Chapter 1

The day I was diagnosed with late-stage stomach cancer,

Cecil Harding was off diving in the Maldives with his childhood sweetheart.

"She gets a little scared in deep water, so I have to stay with her. Take some stomach medicine yourself."

After he hung up, I threw my phone, along with the sixth-anniversary engagement rings he'd given me, into the hospital's medical-waste bin.

A few days later, he booked out every big screen in the city to propose to me.

What came instead was the death certificate for the burial of my ashes.

1

When the diagnosis was handed to me, the doctor looked at me. "Miss Fox, is any family with you?"

The fluorescent light fell on the endoscopy report. Poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma of the gastric antrum, peritoneal metastasis, late stage.

From the next exam room came an old woman crying, sounding like she was begging the doctor to save her son.

And I sat on the plastic chair, my face blank, calm in a way that didn't fit someone who'd just been handed a countdown to death.

Half an hour later, Cecil's phone finally connected.

But before his voice came the sound of waves, and only then did it occur to me that it had been a long time since I'd seen the ocean.

After a moment, Cecil's voice came through, laughing. "What is it, Sonia?"

"Cecil, I'm at the hospital."

The other end went quiet for a second.

Soon a woman's soft, coaxing voice pressed close to the receiver. "Cecil, the instructor says we can go in now, but I'm scared."

Cecil soothed her under his breath. "Don't be scared. I'm right here with you."

When he spoke again, the impatience was plain. "Your stomach again?"

"It's different this time." The report was crushed soft in my hand. "The doctor says family needs to come."

Cecil sighed. "Sonia, Roberta's been afraid of deep water since we were kids. She only came to the Maldives to keep me company."

"She gets a little scared in deep water, so I have to stay with her. Just take some stomach medicine for now."

Through the receiver came Roberta Henson's light laugh, and before I could say another word, the call cut off.

I looked at the phone still glowing in my palm. The screensaver was the ring Cecil had given me.

Last month, he'd slid the engagement ring onto my finger and said that at our sixth anniversary he'd propose, that he'd give me the grandest wedding in the whole city.

Now I looked at the ring on my finger, the band cold, biting into my swollen, aching skin.

A nurse happened to wheel a medical-waste bin past just then, and the phone and the ring both went crashing in together.

The nurse startled. "Miss, you can't throw those in there."

"I understand. I don't want them." Only after I said it did I notice how badly my throat hurt. "I don't want any of it."

At the end of the hall, the attending doctor caught up with me. "Sonia Fox, your illness can't wait. Notify your family right now and get admitted."

"There's no family. I'm an orphan."

The doctor frowned. "But the surgery consent form has to be signed by someone."

I stood up. "I'll sign it myself."

It was almost funny, really.

Six years. Six years ago, I ran into Cecil outside the orphanage.

Nineteen, just aged out and gone from the home, standing at the roadside with a suitcase whose lacquer had all peeled off. I didn't know the way, and I had nowhere to go.

His car stopped in front of me. He rolled down the window. "Get in. It's raining out there."

It really was raining that day. But maybe he was only passing through, or maybe it was just a passing kindness.

I turned that one rain into a whole spring.

Over six years I moved into his apartment, cooked for him, ironed his shirts, kept track of every meeting on his schedule.

His stomach was bad, so I spent three months learning how to plan nutritious meals.

When he drank too much at business dinners, I drove out at two in the morning to pick him up.

He gave me money to spend. He gave me a "home."

But Roberta had never once disappeared from his life.

She was the neighbor he'd grown up with, and later she went abroad to study, coming back to the country every so often.

Every time she came back, Cecil turned into someone else.

One New Year's Eve, halfway through the hotpot, he suddenly took a call, didn't even set his chopsticks down before he grabbed his coat.

"Roberta's back. I'm going to pick her up."

That night I sat alone in front of a table of food gone cold, waiting until four in the morning. When he came back he smelled of a woman's perfume.

I didn't ask him why it had taken four hours.

If I asked, he'd answer, and the answer was more than I could bear.

Things like that happened many times.

On my twenty-fourth birthday, he said the company needed him. That night someone posted photos on their feed of him and Roberta at a French restaurant.

I messaged him. Three hours later he wrote back. "Sorry, Roberta just got back into the country. I had to see to her."

He didn't mean anything by it. He probably never once thought anything was wrong.

To him, Roberta was the childhood friend who needed looking after, and I was the one who could be pushed to the back of the line whenever.

Last month he suddenly gave me the rings, said he wanted to give me a grand proposal.

For a moment I almost believed it.

But the endoscopy report knocked all of it back to what it was.

My stomach had hurt for three years, and he'd never once come with me for a single checkup. Every time I said my stomach was bothering me, all he ever said was "Take some stomach medicine."

I picked up the pen and signed Sonia Fox on the surgery consent form.