When I discovered it, I was furious.
“I can’t take this.”
She looked genuinely puzzled.
“Why?”
“Because I’m not some charity project.”
Evelyn stood very still.
Then she said quietly, “I never thought you were.”
That sentence followed me for months.
I finished the course.
I got a better job.
I started paying down debt.
And slowly, almost against my will, the life I had originally planned to steal from Evelyn became a life we were actually building together.
I began coming home early because she liked eating dinner at six.
I learned how to make the tea she drank when her arthritis hurt.
I installed railings near the back steps.
I started driving her to medical appointments even when she told me she could manage alone.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped checking property values.
But I never confessed why I had proposed.
That secret remained beneath everything.
Then Evelyn became sick.
At first, it was fatigue.
She would sit down halfway through preparing dinner and insist she was fine. Then came dizziness. Shortness of breath. A lingering weakness that made climbing stairs difficult.
I urged her to see her doctor.
She smiled.
“You’re fussing.”
“Go anyway.”
She went.
The doctors discovered heart problems that had progressed more than either of us realized.
Nothing was immediately fatal, they said.
But Evelyn became fragile.
Medication bottles multiplied beside the kitchen sink.
I began waking at night whenever her breathing changed.
