“So do I. He’s got a cold, so we delayed the shoot by a day. I was wondering if you were here and wanted to have lunch tomorrow.”

“I’d love it,” he said quickly. “I’m leaving day after tomorrow for the Bahamas. It’s too cold here.” He had a beautiful boat he kept in the Caribbean in winter. He spent a lot of time on it. It was his escape from the world.

“I’m glad I called.”

“So am I.” They agreed to meet at the hotel for lunch the next day. She hadn’t asked him how he was. She would be able to judge it for herself when she saw him, and he didn’t like to talk about his illness.

Paul had turned sixty that fall, and had been struggling with Parkinson’s for ten years. It had changed everything about their life, and his. He had developed a tremor right after his fiftieth birthday, and at first he had denied it, but as a cardiovascular surgeon, he couldn’t hide from it for long. He had had no choice but to retire within six months. And then the bottom had dropped out of his world and her own. He had continued to teach at Harvard for the next five years, until he couldn’t manage that anymore either. He had retired completely at fifty-five, and that was when the drinking began. For two years he hid it from everyone they knew, except for her.

The only wise thing he had done during that time was make some excellent investments, in two companies that made surgical equipment. He had advised one of them, and the investments had been more profitable than anything else he had ever done. One of the companies went public, and when he sold his shares within two years of his retirement, he made a fortune, and bought his first boat. But the drinking kept everything about their life on edge, and as the Parkinson’s hampered him more and more, he was barely able to function. And when he wasn’t sick, he was drunk, or both. He had finally gone into treatment for his drinking at a residential facility that one of his colleagues at Harvard had recommended. But by then, their entire world had fallen apart. There was nothing left and no reason to stay together, and Paul had made the decision to divorce her. She would have stayed with him forever, but he wouldn’t allow it.