A Lover's Secret (21 page)

“
What?
That he would
what?”

 “That’s what I’m calling you about.” Elizabeth sighed.
“We’ve always worried that, if we weren’t very careful, Jake would be someone
who would… determine the end to his own story.”

The connection crackled, and she lost part of what Elizabeth
was saying.

“So, now what?” Jess demanded. “Where is he? What can I do?”

“Jess,” Elizabeth’s voice cracked. “I’m not sure how to say
this.”

“Just say it.”

 “For the past few weeks, it’s almost as though Jake has
given in. Certainly, he is experiencing more pain, and while we haven’t seen
the decreased motor function that we would expect with this pain level, he is
reporting a sense that he knows he is holding it just at bay. He feels a bit
hopeless. It’s like he’s already succumbed.” Elizabeth cleared her throat.
“Just try to imagine the frustration for a man like Jake—struggling to walk, to
speak, even, eventually, to breathe and to swallow? Also, imagine that he is
alone in the world, except for his doctors, and, of course, you. Truly, there
is no way to put into words the feeling of defeat these patients endure as they
enter the advance stages of the disease.”

“So you feel he has reached these advanced stages?”

“I believe that he is starting to, and I believe that,
beyond our medication, the only reason he’s been able to hold it off for as long
as he has is because he’s always been so strong mentally. Now, I believe
that…well, that this mental fortitude is unraveling.”

Jess felt lightheaded suddenly. All she wanted to do was to
hold him. To feel his face between her palms. To wrap her body around his. To take
away his pain. “So, where is he now?” Jess asked, as her taxi pulled up to the
curb at the airport. She handed the driver her credit card, staring straight
ahead and pressing the phone tight against her ear.

“Miranda, the supervising physician, and I… we think that,
with you on board, we can help pull him back to where he was. We can prolong
his life and we can relieve his pain, at least for the time being. But before
we can save him from his disease, Jess, we need to save him from himself.”

Jess’s vision narrowed and darkened. She could see just in
front of her, but everything was swimming. Her chest constricted and she felt a
whoosh of empty space, of aloneness, all around her.  

“Just… get here, Jess. Please. Just get here as fast as you
can.”

“But you are the expert, Elizabeth. What can I possibly do?”

“To start, Jess, we hope you can help us find him.”

She swallowed hard and closed her eyes.

“And Jess?”

“Yes?”

“There’s something you need to see.”

***

Was Jake even still alive? Was he hurting? Was he suffering?
Did he think she didn’t care?

The flight attendant’s scarf looked too tight around her
neck. She kept pulling at it as she stalked up and down the aisle, grinning
widely. The gentleman in the seat beside hers turned to nod and to say hello,
and when he did, Jess saw he had an enormous tumor growing from the lymph nodes
on the left side of his neck. It was a swollen mass, at least nine inches long,
with skin stretching tight over the top. It distended his cheekbone and his eye
socket. Jess swallowed and returned his greeting, and then the man turned his
face straight ahead again, and there was no evidence of the tumor at all.
Viewing only the right side of his face, no one would ever know.

Suddenly she felt as though everyone was choking, suffering,
dying. Even she. Everyone was locked in a state of decay and there was nothing
she could do; nothing anyone could do.

The man beside her extracted a book from his bag. Jake’s
book.
Live Every Day of Your Life.
The sight of it took Jess’s breath
away. There wouldn’t be many more days for this man. She hoped that he was
happy and that he had someone, somewhere on the ground below, who would enfold
him in a tight embrace and not let go until he did.

That was all she wished for anyone now. Not to die, cold and
alone, at the base of a staircase. Not cold and alone anywhere, unaware that
Jess loved them.

While she’d waited for her plane to board, Jess had tried to
call Jake, again and again, but his phone only rang and rang. She had listened
to his outgoing message at least a dozen times, imagining his full fleshy lips
forming each and every word.

And when the plane landed, Elizabeth was there, just where
she said she’d be. Her blonde hair was pulled tightly into a bun, and her eyes
glowed a dark blue. After a quick, shaky embrace, she pulled Jess to the
nearest bench, where she pulled a letter from her handbag.

 “This was just lying on my briefcase this morning,” she
said. “That’s when I called you.”

The letter was printed in the uneven scrawl she had seen
only from arthritic elderly patients. Had it pained him to write? To form the
words she was about to read? Jess struggled for a breath. Tears stung her eyes.

E,

I am a lucky man, for I have tasted the life I’ve always
wanted to lead. Now I’m ready to let it go.

I hope that my participation in your research, however
brief, has resulted in some degree of benefit for your future patients. I know
I am one of many you have cared for, and I know that, once, I was a promising
number on your chart. I am deeply sorry for my weakness.

J

P.S. Make sure Jess doesn’t forget me. She holds the key
to many things. She will do something great in this life. Watch and see.

Jess read the letter twice more before she met Elizabeth’s
eyes.

“He was never a number on my chart,” Elizabeth said softly,
her chin quivering.

Jess closed her eyes and swallowed. “Judging from this note,
do you think… do you think it’s already done?”

“I don’t know, Jess.” Elizabeth paused, then. “I was hoping
you truly were the key to figuring out what to do here.” She took a deep breath
and continued. “It seems the stronger a person is before the illness, the
harder it becomes for them as they start to experience the final stages. We
knew, going in, that Jake was a lonely man, and maybe we shouldn’t have allowed
him to participate in the project. Maybe it was all too much for him, without
someone to share his pain with.”

“Why are you talking about him in the past tense? Why are
you talking like it’s too late?”

“I don’t know, Jess. He left this note hours ago.”

“Elizabeth. I’m here now. Let’s go. Let’s do something.”

Elizabeth swallowed hard and looked her in the eyes, then
turned away. “There’s another letter, Jess.”

Why was Elizabeth talking so slowly? Moving so slowly? Now,
when every moment counted; when every moment mattered?

Elizabeth pulled out a white envelope with Jess’s name
printed across the front in the same painful-looking scrawl. She tore it open,
surprised that Elizabeth hadn’t done so already. Surely it contained some sort
of clue.

My dearest Jess,

You deserve to be told the truth, and while it will be
too late as you read this, know that I have deep regret for the way things had
to be.

You deserved the truth from the beginning and I wanted
nothing more than to tell you, but I was selfish, and so I found that I could
not. I thought, foolishly, that I could spend a weekend with you, maybe a week
or a month or—if the fates smiled on me—a year. I thought that I could treat
myself to this final wish and then I could leave. I could leave the world a
little happier, a little more content. Satisfied. But then I got greedy. I had
to have more of you.

I’d made peace with my fate years ago. I made peace with death.
And then I reunited with you. I found you, and I wanted to live again. I didn’t
want to let you go. I didn’t want our story to end.

And that is how I ruined it. I ruined your memory of me,
with my secrecy and my fear. If I could do it again, I would tell you about the
treatments. I would tell you about my disease. My weakness. My decay. And
still, I find that I only ever wanted to be your lover, never your patient. So
I will not share the details of my condition. I will say that it has resulted
in the degradation of everything that made me who I once was and that it has
now become the end of me.

Please know that you were the bright spot of my life. You
made me forget everything, at a time when I most needed to. You made me feel like
I would live forever because, together, I think we do. I felt it the first
moment I saw you, so many years ago, then years later when I finally kissed
you, and now.

When my mind becomes quiet, images rush through. I have
loved you before, in lives long forgotten. I see you in a flowing hat and
dress, tightly corseted. You in a safari jacket. You in soft pink slippers, a
member of some royal ballet. It is your eyes that tell me.

The first time I saw them, I had a flash of recognition.
I just knew. And this gives me such great consolation, such great comfort, for
I know that as this life ends for me, it only brings me closer to the next, in
which I can love you with a body that is mended. A body that will allow me to
love you the way I want to. The way I need to.

Please remember the story of us. Take it with you through
this life.

I will always love you, Jess. And someday, in another
lifetime, I will touch you again. I will hold you again. I will feel the warmth
of your skin against mine, and I will know you by your eyes. Your eyes, which are
kind, and powerful and knowing.

Hold the stone we found together tight, and know that we
will meet again.

I am leaving everything to you, Jess, so that you may live
fast and free, or slow and bound or however you most want to live this life,
until we meet again.

Don’t forget me.

Jake

“
What were the stones that you found?” Elizabeth
asked, her eyes a steely, glassy blue.

“They were Apache—“

“Apache tears.”

“Yes.”

“The legend,” Elizabeth said, nodding, “where the warriors
dove off the side of a mountain, fell to their doom, rather than risking
capture.” She lowered her voice. “He told me that story once, too.”

Jess removed the stone from her pocket, where she’d always
kept it. She turned it up toward the light and the deep ebony color turned
nearly translucent.

Elizabeth swallowed. “He doesn’t want us to save him, Jess.
That’s what the legend means.”

“I know.” Jess felt cold, suddenly. “But didn’t you just say
that if we can save him from himself, we might be able to save him?”

Elizabeth nodded.

“Then why are we still sitting here?”

Elizabeth turned her palms upward. “Because I don’t know
where to go.”

“And he’s got
hours
on us.” Jess squeezed her eyes
shut.

Elizabeth nodded.

“Why did you wait so long? Why did you wait for me?”

Elizabeth was silent for a moment, and then she raised her
eyes to meet Jess’s. “I don’t think I can save him. I think only you can. He
loves you, Jess. You give him hope. You could tend to him, mend him. You could
do it.”

“So, where has he gone?”

Elizabeth closed her eyes. Her breath hitched.

“You know him better than I do, Elizabeth. Think.”

And then, suddenly, Jess was in the plane with him again,
her first ever plane ride and she remembered how Jake had gotten very quiet as
he told her of the bluffs. Of the cliff face where he liked to sit and watch
his feet dangle over the ocean.

Jess’s voice was tight. “I think I know where.”

When Elizabeth’s eyes met hers, they were bright, hopeful.

“He spoke of a place, right on the coast, he said, with a
hard strand of granite, hard enough to drive on. Right off the road, and then a
cliff face, going right off into the ocean. The waves crashing at the base.”

“That could be a dozen places. More than a dozen.”

“But this is a place he went. A lot. He said…” Jess winced.
“He said it was like the perfect place to launch.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened.

“I assumed he meant for BASE jumping….” She snapped her
fingers. “It had a name he described as poetic. ‘Belvedere Bluffs,’ maybe? Or
‘Bellowing—“

“Bellingham!”

“Yes! That’s it. How far from here?”

Elizabeth’s voice was low. “It’s forty minutes away. At
least. But it’s close to his house.” She was silent a moment. “That means we’re
too late, Jess. That means we’re too late.”

“We have to go and see, Elizabeth. We have to go. We have to
see.” Inside, a deep trembling had begun, starting from the core of her and
extending out, to her fingertips, out through her voice.

***

Elizabeth’s car was tiny, with leather seats and a
reflective dashboard. As they departed the airport, Elizabeth turned to her,
and Jess saw that her eyes were wide and beautiful and sad, and she saw that
Elizabeth loved Jake.

So she
was
a doctor. A specialist who had it in her
power to save someone. Many, many people. All at once, Jess knew that she would
someday do the same, and she would start with Jake. At the very least, she
would show him that he wasn’t alone. Maybe that would be worth everything. It
had been to her.

Elizabeth’s phone rang then, an old-fashioned ringtone that
reminded Jess of Grandma. “It’s Margot.” Elizabeth said, glancing at the
display. “Maybe she knows something.” She answered and muttered a series of
guttural uh-huhs. Then, in a rush, an exclamation of “thank you” as she ended
the call. Elizabeth’s face flushed, and she began to laugh. “Margot just got a
call from Jake’s attorney. Jake was there, at the office. Just now. He was
there to change his will, and he just left.”