Chapter 35

Ryan is dead.

I’m so sure of it. I’m like ninety-nine percent sure. He quit, went home, and then blew his brains out.

Yet for some reason, I’m speeding to his house as fast as I dare. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s almost certainly too late to stop him. So why am I rushing?

As I stall at a stoplight, my stomach turns again. What am I going to find when I get there? If Ryan really shot himself two days ago, his body is probably already rotting. I’m going to find a room covered in blood and brains and a rotting corpse.

And then the police will come and I’ll have to answer endless questions. And his family might show up. His mother and his sister. I’ll have to deal with them discovering that their son/brother is dead.

Maybe I shouldn’t go over there. Maybe I should just call the police now.

But it’s too late. I’m already rounding the final corner on my drive to the house that Ryan is renting. I find it at the end of the block, the lush green lawn and pleasant white-shuttered house belying the horror that may wait for me inside.

Before I can change my mind, I throw the car into park and get out. I see Ryan’s car in the driveway, so he’s definitely inside. There don’t appear to be any lights on in the house, but that doesn’t mean much considering it’s the middle of the morning. I walk up to the front door and stand there a full sixty seconds, gathering my nerve.

And then I knock.

I wait. I wait ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty…

He’s dead. I know it. He’s dead.

Forty seconds. Fifty…

Maybe this isn’t really his house. After all, this cozy little cottage is a far cry from the bachelor pad he kept back in Manhattan. It’s hard to reconcile that swanky apartment with this place. I can’t actually imagine Ryan living here . But he must—that’s definitely his red Porsche in the driveway. This is his place and he’s home. He just isn’t answering the door.

How long before I call the police? Should I just call now?

I start to reach into my purse for my phone when the door suddenly opens up. Relief floods through me for a split second before I realize that the person standing before me is definitely not Ryan Reilly. First of all, it’s a woman. She’s about five feet tall, middle-aged and sturdy, dressed in ratty clothing, and holding a mop.

“Hello,” she says in heavily accented English. “You look for somebody?”

I cling to the relief I felt a minute ago. If there’s somebody else in Ryan’s house, surely they’d notice if he were lying dead somewhere. Even the worst cleaning lady would notice something like that.

“I’m looking for Dr. Reilly,” I say softly.

“Reilly,” she repeats. She smiles pleasantly. “ Sí . Reilly is… he in here. I show you.”

My heart is pounding as I follow the woman into Ryan’s home. It’s spacious but sparsely decorated, as expected from somebody who didn’t expect to be here for very long because he assumed he’d be blowing his brains out before too long. He’s got a sofa, a dining table, and a television, but there are no photos anywhere and his one bookcase is almost completely empty. I wonder what happened to Ryan’s old apartment and all the stuff in it.

The woman leads me down a short hallway and gestures at a room. “Reilly,” she says triumphantly, pointing out the man in the room before she leaves us.

This man is not Ryan.

But I do know who he is. His name is Nick Reilly. He’s Ryan’s brother.

I met Nick Reilly several times back when Ryan and I were together. We went out for drinks and each time, Nick had too many, which Ryan said was basically what he always did. Nick reminded me a lot of Ryan—he was funny, charismatic, and too handsome for his own good.

I’d never recognize him now if we weren’t in Ryan’s house. For starters, Nick is a good twenty or thirty pounds thinner than he was back then—maybe more. And he wasn’t overweight to begin with. He’s got hollows in his cheeks and his eyes are sunken in their sockets. He’s sitting in a hospital-grade wheelchair, but he isn’t sitting still. Every part of his body seems to be moving at once. His arms are going everywhere, his legs keep shifting in the leg rests of his chair, and even his head is moving. Just watching him is exhausting.

“Jane McGill,” Nick Reilly says in a voice that’s so slurred I might not have been able to tell what he was saying if it wasn’t my own name. He tries to get up as if to greet me, but the seatbelt on his lap stops him.

I honestly want to cry when I look at Nick. He used to be so young and healthy. I can’t believe this is what his disease did to him. And so quickly . I can understand why Ryan wouldn’t want this. I get why he’d rather be dead.

“I can’t believe you remember me,” I murmur.

Nick manages a smile. He looks so old . I know he’s only six or seven years older than Ryan, but he looks like an old man. He could easily be seventy. His hair is completely gray, save for a few darker strands here and there. “Of course I remember you. Ryan… he used to talk about you all the time.”

I squeeze my hands together. “He… he did?”

“Yeah.” Nick nods. “All the time. Jane this. Jane that. Always.”

I just stare at him, unsure how to respond.

He practically forces the words out of his disobedient tongue: “He loved you a lot.”

That dizzy sensation comes over me again. He loved you a lot . I don’t know what unsettles me more. The sentence or Nick’s use of the past tense. Where is Ryan? Is he here somewhere? Or is he lying dead, God knows where? For Christ’s sake, where has he gone ?

“Jane?”

I whirl around and there he is. Ryan Reilly. Tall, adorable, and solid. Totally, one-hundred percent alive. And looking at me like he thinks I’ve entirely lost my mind.

All the anxiety I’ve felt in the last hour rushes to the surface. My stomach turns again, and this time I know with absolute certainty that I’m going to throw up. I clamp my hand over my mouth and run out of the bedroom, to Ryan’s kitchen, where I release the contents of my stomach into his sink.

After I’ve done it, I raise my head and discover that Ryan is standing over me, gawking.

“Jesus Christ, Jane,” he says. “Are you okay? ”

“I thought you were dead!” I nearly shout at him.

He blinks at me. “You did?”

“Is that so surprising?” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Man, I need a mint. “You quit all of a sudden without saying anything to me, and I know you’ve got that gun…”

Tears spring up in my eyes. I don’t know whether I’m crying because I’m relieved not to find Ryan dead with a gun in his hand or because I know that eventually, somebody will.

His blue eyes widen. “You thought I killed myself?”

“Well… yes.”

“Jesus…” Ryan tugs at the collar of his T-shirt. It’s still odd to see him wearing something besides scrubs. “I’m sorry, Jane. I didn’t realize…” He shakes his head. “I’m not going to try to kill myself. Okay? So don’t worry.”

“But you quit ,” I point out. “I thought you said you were going to work until you couldn’t anymore. And you said that once you couldn’t…”

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “That’s before I found out how goddamn tedious paperwork at the VA could be. I figure if I’ve only got one or two more good years left, I’m sure as hell not going to spend it doing that .”

My shoulders sag in relief. I can’t believe I found him here, still okay. And not just okay, but looking… well, not un happy. “So what are you going to do? ”

He smiles distantly. “I’m going to see the world. I’ve always wanted to travel, but I could never make time for it because of my career. Well, the career’s gone. So I’m going to see everything I’ve ever wanted to see.” He looks around the house. “I just needed a few days to wrap up some loose ends, like making sure my brother is taken care of. Then I’m flying out to Paris tomorrow.”

“ Tomorrow ?” I gasp. “Without even telling me?”

Ryan shrugs again. “Why would I have told you?”

Good point. Why would he have told me? What am I to him? Nothing. What was I ever to him? Not really much more than a fling. “You know,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice, “your brother told me that you loved me.”

“That’s true.” He rubs the slight stubble on his chin with the back of his hand. “I did love you.”

I snort. “Well, you never said that to me.”

“Yeah, so?” He shakes his head. “Come on. I obviously loved you. There was no point in complicating things by saying so.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you did,” I mutter. No matter what he says now, Ryan really only cared about one thing, above everything, and that was himself. Himself and especially his career.

“Jane.” He waits for a moment until I turn to meet his gaze. “You were the love of my life. You had to know that, didn’t you? ”

“The love of your life !” I burst out. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You weren’t even faithful to me!”

“ You weren’t faithful to me .”

“I would have been if you were!”

“Look,” he says, “before you came along, I’d never dated a girl more than a few months. And after you, there was nobody. I mean, nobody important. You were the only one who ever meant a goddamn thing to me.”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter. “It’s a nice thing to say, but you can probably understand why I don’t believe you.”

Ryan just looks at me for a minute, glassy-eyed, like he’s struggling with some deep internal debate. It’s so quiet that I can hear the ticking of a clock somewhere in the distance. Finally, he says, “I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I knew I had Huntington’s disease,” he says. “Like, before the symptoms started, I already knew I had it. For sure.”

I frown at him. “How did you know?”

“I got myself tested. Years ago.”

“You did?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I told him a million times to get tested, and now I find out that he actually did it? How come he never told me? “Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously,” he sighs. “It was eight years ago, actually. Right after you dumped me for Pip.” He smiles crookedly. “I decided that I had to know for sure if I had it or not. And if I didn’t, I vowed that I was going to win you back from him and marry you. But then…” He clears his throat. “Well, you know what happened.”

“Jesus,” I breathe. My knees are feeling shaky again and I cling to the kitchen counter for support.

“I’d never met another woman who made me want to know my fate before,” he says softly. “I just wish… it could have been different.”

All the times he started to say to me “I wish…” then couldn’t complete the sentence, that was what he meant. He didn’t regret his life. He just wished that he wasn’t doomed. That Huntington’s wouldn’t inevitably claim his mind and body.

I hate that this happened to him, but I’m not sorry that I ended up with Ben. If Ryan were cured right this minute, I wouldn’t leave Ben for him. Ben is my husband. He’s my soulmate. He and Leah are my everything.

I can’t help but wonder though. If Ryan’s test had been negative, if he had gotten to me while my relationship with Ben was still brand new, if he had gotten down on one knee, would I have said yes?

I don’t know. I very well might have.

“What will you do when you start to get sick?” I ask him.

He glances back at his bedroom. “Well, they won’t let me take a gun on the plane, so I’m not sure about that one.” He shoves his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when it happens.”

Or maybe he’ll change his mind about ending it all.

We hear a crash in the other room and Ryan jerks his head back. “Damn it,” he mutters. “What the hell is Nick doing in there?” He sighs. “I’ve got to go check on him. You should probably, you know, go.”

“Okay.” I bite my lip. “Will I ever see you again?”

His blue eyes meet mine. “No,” he says.

_____

I drive home after that. I’ve got another hour before my afternoon clinic, and I don’t want to be alone. I cross my fingers that Ben chose to work from home today. When I see his Prius in the driveway, I feel a flash of relief.

He’s sitting on the couch in a T-shirt and boxers, his laptop on his legs, a jar of peanut butter beside him. It’s so classic Ben that my eyes fill with tears. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? I’m sobbing at the sight of my husband eating peanut butter. This is embarrassing.

Ben looks up and notices me standing there. A surprised smile spreads across his lips. “Jane!” He tosses his computer to the side and stands up. “Hey, what are you doing home?”

I’m still struggling not to cry. “Oh, you know. Had a break in my schedule. ”

He wraps his big arms around me and I get lost in the warmth and smell of my husband. I lean my head against his shoulder and he holds me tighter. Ben gives the best hugs ever. It’s one of so many things that I love about him.

“Is everything okay?” he asks me.

The question somehow puts me over the edge. Tears spill over and now I’m crying. Actually crying. He looks startled but he keeps hugging me and kissing me, which just makes me cry more.

“Jane,” he says softly. “What’s wrong? Please tell me.”

I wipe the tears from my eyes the best I can, although most of them are on Ben’s shirt. Plus a lot of my snot. Oh well. That’s the great thing about having a husband. You can get snot all over his shirt and he doesn’t get (too) upset.

“Jane?” he says again. “Why are you crying?”

“It’s happy tears,” I tell him, trying to smile. “I’m happy to see you.”

He raises his eyebrows. He appears skeptical. “I’m happy to see you too. Um, is that all?”

“No,” I say. I take his warm hand in mine. “I think I’m pregnant.”

Ben’s eyes light up. He grabs me again in a hug, and for a moment, I allow myself to feel happy again. Except a second later, something occurs to me. And I get a horrible, sinking feeling in my gut…

Crap! I was supposed to drive Alyssa back to the railroad station.

Oh well.