I didn’t know how to answer. I wasn’t used to being anyone’s favorite anything.
A few weeks later, Beatrice’s hands were trembling more than usual. Her color was wrong, and there was a faint rattle in her chest. When she caught me watching, she pulled the canvas bag closer.
Three weeks after that, an ambulance came for her. I rode along with the bag beside me. There was no one else to call.
During her hospital stay I visited whenever I could. One afternoon she patted the mattress.
“Sit, Owen. I have something to ask.”
She looked smaller beneath the thin blanket, but her eyes were as sharp as ever. Her hand, when it found mine, was warm and surprisingly steady.
“I have one final wish. I know this sounds strange, but I don’t have much time. I’ve spent so many years alone, and I don’t want to leave this world without having someone to call my husband.” The heart monitor kept its steady rhythm. “Will you marry me?”
“Beatrice…”
“Don’t answer now. Go home. Sleep on it.” She squeezed my hand. “But please don’t say no because you’re worried what people will think.”
Of course I was worried. I was thirty-four. She was eighty-two and dying.
I didn’t sleep. At sunrise I drove to the nursing home and pulled Jenna into the break room.
“Beatrice asked me to marry her. Don’t laugh.”
She didn’t. She rubbed her forehead like I’d given her a headache. “Please tell me you said no.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
“You know how this looks. A thirty-four-year-old orderly marries an eighty-two-year-old woman with no family. People will say ugly things. Management will ask questions. Your career here could be over, maybe in this whole field.”
“She’s dying, Jenna.”
“She could have asked you for a hundred things that weren’t this.”
“But this is what she asked for.” I looked down. “I don’t know if what I have to lose matters more than what she has to lose.”
Jenna sighed. “That’s your problem, Owen. You never think you have anything worth protecting.”
That stayed with me.
That afternoon I went back to Beatrice’s room. She was sitting up with a paperback, and she smiled the moment she saw me.
“You’re back sooner than I expected.”
“I have my answer. I want to do it.”
Her eyes filled. She blinked hard, refusing to let a tear fall. “Then yes?”
“Yes.”
She squeezed my hand so tightly I could feel every thin, papery finger. Under her other palm, the canvas bag rested where it always did.
A week later we were married in her hospital room. A chaplain officiated, and Jenna stood beside us as a witness without a word of protest. Beatrice wore a soft pink cardigan and the same stubborn smile she’d worn the day we met.
Most people would never understand my decision. I’m not sure I fully did. But she was lonely and dying, and giving her one last moment of happiness felt like the least I could do.
Three days later, she died peacefully in her sleep, my hand still beneath hers.
PART 3
I stood at her funeral in a borrowed black coat, empty and unsure what came next. A man I’d never met crossed the wet grass toward me, carrying Beatrice’s canvas bag.
“I’m Mr. Whitlock,” he said. “Her attorney.”
He set the bag in my arms. It felt heavier than it should have.
“She chose you for a reason. There’s a letter inside, Owen. She wanted you to read it before you make any decisions. She anticipated…”
A man in a gray suit stepped between us. About fifty, thinning hair, tight jaw. I’d never seen him, but I knew who he was before he spoke.
“You must be Owen. I’m Gregory. Beatrice’s nephew.”
“She mentioned you.”
“I’m sure she did.” He looked me up and down. “A young orderly marries my eighty-two-year-old aunt three days before she dies. You can imagine how that looks.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It never is. I’ll be contesting everything: the marriage, the will, all of it. My lawyer is already drafting the papers.” He nodded at the bag. “You took advantage of a vulnerable woman, and I won’t let it stand. If you’ve got nothing to hide, hand that over.”
