“I love it when you look at me like that,” I returned the smile.

“You know something, Just Silvia?”

“I know a lot of things. More than you do, certainly.”

He chuckled, “Well, I don’t know if you know this or not but you are every bit as beautiful right now as you were the day I first laid eyes on you.”

“Are you going to hit me in the head with a ball?”

His eyes were twinkling, “Best shot I ever made. I’m serious, though, Sil. You’re just as beautiful as you were then. What a life. If I had a pecker that still worked when I wanted it to I’d steal you off to the back of the house and have my way with you.”

I giggled and tossed the strawberries with sugar in a bowl.

He was quiet, just staring at me.

“Oliver, you’re making me all fluttery.” I grinned.

“I always loved looking at you, you know that? It’s been the greatest joy of my life being able to look at you every single day.”

“Are you feeling sentimental?”

“Yes. Very.” He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke his voice was low, “Will you play a game with me? “

“What game?”

“You do what I say. I’d like it if you turned around.”

It was an old game and one we had not played for a very long time.

“You’ve gone gobstoppers, Old Man,” I told him.

“Please?” He asked.

I did.

“Now put your hands flat on the table.”

I did.

“Now close your eyes.”

I did.

I could hear him coming up slowly behind me. His arms wrapped around my middle and lifted my hands to my belly, holding them together beneath his own. He buried his face in my neck and breathed me in. For a moment, I was seventeen again, lost in ecstasy in the arms of the boy I was going to marry sooner than I thought.

“Marry me?” He whispered.

I nodded, “Yes, Sweetheart.”

I loved him still all those long years later with just the same passion I had the first time he'd asked me. He could still take me to that sacred place with only a touch.

We stood there together with our eyes closed in a place where age and time don’t exist, where there were no distances between us, in that place where we were safe and loved and could only get to with each other. It was the place we were always meant to be. We were together. We were home.

After a time, he spoke.

“Silvia,” He said softly, “I’m dying.”

It was like a brick to the face. My knees buckled. I tried to move, to turn around, but he held my arms with his hands and pulled me against him. Even in his eighties he was still so strong he could overpower me with no effort. He had never done that before. He had never restrained me, but right then he wouldn’t let me turn. He was whispering in my ear in calm, even voice, saying words I didn’t want to hear.

“Rubbish!” I told him.

“The pain I’ve been having…it’s cancer, Love, and it’s a bad.” He was holding me as if I were not even struggling.

“No,” I said quietly, “No. No…”

He just kept talking.

“No! No! No!” I shook my head, “No!”

He droned on.

“No! No! No!” I was trying to kick him in the shins now, trying to stomp on his feet. Anything to get away from those words. “I’m dying…it’s cancer, Love…” I wanted loose. I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to hear anything he had to tell me. I didn’t want to know. “Shut up!”

“I saw the pictures today. I’ve been telling you that I was visiting Alexander, but the truth is he was taking me to see doctors. The cancer’s in my liver and my kidneys. It’s been there awhile. I’ve only got one kidney working and it’s not doing so well. The cancer’s in my lungs, too. They showed me, Sil. It’s there. It’s a small amount, but…”

“Stop this, Oliver!” I demanded, “Shut your noise!”

“I can’t stop it! If I could I would! It’s time you knew! I’ve been living with this for weeks!” His voice was rising, “I don’t want to leave you. Not ever, but it doesn’t seem I’m going to have a choice. It’s gone too far!”

“They can cure cancer!” I yelled.

“They can, but not this! It’s too late! I’m stage four, Love!” He struggled against me now, keeping me from going wild, “If I accepted treatment I’ll be sicker than I would be without it and I’ll just die the same!”

“I want a second opinion!”

“That was the third, Silvia! It was the third opinion! Do you think Alexander would allow me to give up so quickly? They all said the same thing! I didn’t get help in time! I didn’t have the normal symptoms, not in time…” There was desperation in his tone, “I’m eighty-five years old! It’s just what it is, Sil! It’s what happens to everyone! We’re born, we grow old and then we cross the veil…”

“NO!” I screamed. Finally able to break free, I whirled on him and knocked him back with my fists. Strawberries flew off the table and scattered across the floor, the bowl shattered, “No goddammit! Are you listening to me, Oliver? I said NO!” I shoved him again. Not in sixty-eight years of marriage had I as much as raised my fist or, heaven forbid, actually hit him.

He stumbled backward, more out of shock than concussion.

“NO!” I shouted again.

It wasn’t even that I was angry. The truth is that I was not angry at all. How could I be angry with my husband for being ill? He hadn’t decided to go and get cancer. He was still active. He was still funny and good. He still had people who loved and needed him. He hadn’t chosen this! How could I punish him for something he had no choice in the matter of? No, I was not angry. I was terrified. I had met Death once long ago and he hadn’t even paused to give consideration to me. He’d snatched my baby right out from inside my body. He didn’t stop to watch me suffer, he never heard me scream and sob and beg him to be merciful to Cara. Death didn’t pay attention as Oliver worried and prayed for me while I lay unconscious, bleeding in a hospital, or care that he’d left that young man to mourn a daughter that he would never know. Death has no eyes and no ears, Lady Folia had said, but I knew his secret.

Ice, Death is made of, and if he couldn’t see or hear me, I had to find a way to shatter him.

“You took my baby,” I slammed my hands against the counter, “But you will not take my husband! You will hear me! You will see me! You will take your horrid, stunning blue sky and you will leave us alone!”

Oliver was staring at me with wide eyes, but he was silent. He let me scream and throw things around the kitchen. He let me kick a plastic bucket until my foot went through it. And then he let me run outside into the garden and scream some more.

“Where are you? Show yourself again, you immense and filthy coward! I’ll kill you! You’ll not have him, Death, you stealer of babies!” I picked up a shovel and swung it through the air, letting it go and skid harmlessly through the grass. “You’ll hear me! I met you once and you took what you wanted, but not this time! This time it’s not just a wee baby you have to spirit away! Defenceless she was! No, this time it’s Oliver Dickinson and his wife and we’ll have nothing of you! You will leave him alone or you will take us both together! Do you hear me, Death? You bloody, stinking, foul coward!” I was screaming so loudly that it hurt my throat, “You can’t have him and leave me! You’ll take both or no one at all!”

Thoughts were pouring through my mind. I had known Oliver was sick. I had known it for a long time. It was me who first noticed he was slowing down, sleeping late into the day. Age, I told myself, he deserved the rest. But then he caught a bad cough he couldn’t get rid of, so bad I saw him one day cough up blood. It was the same day I noticed his eyes were turning dark yellow where they should have been white. He went to see a doctor, had a million tests run and hadn’t gotten any better, but he’d kept telling me they hadn’t found anything seriously wrong other than scar tissue in the liver.

“You lied to me! You said that there was nothing wrong!” I roared and turned on him. “Why did you lie to me?”