Promise Me by Richard Paul Evans Read Free Book Online Page A

were.”
    â€œNo, but there can still be love.”
    He took a deep breath. “I don’t know.”
    â€œWhere will you go?” My eyes welled up with tears. “Do you really want to die alone?”
    His eyes began to moisten as well. He shook his head.
    â€œYou belong here with your family. We’ll take care of you.”
    He laid his clothes on the bed, then wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
    I took his hand. “I married you for better or for worse. Most of it has been better. You’ve been good to me. You’ve given me Charlotte. You’re a good father. I want to be with you. I want you in my bed. It’s forgotten. I promise.”
    â€œCan you really do that?”
    I put my arms around him. “I will. I promise. Let me care for you.”
    He suddenly began to cry. “I’m so sorry about everything. I’m sorry I have this.”
    â€œWe can beat this.
Together
, we can beat this.”
    He shook his head. “It’s too late for that. My oncologist said that even if they put me through chemo and radiation it would only buy me a few months at best. He said, ‘Go home, put things in order and cherish every minute with your loved ones.’ ” He began to cry again. “I told him I didn’t have a home.”
    â€œYou do. You have us. And that’s what we’ll do. We’ll make the most of every minute. I love you. I always have.”
    Marc dropped his head on my shoulder and we both wept.

Just when I was ready to take the bandage off my nose, an axe took off my head.
    Beth Cardall’s Diary
    Physically, Marc did okay for the next three weeks, but it was clear that the cancer was spreading. Almost as difficult as watching his decline was watching Charlotte experience his loss. Telling her that her father was dying was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. It was hard to know how much she really perceived. What does a six-year-old know of death? For that matter, what does anyone really know?
    By August, Marc had difficulty walking and I took a leave of absence from work to care for him. On a cool morning in September, I had just finished bathing him when he asked, “Do you love me?”
    â€œOf course I do,” I said, drawing a terry cloth towel across his back. “Haven’t I shown you?”
    â€œIn spades,” he said quietly.
    â€œWhy do you ask?”
    â€œI wonder if you would love the
real
me.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œNever mind,” he said.
    I pushed the exchange from my mind, chalking it up to the myriad drugs the doctors had him on. About a week laterI was feeding him lunch when he mumbled, “
E pluribus unum
.”
    E pluribus unum
?
    â€œI need to confess something.”
    The way he said this filled my chest with fear. I instinctively knew that whatever he was going to say was bad. “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “If it’s going to hurt me, please don’t tell me.”
    â€œI don’t want to die a liar. I don’t want our relationship to have just been a lie.”
    My panic was now so thick I could barely breathe. “Please, Marc, don’t do this.”
    He said, “Ashley wasn’t the only one. There were others.”
    Others?
I looked at him waiting for the other shoe to drop. When he didn’t say it, I asked, “How many?”
    â€œMaybe eleven.”
    Eleven
. I began to cry. My heart wasn’t a yo-yo; it was a paper target on a shooting range. It was roadkill. “You couldn’t have just kept this to yourself?” I got up and walked out of the room.

    Nothing was the same after that. Marc was a stranger to me—a man I’d never really known. I didn’t speak to him for the next three days. Oddly, I wasn’t angry—emotionally, that account had been bankrupted—I was something more. I was indifferent.
    Marc stayed in our bedroom while I slept with Charlottein her