart attack less than two years after he went in.”

“My mother has never been the same, not even close. She’ll never get over it. I suppose I won’t either. And she and I have always had trouble talking about it, because she says he did it all for me, which seems to make it okay in her mind but always makes it much worse to me.”

We sat quietly in the room, listening to the humming of the machines. Every now and again someone would laugh, or a phone would ring. There was soft music in the distance that I couldn’t recall hearing before. It was almost time to go.

“Let me tell you something, Samantha,” I said. “The lesson in all of it is that money without power is meaningless. So the lesson for you should be to stop apologizing all the time for the way you were raised and all the advantages you had. What you’re doing now is wonderful and there isn’t any way to put a price tag on it.”

“Besides,” I added, “money isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. What makes life worth living is all the wonderful things that could happen to you. Remember that.”

“Samantha,” I said. “Earlier, when I told you Brooke seemed like the sort who’d have the perfect life, I could tell from your face she does not. Right now, I could really use a story about her life that isn’t so perfect. Would you tell me?”

She seemed to think very hard. “Her life isn’t perfect, Katherine, believe me.”

Samantha put her hand up near her mouth. “I’ll just tell you this, because I don’t want to betray her trust. Brooke is one of those women who judges herself and every other woman based on the men in their lives.”

I nodded. I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear that. “Women like that have always treated me like I’m pathetic,” I said.

“Baloney,” I said. “They act as though they consider everything I have a substitute for what they have.”

That slowed me down. “I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t make any difference anyway.”

Samantha came closer and fluffed the pillow at the base of my achy back. “I think there’s a lesson in that for all of us,” she said. “Something about just needing to give each other a break now and then.”

Then she sat back down in the chair opposite mine and we waited quietly for the rest of the poison to finish dripping into my veins. It would only be a few more minutes.

BROOKE

There isn’t any need to continue talking about it all, because that only serves to defeat the purpose, which is to live. Not just to stay alive, to live. As I, and only I, define living. I don’t tell anyone else how they should define it, and I don’t ask for advice, either.

For me, happiness is the only goal I can imagine. I don’t really have any others. Some people pursue happiness in boardrooms or on mountaintops, they spend their lives negotiating and climbing, and it seems to me what they are doing is looking for happiness in the profits and the pretty views. But I don’t need to look so far away for happiness. I have it here, all around me, every day, nearly every minute. I don’t need to accomplish anything in order to feel happy. Happiness is not something I hope to discover along the way to vague, distant goals; happiness is a means to its own end. It is the destination, the only one worth striving for, at least that’s the way I see it and I tell my kids that all the time. The only thing I wish for you is happiness. I don’t care if they are ambitious, athletic, or academic. I don’t care if they want to be doctors or schoolteachers or garbage collectors; I only want them to be happy. Living happily ever after is always the best ending. Any story that ends differently isn’t worth telling, as far as I’m concerned.

So, sometimes I think to myself: How dare she try to tell me how to live my life?

Not Samantha. I love her for trying to tell me how to live my life. She’s young enough not to have learned that there are different ways of thinking, and she’s sweet enough to care. I appreciate her for both of those. I don’t get angry with her when she pesters me about my decisions, which she does less and less frequently anyway. That’s nice. Now we can just be friends. Perhaps someday she’ll meet Scott and my kids. I think she’d like that, and I would too. Perhaps we could double-date, if things progress with Dr. Marks, which I have a funny feeling they are going to.

Actually, it’s more than a funny feeling, more like a premonition. Or a matter of faith. Something good has to come from what I’ve been through. Perhaps this is what it is meant to be. Perhaps Dr. Marks and Samantha will marry and they’ll have a son or a daughter who becomes a brilliant scientist who discovers the cure for cancer, and it would never have happened if I hadn’t become sick and met Samantha and fixed her up with Andrew.

So, it’s not Samantha who infuriates me. It is cancer. How dare this disease, this creeping, crawling creature I can neither see nor feel, show up unannounced and uninvited and start dictating all this change. Cancer has a whole list of ways in which my life is going to be different, a list of things I need to do, a list of things I will never do again. Even now, when it is no longer inside me, it wants to tell me how to behave so it will never return.

Well, guess what: I’m not listening. I have my own plans and my own schedule and I will deal with cancer on my own terms, no one else’s. If I choose to drive car pools and chaperone class trips and get my hair blown out every Saturday night and talk dirty to my husband on the phone when he is away, then that is exactly what I’m going to do, with apologies to no one and absolutely no second thoughts.

KATHERINE

There really aren’t three better words in the English language than those, are there?

Even I love you isn’t always better. Hell, I’ve probably had more pain and suffering as a result of I love you than I have any three other words, with the exception of You have cancer, and even that may be a toss-up.

Right now, I’ll take I look beautiful, because it’s been so long since I’ve said them, or thought them, or even thought about them.

It starts with the wig, which is fabulous. I can’t decide now why I resisted it. It is long and blond and wavy—it’s like having Charlize Theron’s hair in the blink of an eye. And I love it.

As I stand before the full-length mirror in my dressing area, I am thrilled beyond words at what I see. For the first time I am not looking for the flaws. Usually when I observe myself in the mirror I am trying to find the faults, the blemishes, the crow’s-feet, the faint stain on the blazer where the salad dressing never fully came out. Tonight is the opposite. I am looking for the places where I look fabulous, and there are many. Not just the hair, or the wig, but plenty more. My eyes are alive and glowing. My coloring has come back—most of it, anyway—so I don’t look pale or gaunt. I am still thin, and there is a pride in my posture I have never seen before, something in the arch of my back, the rise of my chin, the heat of my stare. It says I am here. It says if I was ever gone I am back, and wherever I am going can wait. Tonight I am here, and I am wonderful to behold. And if it took cancer to make me feel this way, to allow me to see myself like this, then so be it. At least something good came of it.

When the intercom sounds, I am ready. I give myself a final glance in the mirror, and a wink, and as I smooth a tiny piece of hair above my eyes I think to myself that I really am filled with loving-kindness, and I am peaceful and at ease, and I am happy. Maybe for the first time since I was a little girl, I am truly happy.

It is Marie who is downstairs. Maurice picked her up and now they are here for me. She is stunningly beautiful in her gown, long and flowing, white in all the right places. By her standards, the dress is conservative; you can hardly see her breasts, which I have become so accustomed to seeing on full display that now I miss them.

“Well, well,” I say proudly, as I step off the elevator. “Here comes the bride.”

Marie is shivering with excitement. “You look so beautiful, Katherine, I could honestly cry.”

“Remember,” I tell her, “it is your night. This is not Katherine’s Going Away Party, this is your wedding and if you aren’t going to act like it I’m going back upstairs.”

Marie smiles. I can see tears in her eyes. “I’m perfect, boss,” she says. “You told me in Aspen that I needed to figure out what makes life worth living. Well, I figured it out, and that’s what tonight is about.”

She reaches out her hand and I take it in mine and squeeze it. She is such a sweet girl, and sometimes so much more insightful than I ever gave her credit for. I love her tonight, with all of my heart.

“It makes me very proud . . .” I start to say, but to my own surprise the words stick in my throat. If I finish the sentence I will start to cry, and I don’t want to cry, not in the lobby, not on Marie’s night.

“I love you, boss,” she says, and I squeeze her hand again, and we go out through the revolving door.

Maurice is standing by the car with the door open, smiling broadly, his hat tucked beneath his arm. It is a beautiful, crisp night, the first of the season that has truly felt like fall. That first night when you feel as though it has been a year since last you were cold. I’ve been cold plenty this year, but not like this. The air is invigorating, and I pause a long moment before I get into the car, just taking it in, looking about at all the twinkling lights of an early New York evening.

“Maurice,” I say, “there is so much beauty in this world, so much in this life that is so beautiful. I don’t know why I haven’t seen it before.”

“You’ve always seen it, boss,” he says. “You’ve just been too busy to pay attention.” If I’m not mistaken, it sounds as though there is a lump in his throat as well. “It’s wonderful to see you looking like this,” he continues. “I’ve never seen you look better than you do right now.”

And with one final glance around, I duck my head and slide into the car beside Marie.

We sit in silence for most of the drive, which doesn’t take very long. It’s only a few blocks, and traffic is light. As we cross through Central Park, a taxi pulls alongside at a red light, just outside Marie’s window, an old-fashioned checker cab, the sort I haven’t seen in years. I remember that when I was a girl my parents took me into the city to see the Christmas show once at Radio City Music Hall. We took the train from Connecticut and we had lunch near Grand Central station, egg salad sandwiches and chocolate malts, and then my father hailed a taxi and I was so excited to pull up the reclining bench seat from the floor. That was our last Christmas together, I think.

Then the light changes to green and the taxi pulls away behind Marie’s head and I lean over and put my face to her ear. “How do you feel?” I ask.

I smile. That seems right. I think if I were her I wouldn’t be able to wait either.

We emerge from the park just as the last natural light of the afternoon fades away, and the street lamps begin to flicker, coming to life for the evening. Before I know it, we pull into a circular driveway and over toward the expansive entrance of an elegant Central Park West skyscraper.

“There’s a private elevator for us,” Marie says to Maurice, pointing to a secondary entrance near the corner. “Pull up, please.”

Then we park and Maurice gets out of the car, holding open the door. The air has turned slightly colder, and I can see his breath wafting from beneath his hat, drifting into the darkening sky as he waits.

“The elevator is directly inside,” Marie says to me. “Take it to the penthouse.”

“I’d just like a minute to myself,” she says, “I’ll meet you upstairs.”

I put my hand on her leg and squeeze it, then slide outside and smooth my dress as I stretch my legs. I pat Maurice on the shoulder and motion into the car toward Marie. “If she needs anything please run and get it.”

“Of course I will,” Maurice says. “Now you go ahead up, it’s chilly out here.”

The electric doors part before me and I feel a rush of warm air, a stark contrast to the crispness of the night. When the elevator arrives I select the top floor and lean back against the handrail in the rear wall. There is a tiny, circular mirror in the upper corner of the elevator, above the buttons and the glass cases displaying the certificates of inspection. I try to see myself in it but it is too far away and distorted, as those mirrors always are, like a funhouse. I hold the rail behind me, tapping my foot, listening to the speedy hum of the floors whooshing past. Then I feel a gentle slowing and a melodious ding, and the letters PH illuminate in red.

The music begins just as the doors open directly into the apartment, as they do in mine. There is a band on a stage facing the door, seven or eight pieces, in formal dress, and as I step out of the elevator, they begin to play the song “Isn’t It Romantic.” I love that song.

The room is glowing, awash in pink and green, with a chandelier sparkling like cut diamonds, casting jagged streaks of silver and gold. The music is rich and loud and fills my ears completely, fills my head, makes me dizzy, enough that I do not notice anything unusual at first. It does not register that there is merely a dance floor and a single table where there should be rows of chairs separated by an aisle for the bridal march. But none of that enters my mind as I walk slowly toward the table, where a man sits facing away, his tuxedo-clad back broad and distantly familiar. And the band continues to play and the lights continue to sparkle and the room continues to glow and my heels make just the faintest tapping sounds on the dance floor as I approach. And I take a moment to look around, and I see there is no one else there. It is just the band and the man at the table and me.

And then, in case there is any question, I hear a clattering off to my right and a door pushes open and out of the darkness appears the golden retriever. She bounds toward me and then veers away, making an acrobatic leap, then stopping and stretching and curling at the foot of the table, just steps away. And the band continues to play, and my heart beats so fast I can feel it in my temples and hear it in my ears. And I open my mouth but no sound comes out, so I simply place my hand on his shoulder, and he looks up and smiles at me, and I realize I have seen his face a thousand times in the past three months. I have seen it every time I closed my eyes to transport myself from where I was to where I wished I could be, and now here it is and it is even better than it had been in my head. And he takes my hand and he stands, and kisses me gently on the cheek, and then he wraps his arms around my waist and we begin to dance as the band plays on and the golden retriever nods approvingly at our feet.

BROOKE

I have been meaning for the longest time to begin memorizing quotes and who said them. I love to read, and I have promised myself I will begin to do what I know other people do, underlining meaningful passages, phrases, posting them as notes on my refrigerator or bathroom mirror, or as reminders on my iPad.

The idea came to me last night, during dinner with my husband and the twins and a dear friend of the family, a darling young girl named Ashley, who grew up on our street and used to babysit for my kids before she went off to college. She is twenty-one now, and home to see her parents, and she always stops for a visit with us, and last night she sat down to a heaping plate of macaroni and cheese with steamed broccoli on the side and laughed about wonderful memories we all share.

She first babysat for us when the twins were just a year old, and she always tells them stories of how cute they were, which we all love, and the kids especially never tire of hearing of the night Megan had projectile diarrhea that grazed Ashley’s hair and splattered against the wall four feet behind her. Both kids, even now, at eight, practically fall out of their chairs at that one.

Ashley has blossomed into such a lovely young woman, poised and pretty. I view her with a degree of pride and I know Scott does as well. We both remember her when she was hardly older than the twins are now, walking up our driveway with a tray of brownies she and her mother had baked to welcome us to the neighborhood. It was our first house, and right away she made it feel like a home. When the twins came four years later, Ashley became a fixture; I cried at her high school graduation.

Anyway, we were all having the most wonderful time when Jared began to reminisce about a night none of us had ever heard about, even his sister. He remembered Ashley’s high school boyfriend, a shy kid named Eric, who frequently visited while she babysat. Scott and I were perfectly comfortable with that so long as her parents were, and they were; Eric was a sweet boy and he liked to play with our kids and when the twins were in bed he and Ashley would sit on our couch and watch television until Scott and I came home. It was all very innocent and sweet.

Well, last night over dinner Jared told us of a night, back in the days of Eric, when he awoke during the night with an upset stomach and came downstairs and saw Eric and Ashley kissing! Oh, the horror of it, he told us, as he is still of an age where he finds kissing to be repulsive, as does his sister. Scott and I roared with wine-infused laughter, and Megan made a funny face to indicate how gross the kissing must have been, and it was all very funny. Except that Ashley wasn’t laughing.

“Jared,” she said, turning a bit red, “I don’t remember that happening. You must have dreamt it.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head for emphasis, “I was awake. I remember. You were kissing!”

And then Megan was out of her chair and mimicking a make-out session, her arms wrapped dramatically around her own sides, making smooching sounds loud enough to startle the dog.

Scott, who had managed to get his laughter under control, looked over at Jared. “Was that how it looked when Ashley and Eric were kissing?”

“Well, sort of,” Jared said, his attention back to his macaroni, “only they weren’t wearing clothes.”

The words hung in the air for an instant. Scott immediately took an enormous gulp of his Pinot Noir and glanced quickly at Ashley, who was now bright red, her lips parting, no doubt to futilely insist Jared had dreamt or imagined the entire event, but before she could say a word the silence was broken by Megan, who started dancing uncontrollably about the room, smooching and laughing so hard she fell to the ground, where she continued to writhe with laughter and scream, “KISSING NAKED! KISSING NAKED!”

“Jared,” Ashley said, because she had to protest even though it was obviously true, “you are making this up. That’s not nice.”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she rolled about the kitchen floor, howling in that combination of humor and wonder of which only children are capable. She knew it was funny and she knew it was awkward, and she knew there was something about it all that wasn’t right but she didn’t really know what, or why. So the most she could do was make noise and she did that for all she was worth until Scott finally stopped it.

He didn’t shout, he almost never does, he just has a certain tone in his voice that makes it clear he is not making a request, he is making a demand. It is a tone I like a lot; I have heard it used in many settings that do not involve macaroni and cheese. Megan quickly got back in her seat and resumed eating, and Jared drank his milk, and I poured more wine into my glass and Ashley’s and I took a long sip. And it was all quiet, aside from the clanking of the silverware, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at Ashley’s face for fear of how horrified she must have been.

And then Scott started to laugh. It was a quiet laugh at first, under his breath, as though he knew it was something he shouldn’t find funny, but he did. And so did I. And as Scott began to allow himself to laugh, I did too, and soon we were both laughing hard, and the kids were too, even though they had no idea why, they will just laugh pretty much any time they can find a good excuse to. And I got up and walked around the table to stand behind Ashley and put my arms around her and squeezed tight, and to my great joy she began to laugh as well, and so we sat there, enjoying a bottle of wine, or a glass of milk, and most of all enjoying each other, my husband and my son and my daughter and their former babysitter and me, and there was so much love in the room it hung in the air like mist on a spring morning.

And so today, after I kissed my husband good-bye and got my kids off to school, I sat down at my computer and found the quote I remembered from college. It is from the play Faust, by Goethe, which I didn’t enjoy at all when I read it back then, but I’ve always remembered the concept: a man makes a deal with the devil; he offers his soul in exchange for a single moment of perfection, one moment where he feels whole and complete happiness.

If ever I to the moment shall say:
Beautiful moment, do not pass away!
Then you may forge your chains to bind me,
Then I will put my life behind me.

I printed it out and I am going to laminate the words and keep them with me. Maybe I’ll hang them on the fridge. And they won’t be the only ones. This is just the beginning. There will be other quotes, other ideas, other people who have understood me without ever meeting me, other words and phrases I will be able to summon when I need them, perhaps in church, or at a dinner party, or to impart a lesson to my kids. I can use them when I argue with Samantha about the decisions I have made, or when I am alone in the bath and questioning them myself. It just feels good to know that there are people out there who can use words better than I can to explain my life. Not that it needs to be explained, if you ask me. But it still feels good.

SAMANTHA

Up early on this Sunday to check e-mail and I hardly even mind it, didn’t need to set an alarm, even as hard as I’ve been working since we started. Something in the salty fresh air of the ocean feels so familiar, so invigorating, it makes my mind feel sharp. In the bustle of the city, I tend to wake with a foggy brain no matter how much I’ve slept. But here at the beach I feel focused and rested, even after all the wine last night, and the midnight skinny-dipping.

The house is just sensational, everything Katherine told me and more. Drinking coffee now in the kitchen I can feel the warmth of the sun as it slips between the vanishing clouds and climbs above the ocean. I can hear gulls squawking in the surf as they dive after whatever washed ashore during the night. Up the way the surfers are arriving en masse. I see three of them on the water but there must be twenty more on the beach, pulling on wetsuits; the morning is chilly, probably no more than sixty degrees out there now, going to seventy after breakfast.

Katherine left filled closets behind; I am in a silver dressing robe of soft flannel, which is hers, over silk pajamas, which are my own. I don’t like to wear her clothes, here or in the city, but now and again I make an exception. This morning it felt just right, luxurious and decadent, like a fudge sundae.

There are more than seventy e-mails waiting for me when I log in. I need to hire more staff. This endeavor has become bigger than Katherine or I dreamt it might, which is remarkable, considering how ambitious we both were from the outset. But it has become clear to me now that I need more help. Seventy is too many messages for a Sunday morning, especially one as pretty and serene as this. I would love to hire Marie, but she is due any day and the sense I get when I speak with her is that her working days are behind her. We’ll see after the baby comes and she settles in, perhaps she’ll change her mind, but I’m not going to count on it. She seems quite content. I won’t push her, but I will ask again.

I’ve never been more impressed by any person in all my life than I am by Marie. What she did, and the way she did it, constitutes the single most dynamic act of courage and love that I have ever witnessed. I told Katherine that I had nothing to do with it and that I knew nothing of it, and both of those were true, whether Katherine believed it or not. I made her a promise that I would not interfere when it came to Stephen and there is no way I would ever have disregarded my word to her.

I found out about it the same time Katherine did, the night of the wedding, when Maurice pulled the car into the driveway in front of my building and I found, to my surprise, that Marie was inside and Katherine was not. When Maurice came around to open the door for me, I gave him a questioning look.

The she he meant was Marie, not Katherine, and she did explain, right then and there, sitting in her wedding gown while the car idled in the driveway and the last of the sunlight peeked through the open window.

“I’ve done something really big,” she said. She was trembling with excitement, her hands shaking so hard she could hardly take a sip from the bottle of water she held. “I think it might be the best thing I’ve ever done. I hope so. I really, really hope so.”

She just kept saying that, over and over, staring into the distance. The sounds of a New York City Saturday night were all around us.

She broke into a smile at that, so wide it spread to us all. There was such electricity in her face it made me tingle, and while I hadn’t yet heard exactly what it was, I knew right then she was right, it was the biggest thing she’d ever done.

She told us about the first time Stephen called the office looking for Katherine. Marie did as she was told, explained that Katherine had resigned and left no forwarding information. The second time he called, the following day, she did the same. The third time, when he tried to disguise his voice and used a phony name, clumsy and nervous, Marie had tears in her eyes as she sent him away.

The following day, he didn’t call, nor the day after that. And as the days passed, and Marie didn’t have to turn away his calls, the ache in the pit of her stomach grew. It grew and grew until it grew into a memory, began to feel as though it had been in a dream, or another life. Which, in a way, she said, it sort of had.

And then a month passed and she had given up that dream and settled into the rhythm of caring for Katherine, and tending to her job, and contemplating her future, when on the third Thursday after her period nothing happened. This was unprecedented; Marie was as regular as you could be, she had never been even a day late since she was seventeen. And she knew immediately she was pregnant, knew for sure, even before the drugstore and the powder-blue tip and the week that passed before she said a word to her doctor or her fiancé. When she finally told Adam, they agreed they would be married as quickly as was feasible. They wouldn’t have a big, glamorous wedding, they both knew that, because his family thought she was a gold-digger and her family thought his family was pretentious, and there was just no need to deal with any of that. So they got into bed and made love more passionately than Marie could ever remember, and then they lay in the dark and drank sparkling apple cider out of champagne flutes and fantasized about what they would do for a wedding if their options were unlimited.

“I would have Bruce Springsteen walk you down the aisle, shake my hand, and then play ‘Born to Run’ on a harmonica,” he said.

“I would have us go up in a hot-air balloon and we could recite our vows as we watch the sun rise,” she said.

“I actually like that,” Adam said, and then he paused to think a minute. “You know, we could do that if we wanted to. Where would we do it?”

“Aspen,” she said, without hesitation, “and we’d bring an iPod and speakers and have ‘Annie’s Song’ by John Denver playing.”

And then, just like that, it all came flooding back, and she told Adam right there, that night, nude and newly pregnant in their bed, that she needed to go to Aspen to look for Stephen. She couldn’t Google him, because she didn’t know his last name, and even if she could she didn’t want to talk to him on the phone—or, even worse, over e-mail—she needed to see his face when she told him. She needed to know, for herself, if he felt as Katherine did, that they were perfect for each other. She needed to know if he was willing to fight for her, and to be there when it got hard, which there was little doubt it eventually would. And so she went, on a wing and a prayer, and Adam went too, and they took a room in the Grand Hyatt at the base of Aspen Mountain, and on the first day they hiked up Smuggler’s Mountain and waited in vain on the observation deck for a ruggedly handsome man and a gorgeous golden retriever. That night they went to Jimmy’s and sat at the bar and ate burgers, and Adam drank beer, and they looked carefully at every man that entered. Marie was certain she would know Stephen if she saw him. There was no reason she should but she was sure she would.

Around nine they gave up and walked to Main Street for ice cream, and along the way they heard music and found a jazz concert in the grassy field across from the skateboard park, so they sat and listened and enjoyed the clean air and gentle breeze. And just when it was time for bed she remembered what was on the other side of the park, and she took Adam by the hand.

The sound of the water rushing across the stones became louder as they walked farther from the music, and as they reached the gravel path and passed the sign that said JOHN DENVER SANCTUARY, the jazz behind them faded away and all that was left was the rumble of the stream and the crunching of their footsteps. And she held his hand the entire way, and was thinking of how perfect it would be to make all the most important promises of her life in this place, when she saw the dog.

She cried when she told us about her meeting with Stephen, about how she cried that night, too, and how he was exactly as she had imagined, and how he remembered every detail of his time with Katherine, including Marie’s own explicit texts. They spent a long time sitting on stones that night, and Stephen listened closely as she explained it all, including the details of Katherine’s diagnosis, her treatment, what she was facing, how she was feeling. And when she was finished, she said, Stephen never budged, didn’t hesitate, and had only five words to say.

It was over breakfast the following morning that they devised the plan and began to make the arrangements.

“And the rest,” Marie said to Maurice and me in the car that night, “is history.”

And she took another deep breath and there was silence, and then we were all overcome at exactly the same time. I reached out for Marie and kissed her repeatedly, and I held her until I felt her tears mingling with my own on my cheeks. And I heard a car door slam shut and then another open, and then Maurice slid in beside us.

“I don’t know if this is appropriate,” he said, “but I need a hug too.”

The three of us embraced for a long time, thinking of Katherine and Stephen, wondering what they were doing at just that moment. What were they saying to each other? Were they holding hands, were they dancing?

Then Maurice adjusted his chauffeur’s cap. “Ladies,” he said, “what do we do now?”

“We go to my apartment,” Marie said. “Adam is waiting with a justice of the peace to marry me.”

So that’s where we went. Maurice and I were the only witnesses. And now they are having a little girl, any minute, and they are naming her Katherine.

So I would love to hire Marie; she is a miracle worker. And there is no doubt Katherine always intended for her to be involved in what we are doing now. Maybe at some point I will be able to talk her into it.

I am joyous to know that she is in a better place, but that doesn’t change the fact that I miss her terribly. The energy in her stare, the length of her stride, even when the pain in her back was the worst and the chemo left her nauseous and dry-mouthed, it was still an effort to keep up with her when she walked. She had an amazing presence, always, on her best days and her worst. I miss every bit of it.

It was the morning after her reunion with Stephen that she first told me of her idea. I had hardly slept at all, rolling about in bed with my phone beside me on the pillow to be sure it would wake me up when Katherine called, which she finally did just after nine.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “How much do you know about my evening?”

“I know everything and nothing,” I said. “You know I had nothing to do with it.”

“I know,” she said. “You did exactly what you should have. And so did Marie. I’m blessed to have both of you in my life.”

“Don’t forget Maurice,” I said. “He cried like a baby when he found out what was going on.”

“I’m home. I need to talk to you about something. I’ve been meaning to for a while, and this finally seems like the perfect time.”

“Katherine, whatever it is can wait,” I said. “If you don’t tell me every single thing about last night in the next thirty seconds I am going to jump out of my own skin.”

She laughed again. “I will, I promise. But I need you to come over here. I’ll tell you all about it over breakfast.”

I didn’t meet Stephen right away; he was in the bedroom, asleep. Katherine told me about their evening, about the way they danced and drank champagne until midnight and then went back to her apartment where they made love and then realized neither of them had eaten any dinner so they raided her refrigerator and sat at the kitchen table and watched the sun come up. And now he was sleeping and she was not, because she had something even more important she wanted to tell me and it couldn’t wait any longer.

“Do you remember the time you asked me how much money I was worth and I said you would find out when the time was right?” she began.

And so, seated there at her kitchen table, while I drank coffee and ate a bagel with cream cheese, she told me everything. I say it that way because it is remarkable how detailed her vision was. I learned that morning that Katherine really was a genius, which I suppose should have been obvious from all her professional accomplishments, but sometimes you have to witness a genius in action to truly appreciate her.

She told me that during all the hours she had spent alone, watching chemicals drip into her veins, she had kept her mind occupied by arranging these plans in her head. In that way, she said, she spent more time and mental energy on this deal than she had on any of those she had put together on Wall Street.

“Some of those were worth a hundred billion dollars,” she said, “but in the end, that’s only money. And if Wall Street and my father taught me anything, it’s that money is meaningless. And someone else taught me that it’s what you do with money that matters.” She looked straight into my eyes. “You did.”

Katherine pulled a beautiful leather binder out of a briefcase she had by her feet and opened it to the first page. “I wrote this out because I wanted to say it exactly right,” she said. “I’ve never been very good at telling people how I feel, so it seemed much safer to me to do it this way. I hope it doesn’t seem impersonal. I promise you, whatever this piece of paper lacks in emotion, it makes up for in sincerity.” Then Katherine cleared her throat and began to read. “In the very first written connection we ever made with each other, Samantha, I told you that you had given me faith in the intrinsic decency of mankind. And, every day since then, you have exceeded that. I don’t believe it is possible for me to ever express in words what your friendship and commitment have meant to me the last three months. But I do believe I can say, without question, that I could not have made it to here without you. That sounds like a cliché, but it is actually the truth. So, I think if I were to say that you saved my life, it would be mostly accurate. And it’s very hard to find a way to say thank you for that.”

When she read on, it was in a different tone, it was her professional voice, like she was making a presentation in a boardroom.

“I have spent a great deal of time thinking, over the past few weeks, about what to do with my money. I hope to be around for a long time, but you never know what may happen, and I want all of this to be very clear. The only people I need to take care of are my mother and Maurice, so I will see they are both always secure. I plan to leave Marie all my clothes and jewelry, lord knows she needs them. And I am going to leave my apartment to you. I think you’d like it uptown, closer to the park.”

“Let me get to the part of this that matters,” she said. “The really big idea I have been working on has nothing to do with any of those. And it has everything to do with you. In another conversation we had online before we met, you told me that you considered yourself a support group without the group. Today, I am proposing that we give you the group. Inside this envelope are the founding documents of the charitable endeavor that will be my legacy, and a job offer. I would like you to be the chief executive of the foundation, with total authority to shape its vision and its mission. We are going to provide thousands of women the sort of support you have given me, and we are going to do it however you see fit.”

She closed the binder and slid it across the table. When I saw the letters emblazoned upon the front, my lips began to quiver.

“Almost all of the legal work to get us started has been done. We have a meeting this afternoon with the lawyers. You’ll need to get to know them quickly. We’ll meet with Dr. Z tomorrow. I have asked him to be our first medical consultant. And then, after that, it’s pretty much going to be up to you to figure it out. I have the utmost confidence in you, Samantha, to take this and make a real difference. To make thousands of women feel the way you did when the cute nurse with the dimples told you that you no longer had cancer. That’s your mission.”

I ran my fingers over the smooth leather cover silently. I had no idea what to say.

“It’s a little overwhelming, I know,” Katherine said, more softly now. “If you want to take a little time to think it over, I’ll understand.”

I didn’t need any time to think about anything. I stood and walked around the table and put my arms around her shoulders, and just like that my life was changed.

And what it begat has been the most fulfilling experience of my life. I am exhausted and frazzled and fully consumed by this job, and I love every second of it. I have never known what it is like to feel this committed to anything. It is rewarding beyond words, and in its own way it is freeing as well. I wouldn’t change a moment of my life the last few months, and I don’t have any other plans for the immediate future. My goal is to run this foundation until it is no longer necessary, until the day when a woman like Katherine or Brooke or me will be diagnosed with cancer and say: “Shoot, I’m going to be out of work for a week.” Or: “I hope the medication doesn’t upset my stomach.” I honestly believe I will live to see that day.

Katherine gave me the authority to decide exactly how best to utilize the enormous endowment she designated to the Breast Friends Foundation. My first idea was to provide counseling and support for patients immediately after diagnosis, so we began with that, and that is an ever-expanding goal. We also provide grants for women who have to leave their jobs, or substantially reduce their hours, during their treatment cycles. That is a complicated process but it is wonderfully rewarding. We have made a real difference; there are at least two women I am convinced would have lost their homes were it not for our assistance. So that is a big part of what we do. But I quickly realized there wasn’t any way we could justify all the dollars Katherine gave us in those endeavors alone. So, about a month into the process, I decided our primary function would be to fund cutting-edge medical research. We have already donated more than $15 million toward breast cancer research in Katherine’s name, and in the next year we should double that. Phillip Rogers, the Wall Street powerhouse who once broke Katherine’s heart, is in charge of our investments and has done brilliantly well, even in a challenging economy. His passion for this cause, and his devotion to honoring Katherine’s wishes, have been invaluable and, in their own way, heartwarming.

As for Katherine, she and Stephen were in Aspen by the end of the first week. When she said she was entrusting it all to me she wasn’t exaggerating. She said she had spent enough time working in her life, and not enough climbing mountains. She also said she thought I had climbed my share of mountains and needed to try the work.

“And,” she said, “don’t count on hearing a lot from me. My philosophy has always been to put the right people in the right jobs and then get out of their way. You are the right person for this job. I’m getting out of your way.”

She stayed true to that as well. For the first month or so, I think I heard from her twice a day. Soon enough that shrunk to once. Then, less than that. These days I hear from her about once a week, usually via e-mails, and while I miss the sound of her voice, nothing makes me happier than knowing she is in a place that brings her such joy and peace. It is a miracle to me how happy she sounds and how well she feels. She begins her next round of chemotherapy next week, and, as she has in the past, she will fly Dr. Z out to Colorado to meet with her doctors. To date, I know all of them are very satisfied with her treatment. I speak with Dr. Z quite often about foundation matters and he updates me about Katherine as much as is appropriate; I speak with him far more often than I do with her.

The last time I heard from her was three days ago. She has taken to sending me notes from the tops of mountains, mostly in the Maroon Bells, which is part of the Elk Range, where there are six peaks known as “Fourteeners,” which means fourteen thousand feet of elevation. After she told me about making the first hike of that sort, I asked Dr. Z if it was all right for her to be in such elevation.

That made sense to me, and so I am always thrilled when an e-mail comes in from her and the message says it was sent nineteen hours ago. That means she was in a place too close to the sky for cellular service. And Stephen, bless him, is always by her side. They always attach a photo, and each time their choice in hats seems to have become more and more outrageous. And, always, there is the dog at their feet.

So that’s where she is now, and I’m here in her home in the Hamptons. She has ceaselessly encouraged me to spend my weekends out here but this is the first time I have taken her up on it; there has just been too much to do in the city. But when I awoke this morning and smelled the salt in the air, it took me back, in a way that only the sense of smell is able, to Hawaii, and I thought to myself: I need to be here more. I need to ride my bicycle out here in this air, and run on the beach, and swim, when the ocean gets a little warmer. Maybe I’ll do another triathlon next year. I could set aside some time to train. That would feel great. I feel good now, but I could feel even better and that would be the way.

Maurice drove us out. He continues working for Katherine, at full salary, and I suspect he always will. They love each other, those two, and there is no doubt he misses her more than I do and he hears from her more often as well. In the meantime, he drives me around the city when I need him, which isn’t often, and looks after the house. It is easy to understand why Katherine leaned on him over the years as she did: he has an air of serenity that is soothing on even the longest days.

And so that is pretty much the story up to now. It is difficult to say for sure where it will go from here. Right now I need to go. I hear Andrew rustling upstairs. He sleeps a lot later than I do. I think I’ll run upstairs and jump into bed with him before he wakes up too much. This is our first weekend together in a while and I’ve missed him. Usually he sneaks into the city for dinner with me or I race up to Connecticut to see him. It isn’t ideal but such is life; he’s busy, I’m busy, you know how it can be. We’re having a good time. Brooke is apoplectic we aren’t talking about getting married. Actually, her disapproval is one of my favorite things; it adds an air of danger and naughtiness to the relationship, which it really doesn’t deserve. I like him a lot. I think I might even love him, but for the moment liking him is working just fine.

From: Katherine Emerson

To: Dr. Gray

Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2012

6:02:07 A.M.

Greetings from the top of the world!

Get a load of this picture Stephen just took of me as the sun first peeked over the horizon. It is about the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. That lump behind me is Florence. Cute, isn’t she?

I had to write immediately to tell you, even though I have no idea when this will actually make it to you, that I have finally figured it out and I wanted you to be the first to know. You challenged me, before I came here the first time, to discover what makes life worth living. And I thought I did. I thought what makes life worth living is all the wonderful things that might happen. I could tell you weren’t crazy about that answer when I came home, and now I know why. I realize I was wrong. I realized it just now as I felt the sun brush my cheek.

So here it is.

What makes life worth living is not anything that might happen. It is what is happening right now. It is this moment, which I own every bit as much as anyone else. It doesn’t matter how many moments I have left; all that matters is right now I am as alive as I have ever been and as alive as anyone else, and this moment belongs to me as much as it does to anyone. And that’s what it’s about, whether you have cancer or not. What makes life worth living is what is happening right now.

Not yesterday, not tomorrow, right now.

I hope you’re proud of me, and I hope you’ll come soon for a visit. Right now I need to go. Stephen just finished cooking breakfast and we have a tight schedule if we’re going to make it down in time for our massage appointments. Give my love to New York, and if anyone should ask how I’m doing, tell them I’m having the best day of my entire life.