Free The Replacement Wife by Eileen Goudge Page A

gritted teeth. “You blame me, don’t you?”
    His eyes flashed, and in that instant, she caught a glimpse of what he’d kept under wraps in the days since she’d come to a decision about whether or not to seek treatment. After a second opinion, from Edward’s oncologist friend at Sloan-Kettering, confirmed the original prognosis, she hadn’t seen the point. For what? Another three to six months shackled to a hospital bed, so shot full of painkillers she wouldn’t know what planet she was on? She and Edward had discussed it, of course, until they were both blue in the face, but he refused to accept her decision. As if she hadn’t agonized over it herself! As if she were doing this for her own selfish reasons! She couldn’t make him understand. So much was being taken from her—the opportunity to grow old with her husband and watch her children grow up, see them graduate and get married and have children of their own—why squander a single, precious moment of the time she had left?
    “Camille, I don’t think this is the time . . .” He lowered his voice, glancing over at the restroom as if he expected the boys to come tumbling out that very moment. “Can we talk about this later on?”
    “Talk about what ? Why don’t you just say it?” she hissed. “You’re mad because I’m not doing what you want. I’m not choosing to subject myself to torture on the practically nonexistent chance I’ll live to see our son’s next birthday.”
    She’d been witness to her own mother’s slow, agonizing death. She knew what it was like. The hospital bed in the dining room. The nurses coming and going at all hours. Each night, she’d lay awake in bed listening to the creak of footfalls in the hallway and voices speaking in low tones, wishing she still believed in Santa Claus so she could believe, too, that her mom would get better.
    “I have patients who’d be grateful for any chance at all,” he said in a tight voice. “How do you know what’s possible unless you try? Miracles do happen. We doctors think we know everything, but we don’t. We—” He broke off abruptly as the boys trooped noisily out of the restroom.
    They didn’t speak of it again.
    THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY, they sat the children down and told them a modified version of the truth. At the stricken looks they wore, she reassured them, “I don’t want you worrying. I’m in good hands.” Her doctor had started her on a mild dose of chemo, just enough to slow the cancer’s spread. It would buy her more time and meant she could go about her business as usual for the next few months, barring any side effects. Her children wouldn’t have to know how serious it was until it was absolutely necessary.
    Zach’s eyes filled with tears. “Are you going to die, Mommy?” he asked, his voice quavering.
    Camille darted a helpless glance at Edward, who was quick to step in. “We all die sometime. You know that,” he reminded their son, his voice gentle. “It’s part of the circle of life.” They’d explained it to Zach when he’d come to them with questions after watching The Lion King for the first time. Then he’d been too young to know the meaning of death. It had helped having a vehicle to make him understand. Thank God for Disney, she thought now with irony.
    “But I’m not going anywhere so fast,” she put in, “so I don’t want to see any moping. I’ll still be there to cheer you on at soccer games. And to embarrass your sister at her piano recitals,” she added with a wry glance at her daughter, who always complained that she clapped too hard. Kyra only gave a wan smile in response.
    Zach wriggled onto Camille’s lap, which he hadn’t done since he was small. Never mind, at nine, he weighed almost as much as she did—he would be tall like his father. “Will you have to go to the hospital like the last time?” he asked with his scruffy head buried against her chest.
    “I hope not,” she told him, wondering if he could hear the