The honesty was worse than a lie.
“And now?” I asked. “What do you expect from me?”
“For now, sit beside Ethan. Speak to him. Read to him. Make the world believe this marriage is real enough to satisfy the trust.”
My pulse quickened. “And if he wakes up?”
Vivian’s expression changed so subtly that most people might have missed it.
But I did not.
“If Ethan wakes up,” she said, “everything changes.”
“Is that what you want?”
For the first time, Vivian looked away, toward the river beyond the glass.
“I want my grandson back.”
There it was.
Not warmth, exactly.
But something human beneath the polished stone of her.
Before I could ask another question, she slid a folder across the table.
“You’ll need to sign these.”
“What are they?”
“Household permissions. Medical confidentiality agreements. Personal security protocols.”
I opened the folder. The language was thick, formal, designed to intimidate. But one paragraph caught my eye.
Spousal authorization in the event of cognitive responsiveness.
My fingers tightened around the page.
Vivian noticed.
“Ethan’s wife has certain rights,” she said.
“Rights you needed me to have.”
“Yes.”
“Because Jason doesn’t.”
A small silence.
Vivian put her glasses back on. “You may be more useful than I expected.”
It was not a compliment.
But in that house, it was close.
Over the next three days, I built a strange life around a man who could barely move.
Every morning, I sat beside Ethan’s bed and read the newspaper aloud, skipping the society pages because they annoyed me and the finance section because I did not understand half of it. Mara showed me how to moisten his lips, how to adjust the angle of his pillows, how to massage his fingers so the joints would not stiffen.
In public, he remained unchanged.
In private, he listened.
One finger tap meant yes.
Two meant no.
No movement meant he was tired, uncertain, or unwilling to answer.
It was not much of a language, but it became ours.
“Did you like classical music before all this?” I asked one afternoon as a piano concerto played softly from the speakers.
Two taps.
“No?” I smiled. “Then why do they play it?”
One tap.
“Yes, there’s a reason?”
One tap.
“Vivian likes it?”
Two taps.
“Your doctor?”
Two taps.
“Jason?”
