Page 96 of When Lemons Give You Life

“Where are they?” Beau slams the table, near tears.

I startle.

“Where are my . . . the . . . the car starter?!” he screams. The Beau I knew never raised his voice.

“Don’t worry, they are safe.”

He looks at me, broken. “Do I have it? That . . . the thing?”

“Yes. You’ve had it over a year, my love.” I reach for the sugar bowl.

There’s a faded scrap of music paper stuck crookedly to the edge, the staves barely visible beneath his scrawl: SUGAR. Griff likes two. You like one. Don’t forget. He put them everywhere when he’d first learned his fate. The fridge is littered with them—little compositions of panic.

One is taped to a photo of us in Portsea. Wind in my hair, his arm around me. He’s written across the top in thick black ink: Griff. Husband.

My throat tightens.

Another note above it: Don’t eat Griff’s chocolate—he WILL get mad.

I let out a breath: half laugh, half ache. All these notes are stuck around the house like breadcrumbs. He wrote them for himself. Except it’s just me following them now.

Notebooks lie open on the counter: some neat, others dog-eared and scribbled out. I flip through one gently. The first page says “OUR LIFE” in careful block letters. A list follows: our first date, Italy trip, that time the power went out and we ate cold soup by candlelight and called it gazpacho.

A few pages later, it starts again. Same heading. Same stories. Smaller, shakier handwriting. As if he was trying to pin them down before they vanished. The desperation reflects off the paper in the quiet way he’d tried to stay. Like if he stopped labeling the world, he’d vanish from it entirely. And I would be the only one left holding the map.

That night, I wake. The sheets are damp beneath me again. My pajamas cling, cold and sour. The smell hits before the memory does. Beau’s been incontinent for weeks now, and pads are no longer cutting it. I could sleep in the spare room, but waking up wet is still better than waking up alone.

Beside me, Beau sleeps soundly.

I blink into the soft morning light. My gaze drifts to the bedside lamp. Beneath it, another scrap of music paper clings to the wall: This is your room. You are safe.

I stare at it for a long time, wishing I could feel safe here. Yet these walls have seen so much fear. The terror of waking up and wondering what else the disease had taken from us; the nights, littered with waking.

I try to lift him from the mattress like I always do to change the sheets. But something goes wrong, and pain shoots down my back. I grab the bedside table, gasping.

Beau sits up slowly, blinking like he’s trying to place the room.

“I’m okay,” I rasp, though I’m not. Not even close.

I force myself to the bathroom, limping. Lowering myself onto the closed toilet lid, I cry, because this is the one room in the house where I’m able to be alone.

I still don’t call for help. There’s no one who can help.

When I emerge, Beau is lingering in the hall doorway, his eyes nervously sweeping over the rooms as if trying to memorize them. “I think I have to go, don’t I, Griff? It’s time for me to go . . . ?”

I shake my head.

“I don’t want to leave our home, Griff. There are too many memories here. I’ve already lost a lot.”

I take his hands in mine, breathing through the pain. “The memories don’t belong to these walls, mate. They belong to us. And when you can’t carry them anymore, I will.”

He looks at me, eyes wide, fragile. “But what if you’re not strong enough?”

I take his face in my hands, steady as I can. “Then I’ll just have to get stronger,” I say, terrified by how powerless I already feel. “And lucky for you, I’m too bloody stubborn to quit on us now.”

“You’re not going to leave me?”

“I’ve left jobs. Countries. Other people. But I’ll never leave you, handsome. Not ever.”