While I Buried My Grandmother, He Chased His Mistress

The call came on a Thursday morning, three days after the anniversary.

I was at my desk, staring at a spreadsheet I hadn't actually read in twenty minutes, when my phone lit up with a number I recognized—Dr. Hale, Eleanor's physician. I stepped into the hallway to answer.

"Ms. Simmons." His voice was careful. Measured. The voice doctors use when they're about to change your day. "Your grandmother's condition has declined significantly overnight. She's been admitted to Mercy General. I think you should come."

I was already reaching for my coat.

Eleanor looked smaller in the hospital bed. That was the first thing I noticed. She had always taken up a room—not loudly, but the way a piece of good furniture does, with presence and weight. Now the white sheets seemed too large around her. The monitors beeped softly. An IV ran into the back of her hand, the hand that always wore her gold bangle.

But her eyes were clear. Sharp, the way they'd always been.

"Sit down," she said. "You're hovering."

I sat. I took her free hand. It felt lighter than I remembered.

We talked for a while about small things—her doctor's terrible bedside manner, the plant in her apartment that I needed to water, a book she'd left half-read on her nightstand. She asked about my work. I told her about the London transfer application I'd been quietly filling out. She nodded slowly, like she'd been expecting it.

Then she said, "I want to see Alexander."

Something tightened in my chest. "Grandma—"

"I want to know he'll look after you." Her voice was quiet but there was nothing weak in it. "After I'm gone. I need to hear it from him."

I looked at our joined hands. Hers, with the papery skin and the faint liver spots. Mine, steady only because I was making it be.

"I'll call him," I said.

I stepped into the hallway. The fluorescent light hummed above me. I pressed Alexander's name and listened to it ring.

He picked up on the fourth ring. Background noise—something electronic, distant. Music, maybe. Or the sound of a crowded, echoing space.

"Hey." His voice was distracted. Not work-distracted. Something looser than that.

"My grandmother's in the hospital," I said. "She's asking for you. She wants to see you tonight."

A pause. "Tonight?"

"Yes, tonight. She's—" I stopped. Pressed my thumb against the inside of my wrist, hard. "She's not doing well, Alexander."

"I've got a deadline. The Morrison account—it's been a nightmare all week." He exhaled. "I'll try to come tomorrow. Tell her I'll come tomorrow."

"She's asking for tonight."

"Camila." His voice shifted, just slightly. That tone I knew—the one that meant I was being unreasonable. "I can't just drop everything. You understand that."

I understood. I had been understanding things like this for eight years.

"Okay," I said.

I went back inside and sat down next to Eleanor and told her he was finishing something for work but that he'd come as soon as he could.

She nodded. She didn't say anything. But her eyes did something—a small, quiet closing-off, like a window being gently shut.

I called him again at nine. Voicemail.

At eleven. Voicemail.

At one in the morning, I sat in a plastic chair with my coat still on and listened to Eleanor's breathing change. It had been steady for hours—slow but even. Now it was different. Shallower. With longer spaces between each breath.

I held her hand with both of mine.

She opened her eyes once, near the end. She looked at me for a long moment. Her lips moved.

"I just wanted to know," she said, "that someone would look after you."

Her voice was barely a sound. More like the shape of words.

I opened my mouth. I wanted to tell her yes. I wanted to give her that. She had given me everything—her time, her name, her network, the apartment I slept in, the career I'd built in the shadow of her reputation. She had given Alexander everything too, though she didn't know I knew that, and he didn't know I knew it either. Not yet.

I wanted to lie to her. Just this once. Just to let her go easy.

But I couldn't make the words come. They wouldn't form. Something in me had already stopped being able to say things that weren't true.

So I just held her hand tighter and pressed my lips to her knuckles and stayed there until the monitor made a long, flat sound and the nurse came in quietly and touched my shoulder.

I sat with her for another hour after that. The room was very still.

At some point I took out my phone. Alexander had called back at 2:17 AM—one missed call, no voicemail. I looked at the time. 3:40 now.

I didn't call him back.

I thought about where he'd been. The noise in the background when I'd called. The looseness in his voice. The way he'd said *I'll try to come tomorrow* like tomorrow was a reasonable answer to a dying woman's last request.

I thought about Eleanor's face when I'd told her he was finishing something for work.

That small, quiet closing-off.

Like she'd already known.

I sat in the plastic chair until the sky outside the window went from black to gray. Then I stood up, smoothed my coat, and began making the calls that needed to be made. The funeral home. Eleanor's attorney. Her assistant at the firm.

I did it alone. I had always been good at doing things alone.

On the way home, I stopped at the jewelry shop. The same clerk. The same small velvet tray.

I bought two gold beads this time.

One for Eleanor.

One for the woman I was finally, slowly, beginning to become.