letter down.
“You knew me?”
Mr. Whitmore nodded.
“She recognized you immediately.”
PART 5 — WHY SHE NEVER TOLD MEI felt betrayed.
Angry.
Confused.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
The lawyer looked uncomfortable.
“She was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“Of losing you again.”
He explained that Eleanor had spent years searching for the right moment to approach me.
But every time she tried, fear stopped her.
Then she was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
Suddenly, time became something she could no longer pretend she had.
“She told me she couldn’t die without seeing you one more time,” he said.
“But she didn’t know how to introduce herself.”
“So she became a hospice patient.”
I stared at him.
“She knew I’d volunteer there?”
“She knew you had volunteered there for years.”
That realization hit me harder than anything else.
Our meeting hadn’t been an accident.
PART 6 — THE WEDDING
I remembered the
