That evening I said nothing. I needed to think. Over the next few days, I began to notice things I had missed before. Gabriel’s pale skin, his unsteady walk, the bruises that peeked from under his sleeves. He smiled as always, cracking small jokes at dinner, yet there was something faded behind his laughter. Eliza never left his side, guiding him gently as though afraid he might fall.
Finally I could not bear it any longer. One morning, while she folded laundry, I spoke. “Eliza, I need the truth,” I said, my voice shaking. “What is happening here?”
She froze, her hands trembling over a pile of fresh sheets. I opened the drawer beside the bed and showed her what I had found the week before, bandages, antiseptics, a shirt stiff with dried bl00d. Her face turned colorless.
“Please,” I whispered, “tell me he isn’t hurting you. Tell me this isn’t what I think.”
Her tears came fast. “No, Mother,” she said through sobs. “It’s not like that. Gabriel is sick.”
The world seemed to tilt. “Sick? With what?”
Her voice was barely audible. “Leukemia. He didn’t want you to know. He thought it would break you.”