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You were each the best gift I could give the other.
I hope you haven’t been too hard on him for keeping the news of my disease from you. It hasn’t been easy on him either. He’s struggled with this secret, and seeing his concern, his need to make everything better for me , has merely validated my decision to withhold this knowledge from you. Because if it impacted our unflappable Ben in such a way, it would surely have been an intolerable burden for you to bear.
I know you will think this is unfair. That you’ll be angry with me for a time, but I do hope that someday you will understand that protecting you has always been my number one priority. And you’ll recognize that all of my decisions have come from a place of love.
Live and love and be happy, sweet pea. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see the beautiful life you and Ben will have together. But the certainty of it brings a smile to this old man’s face and happiness to his heart.
Love you to the moon and back. Forever and Forever.
Gramps
Lilah read and re-read the words several times over but couldn’t wrap her head around the enormity of what they revealed. She just… couldn’t.
Gramps’s handwriting blurred and she felt a wrenching sob tear up through her chest. It emerged with a dull rumble of desolation.
“Oh, God. Oh, my God.” She put the letter aside and wrapped her arms around her torso, rocking herself back and forth as she tried to contain the swell of agony that threatened to envelope her and smother her.
She felt sick. She was sick… she stumbled from bed and lurched to the en-suite where she only narrowly made it to the commode and emptied the contents of her stomach.
How was she supposed to deal with this? Gramps, Ben… all the lies? How could Gramps think any of this was okay?
How?
“Lilah? Jesus, what’s wrong?” Ben’s alarmed voice jerked her out of shocky daze. She pushed shakily to her feet, flushing the toilet, and staggering to the sink where she rinsed her tear-drenched face with cold water and gargled some mouthwash.
When she felt a little more able to face him, she turned to stare at him. His eyes were concerned. His face pale.
“You knew.” Her voice was reedy when it emerged from her ice-cold lips and his gaze wavered.
“What?”
“You knew Gramps was sick,” she said, happy to hear a bit of volume creeping into her voice, as the shock began to recede to be replaced by a tidal wave of sheer rage.
“Lilah.”
“You knew. You fucking knew! Yet you still insisted we leave on that joke of a honeymoon. When he was here dying. And you knew.”
“I swear to God, Lilah, I thought we had more time. I would never have insisted we go if I knew his time was so short. He told me he was fine. He said the doctor assured him… Fuck, Lilah, you have to believe me.”
“I don’t have to believe a damn thing you say, Ben! I have no reason to. You’ve lied to me time and time again. You have zero respect for me and I’m done with you.
“I don’t care what Gramps said… I only care that he said it to you, and you kept it to yourself. Selfishly hoarded information about my grandfather like I had no right to know. I knew you were jealous of me, but I didn’t know to what extent. Did you enjoy having his ear, keeping important secrets from me like you were the grandchild and I was just some random stranger who didn’t deserve the truth?”
“No! Christ. No, that’s not how it was. I wanted to tell you.”
“You didn’t.”
“He wouldn’t let me.”
“Fuck you, Ben! Since when do you let anyone dictate what you should or shouldn’t do?”
“I let Cyrus. I respected him and loved him. He asked me to keep his secret and God help me, I did. But I urged him to tell you. You had a right to know. I told him that.”
“And when we got the news of his collapse? You couldn’t tell me then? You left me in agony all night, using my vulnerability as an excuse to fuck me instead.”
He flinched and stared at her in horror. “No, you mustn’t think that. It wasn’t at all—”
She cut him off again, having no interest in his excuses. “And after that, at the hospital when I was telling the doctor we needed another opinion, you’d met him before hadn’t you? You knew him? And you let me sit there like a fool, questioning him, doubting him, when you had all the information already, and could have shared it with me at any time, but—yet again, even at such a crucial time—chose not to.”
