They had planned children the way young happy couples often do—loosely, optimistically, assuming time would cooperate. They talked about nurseries and schools and whether Mason’s ruthlessness in business meant he would secretly spoil daughters. Beatrice claimed he would be hopelessly soft. He claimed she had him confused with someone else.
Then she got sick.
It began with fatigue, bruising, shortness of breath. Within weeks there were specialists, scans, flights, second opinions, experimental treatments, late-night phone calls conducted in hospital corridors that smelled like disinfectant and despair.
Mason did what men like him always do when confronted with catastrophe.
He treated it like a hostile acquisition.
He hired the best doctors money could find. He flew them from Boston, Houston, San Francisco. He spent millions. He threatened hospital administrators. He made promises to God he did not believe in. He learned medical terminology he never wanted to know. He slept in chairs. He signed forms with shaking hands. He watched hope narrow from months to weeks to days.
On an iron-gray afternoon in late October, Beatrice died with her hand in his.
After that, he continued breathing because the body is a stubborn machine, not because he had any interest in the world.
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