I stared at her.
“Where have you been?”
Her mouth trembled.
“Can I come inside?”
I should have demanded answers there and then. Instead, I stepped aside.
“It’s terminal. Last week, the doctors said less than a few months, maybe.”
She walked into my living room, looked at the photographs on the wall, and smiled when she noticed that none of them showed a wife.
We sat across from each other. Cara folded her hands in her lap.
“I’m sick,” she said. “It’s terminal. Last week, the doctors said less than a few months, maybe.”
I heard the clock ticking behind me.
“How long?”
“I came to ask you something.”
“I’m not entirely sure.”
Then she lifted her eyes.
“I came to ask you something.”
She asked me to marry her.
I laughed. I didn’t know what else to do.
Cara reached for my hand.
“You vanish for a decade, show up dying, and ask for a wedding?”
“I know.”
“No, you do not know.”
Cara reached for my hand.
“Please.”
“Why me?”
She was so weak that I kept one arm around her waist.
She gave a quiet, bittersweet laugh and squeezed my fingers, but she did not answer.
We married two days later at the courthouse.
A court clerk found two employees willing to serve as witnesses. Cara wore a simple blue dress and leaned against me during the vows.
She was so weak that I kept one arm around her waist, but when the clerk pronounced us married, Cara smiled like the woman I remembered.
She slept with her head on my chest while I counted each breath.
Then she whispered, “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”
For five days, I lived inside an impossible mercy.
We ate toast in bed. We watched old movies. We spent quiet mornings together while rain tapped against the windows.
She slept with her head on my chest while I counted each breath.
I asked again why she had returned.
Those five days were the happiest days of my life.
Every time, she smiled and said, “Later.”
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