Griffin was quiet for a long moment, his hands still gripping the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping him steady.
⸻
« I’m scared, » he finally admitted. « Genuinely, completely terrified, in a way I never let myself fully feel during the actual treatment, because I had to stay functional enough to get through it. Now that I’m supposedly on the other side of it, all I can think about is that this might just be a pause. Not an ending. And I don’t know how to ask you to keep signing up for that, over and over, for the rest of both our lives. »
⸻
« You don’t have to ask me, » I said. « I already decided that part eleven years ago, when I married you. Fear doesn’t get to unilaterally cancel a decision I already made, Griffin. Not without at least giving me the chance to make it again, with my eyes open, knowing everything you know now. »
⸻
« And if you’d said no? » he asked quietly. « If knowing about the syndrome had actually changed your answer? »
⸻
« Then that would have been my choice to make, » I said. « Just like it was always supposed to be. You took that away from me three weeks ago, the exact same day you decided, alone, that my answer would obviously be to stay, and used that assumption as your excuse to leave instead of actually asking me. »
⸻
Griffin sat with that for a long time, something in his rigid posture slowly, finally beginning to loosen.
⸻
« I’m sorry, » he said. « I told myself I was protecting you. I think, mostly, I was protecting myself from having to watch you decide, out loud, whether I was actually worth the risk going forward. »
⸻
« I already decided, » I said. « You are. You always have been. I need you to actually let me prove that instead of making the decision on my behalf and calling it protection. »
⸻
We didn’t finalize any divorce paperwork that day. We went home instead, and spent most of that night talking more honestly than we had in the entire fourteen months of treatment combined, working through exactly what Li-Fraumeni syndrome would actually mean for our lives going forward — more frequent screenings, a considerably more vigilant relationship with every ache and unusual symptom, genetic counseling to understand the full scope of what we were actually facing.
