“See,” she explained, “Wes had come to visit me at home, after I had had my surgery—which had gone really well: my artificial heart was in my chest, and it was pumping, and I was breathing and doing most of the things I used to be able to do. And then…” Glory paused, rolling her eyes at the implausibility of it all before continuing, “Wes calls me up last Tuesday—I was eating my dinner—and says he wants to stop by to see me. And I don’t really want to see him, but I do want him to see that I’m doing well—really well, actually—without him. And so I tell him to come on by. And he does. And then…” Glory snorted sardonically and then continued, “He’s not even there for five minutes and he starts crying, and telling me that the woman he left me for … had left him! Do you believe that?”

East didn’t answer. Because he didn’t have enough information yet to know whether he believed or disbelieved. He was just listening.

Glory continued. “And then he tells me that he wants me back! I mean, can you believe that?”

East didn’t answer again—again because he didn’t have enough information yet to know whether he believed or disbelieved. He was just listening.

“And I said, as nicely as I could, ‘Wes, I’m sorry. I have a new heart now. It doesn’t want you back.’ And I know that sounds harsh, but it was the truth, and I owed him the truth. And I should have left it at that…” Glory paused and fought off some sadness as she relived her last moments with Wes. But then shook the sadness off and continued, “But I didn’t—leave it at that. And I told him that even if my old heart had been working, I didn’t think it would want him back either. And that…” Glory sighed and tumbled into a deep sadness as she finished her story. “That just killed him.”

East realized that he had been holding his breath since Glory revealed that she had killed her husband. Because he thought that she had actually killed her husband.

But now he realized that she hadn’t actually killed her husband.

She may have contributed to his demise.

But she hadn’t killed him.

And he exhaled for the first time since Glory had said that she had killed her husband. “Oh-oh-oh,” he stammered, relieved to learn that Glory wasn’t a killer. “So you didn’t … actually kill him.”

“Yes, I did! Because he got so sad that my new heart didn’t want him back that he just tore outta my house … and ran outside … and a bus was coming, and he didn’t see it, and…” She struggled to say what happened next, because it upset her so deeply. “And it just took him right out.”

“But … that wasn’t your fault. That was just … fate. Or somethin’.”

“No. It was my fault. At least—partly. Because I wished some pretty terrible things for him after he left me.”