CHAPTER 12
Three months after I came home, Phedra had surgery.
The night before, she barely spoke.
We packed her hospital bag together.
Yellow scarf.
Phone charger.
Slippers.
A photograph from our wedding.
She had found it in one of the boxes retrieved from the house.
In the picture, both of us looked impossibly young.
Phedra held it up.
“You had more hair.”
“So did you.”
She threw a sock at me.
For a second, we were ourselves again.
Then her smile faded.
“What if I don’t wake up?”
My chest tightened.
“You will.”
“Damian.”
I stopped.
She hated promises nobody could guarantee.
I sat beside her.
“I’m scared too.”
She nodded.
“That’s better.”
“What?”
“The truth.”
So we told each other the truth.
She was afraid of surgery.
I was terrified of losing her.
She hated what cancer had done to her body.
I hated that I could not take any of it for her.
She worried I would eventually resent caring for her.
I admitted I worried she would never fully trust me again.
By midnight, nothing was solved.
But there were no hidden things between us.
That mattered.
The next morning, I kissed her before they took her away.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Then the doors closed.
I waited six hours.
Six hours is enough time to relive an entire marriage.
Our first apartment.
Our wedding.
Arguments about bills.
Sunday breakfasts.
The airport the day I left for Calgary.
Phedra standing behind security glass trying not to cry.
Every month I had said, Just a little longer.
I finally understood how dangerous those words could become.
Dr. Mensah appeared shortly after sunset.
I stood so fast my chair moved backward.
“The surgery went well.”
My knees nearly failed.
“Can I see her?”
“Soon.”
“Did you get everything?”
“We achieved what we hoped surgically. Pathology will give us more detail.”
Not certainty.
But progress.
When Phedra woke, she looked exhausted.
I held her hand.
“You’re here,” she whispered.
“So are you.”
A week later, pathology brought more good news.
The response to treatment had been strong.
Additional therapy would still be needed.
Follow-up would last years.
But Dr. Mensah used a phrase we had once been afraid to imagine.
“Your outlook is encouraging.”
Phedra cried.
I cried.
Dr. Mensah pretended not to notice either of us.
Around the same time, the financial case reached another turning point.
Investigators completed a major review of Selina’s accounts.
The final numbers were worse than Naomi originally estimated.
Of the money I had sent during Phedra’s illness, thousands had gone toward home renovations.
Thousands more to Godfrey.
Luxury purchases.
Vehicle payments.
Business debt.
The medical spending remained painfully small.
Some assets were ordered sold or preserved for restitution.
Godfrey agreed to plead guilty to several fraud-related offenses in exchange for cooperation and restitution obligations.
When Naomi told me, I felt strangely empty.
“Aren’t you relieved?” she asked.
“I thought I would be.”
“Justice rarely feels the way people imagine.”
“What does it feel like?”
She shrugged.
“Usually paperwork.”
That made me laugh.
Godfrey requested permission to send me a letter.
I agreed.
His letter was shorter than Selina’s.
Damian,
I was jealous of you.
I read the line twice.
He admitted he resented my job in Canada because relatives praised me for supporting the family.
He wanted his auto shop to prove he could become successful without me.
Then he accepted my money anyway.
He said Selina made stealing feel temporary.
Borrow now.
Replace later.
Nobody loses anything.
When Phedra became sick, Godfrey admitted he saw her treatment costs as a threat to his business.
There was no excuse.
He did not offer one.
The final paragraph surprised me.
I knew putting Phedra in the shed was wrong. I helped carry the mattress. That is the thing I am most ashamed of because no one forced me to do it.
I lowered the letter.
Phedra sat across from me.
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe he’s ashamed.”
“That’s not the same as changed.”
“No.”
She nodded.
“What will you do?”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t want to answer?”
“Not yet.”
That was another lesson I had learned.
Forgiveness did not have to arrive because somebody apologized.
An apology could be accepted as information.
Nothing more.
The settlement money finally moved after months of secure verification.
Not into Selina’s account.
Not into Godfrey’s business.
Not even directly into mine.
With professional advice, part went into conservative investments.
Part covered expenses and debts related to Phedra’s care.
We purchased a modest house near the hospital.
Two bedrooms.
A small garden.
A kitchen Phedra loved.
No granite countertops.
She laughed the first time she saw it.
“After everything, you bought a kitchen with cheap counters.”
“I have trauma around granite.”
She laughed so hard she had to sit down.
We sold my share of the old family house eventually.
The sale was complicated by legal proceedings and Selina’s ownership interest.
I expected grief when the papers were signed.
Instead, I felt relief.
My father’s memories were not trapped inside walls.
I still remembered him teaching me how to hammer a nail straight.
I remembered his laugh.
I remembered carrying bricks.
Selling the house did not sell him.
The shed was demolished before the property changed hands.
Phedra asked to be there.
I worried it would hurt.
She insisted.
We stood behind the safety barrier as workers pulled down the rusted roof.
Metal crashed.
Wood broke.
Dust rose.
Phedra did not cry.
When the last wall fell, she released a breath.
“Ready?” I asked.
She nodded.
We walked away together.
At our new house, she planted sunflowers beside the kitchen window.
“They’ll get too tall,” I told her.
“That’s the point.”
Weeks later, green stems pushed through the soil.
Phedra knelt beside them in the morning sunlight.
Her hair was growing back.
Her strength was returning.
The court case against Selina still waited ahead.
Nothing about our future was guaranteed.
But for the first time, we were building something with money no one had stolen and choices no one else controlled.
Phedra looked over her shoulder.
“You coming?”
May you like
I stepped into the garden.
This time, when my wife called me, there was nothing in the world powerful enough to keep me away.
