Too Late, My Ex-Wife: Her Regret After Our Daughter's Death

Chapter 8: The Wrong Kind of Cold

Third Person's POV:

The amusement park had been Lily's idea, but she wasn't really there.

Nathan could tell within the first ten minutes. She stood in front of the carousel and watched it turn without asking to get on. She held his hand and walked through the gates and looked at everything the way you look at things when your eyes are working but your mind is somewhere else entirely.

"Want to try the swings?" he asked.

"Maybe in a bit," she said.

She'd said that three times already. About the swings. About the spinning teacups she'd talked about for two weeks last summer. About the small roller coaster at the far end she'd circled on a hand-drawn map at age five and pinned to her bedroom wall.

Her face was pale. Not the pale of a child who hadn't slept well. The other kind.

Nathan crouched in front of her near a bench by the fountain. "Lily. Talk to me. How are you feeling."

She looked at him, then past him, at the carousel still turning.

"A little tired," she said. "But I'm okay."

She was not okay.

He straightened up and took out his phone.

~.~

At a restaurant three streets away, Vivienne sat across from Roman's son at a corner table decorated with balloons and a banner he'd picked himself. The boy had been talking for forty minutes about a video game Nathan had never heard of, and Vivienne had been nodding in the right places, refilling his juice when it ran low.

Her phone buzzed on the table.

Nathan.

She looked at it a moment.

Roman's son reached over and put his hand on hers. "You promised you'd stay until the cake," he said. Not a question. A reminder.

"I know," she said. "Give me one moment."

She answered.

"Lily's not well," Nathan said, voice flat in the way it went when he was holding something back. "She's been off since this morning. I think you should come."

Vivienne looked at Roman's son across the table. He was watching her with wide eyes, his lower lip already finding its position.

"I'll be there as soon as I can," she said. "Give me thirty minutes."

She hung up before Nathan could answer.

Roman's son's lip completed its journey. "You're leaving."

"I'll come back. I promise. Just let me check on her, and I'll be back before you know it."

He looked at her for a long moment, working very hard at an expression of devastation. Then he nodded slowly and picked up his juice.

Vivienne gathered her bag and left.

~.~

In the restaurant's office bathroom, Roman stood with his back against the wall, listening to the voice on the other end of his phone describe, in specific and unhurried detail, what would happen to his legs if the money didn't arrive by end of business.

"Today," the voice said. "Not tomorrow. Not in three weeks. Today."

"She's running a verification check," Roman said. His voice was steady. His hands were not. "It'll come back clean. She'll sign today, tomorrow at the latest, I just need—"

"You said that last week."

"I know. I know, but she's close. She's right there. If you give me—"

"End of business," the voice said. "Or we come to you."

The call ended.

Roman stood there a moment, looking at himself in the mirror above the sink. Then he checked his phone and saw Vivienne had already left.

He put the phone in his pocket and walked back to the table, where his son was eating birthday cake alone with the focused contentment of a child who'd gotten mostly what he wanted.

"Where'd she go?" his son asked.

Roman sat down and thought.

Then he picked up his phone again.

~.~

Vivienne found them near the fountain.

She saw Nathan first, standing very still beside a bench, and then she saw Lily sitting with both hands in her lap, looking at the ground. Something about the way she was sitting stopped Vivienne before she reached them. Her shoulders slightly forward, like she was concentrating on something internal.

She had never seen her daughter sit like that before.

She walked faster.

"Lily."

Lily looked up. Her face was gray at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with the morning light, and everything in Vivienne that had been insisting for months that Nathan was overreacting went quiet all at once.

"Hey, Mommy," Lily said.

Vivienne crouched in front of her the way Nathan had twenty minutes earlier. She put her hand against Lily's cheek. Cold. The wrong kind of cold.

She looked up at Nathan. "What's happening. What exactly is wrong with her."

"I've been trying to tell you for months," he said.

"Nathan." Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "What's the illness. Tell me properly. I need to understand what this actually is."

Nathan looked at her. Something crossed his face that wasn't anger. Something older and more tired than anger.

"Progressive Myelin Decay Syndrome," he said. "It attacks the protective sheath around the nerve fibers. The treatment window passed months ago because every time I tried to get her seen, you told me I was overreacting." He paused. "She's been deteriorating since before the diagnosis. The collapse last week accelerated it."

Vivienne was still crouched in front of Lily, still holding her hand. Lily was looking at her with eyes that had always been too patient for a seven-year-old.

"Mommy," Lily said, "I'm a little cold."

Vivienne opened her mouth to answer.

And then Lily's body went rigid.

It happened fast and completely. One moment she was sitting upright, the next her back arched, her hands locked, her eyes rolled, and Nathan was already moving before Vivienne fully understood what she was seeing.

"Call an ambulance," he said. He had Lily in his arms, one hand behind her head, voice perfectly controlled in the way that meant the opposite of calm. "Vivienne. Call an ambulance and get the car."

Vivienne stood. Her legs worked. Her hands worked. She dialed, talked, ran for the car park, drove around to the gate, and Nathan got in the back with Lily across his lap, and she drove.