What makes you think I ever got married? Married women work themselves to death, all their money goes to husbands who gamble it away. Why would I ever do that to myself?

He walked across the room and flicked a switch. A spotlight turned on, illuminating a laminated poster of a woman on his wall. He took a crayon from his pocket and began drawing on it. I could see smudges from past demonstrations. [. . .] His dashed lines crisscrossed the woman's chest as if he were planning a military maneuver on undulating terrain.

Rachel had been worried she couldn't remember what Sam looked like; now she worried he wouldn't recognize her.

I was so used to pretending to be something I wasn't, it shocked me to be seen for what I was.

Built on the insubstantial foundation of our feelings, the life we had created together seemed a figment of our imaginations that dissolved into fairy dust in the face of something real, and deadly, like cancer.

What life she had left could be measured in hours. Small recompense though they were, they belonged to me now. I had only to claim them.