that she would probably never have more children. It was just too unlikely now, with the statistics of sterility after chemo and the importance of not getting pregnant for the next five years. And by then, she'd be forty-seven. The prospect of another baby was over.
She also knew that, at forty-two, she would probably go through menopause, as a consequence of having chemo. It was still difficult to understand the words, to absorb them, to make them hers, mastectomy, malignancy, chemotherapy, nodular involvement, metastasis. It was incredible. Her entire vocabulary had changed in a month, and with it her life and her marriage. There was no hiding from what it had done to them, and to her relationship with Sam. He was completely removed from her now, in all the ways that mattered. But he wouldn't admit to it, of course. He was completely committed to pretending nothing had happened, which made it even harder. How could you fix something no one would admit was broken?
“Are you going to bed?” She looked surprised when he got undressed and got into bed after they'd gone trick-or-treating. It was only ten o'clock and neither of them seemed tired when they got home at nine-thirty.
“There's nothing else to do,” he said as she looked at him. “I thought I'd turn in early.” In the old days, that would have meant a little romance, but now she knew he'd be asleep, or pretending to be, before she got out of the bathroom, as indeed he was twenty minutes later. He just couldn't face her, or bear to deal with his “obligations.” And that was the last thing she wanted anyway. If he didn't want her, she'd rather do without, forever if she had to.
She read late into the night, she was feeling better by then. And she was going back to work on the Monday following the Halloween weekend. She had a lot of work to catch up on and a lot of organizing to do. She had two weeks until she began chemotherapy, two weeks in which to feel pretty good and do all the work she could, two weeks to get her office in order before her life turned upside down again. It was a lot to deal with.
And on Monday when she left for work, and dropped Annabelle off at school, she almost felt like her old self again, except that Sam barely spoke to her at breakfast. He never even took his nose out of the Wall Street Journal to kiss her good-bye, but she was getting used to it. And at least now she'd have her work to keep her busy, and her colleagues to talk to. The last two weeks had been the loneliest in her life, and she couldn't imagine anything worse than what had happened.
“Is Daddy still mad at you?” Annabelle asked, as they walked to school. And Alex looked down at her with interest. It surprised her that even she had noticed.
“I don't know. I don't think so, why?”
“He seems different. He doesn't talk to you much, and he never kisses you, and he looks mad when he comes home from work.”
“Maybe he's just tired.”
“Grown-ups always say they're tired when they're mad. But they're mad. Just like Daddy. I think he is. You'd better ask him.”
“Okay, Princess, I will. You were great on Halloween. Best princess in town.”
“Thank you, Mommy.” She threw her arms around her mother's neck, and Alex nearly melted as she watched her run into school with the others. And with that she hailed a cab with her right arm, and hopped into it and headed downtown. Her left side was still a little sensitive, but she felt alive again for the first time in two weeks. It had been exactly two weeks to the day, almost to the hour, since her mastectomy, and she already felt better. Comparatively, she felt great. The only trouble was she hadn't yet started chemo.
“Well, look who's here.” Liz Hascomb beamed at her as soon as she saw her, and came around her desk to give Alex a warm hug.
And when Alex walked into her office, she found flowers on her desk from Liz, and neat stacks of the files Brock had worked on and completed.
“Wow! It looks like you guys did just fine without me.
“Don't believe that for a minute,” Liz reassured her. There was a fist of messages an arm long, most of them with the information as to how the matters had been