Then she was gone. But her words lingered. My mind flipped immediately, out of habit, to Greer. But it terrified me to admit that Lindsey was right: I wasn’t thinking about tonight or this party or these people at all. My mind was up the coast, in the city that never sleeps, with the one that, I was now realizing, most certainly got away.

Three days later, I was on a plane to New York. I was going to sign paperwork and brief the office on the details of the new acquisition. But it could have waited. The papers could have been faxed; I could have sent someone else. I was going because I wanted to see Amelia.

I didn’t have a plan. I knew what I had always felt for her had resurfaced and I knew the loss of the babies would make things strained between us. And then there was a huge part of me terrified that if I tried to move on, I would only think of Greer.

Were it some other woman, we could date. We could say we’d tried. But if things went awry with Amelia, there was no coming back from that. We would be in each other’s lives forever.

And so, as I hailed a cab into the city, I decided that I wouldn’t tell her anything. Not yet. This meeting would be strictly professional. I looked at my watch, 7:13 a.m. I would be in the city before she left for work.

The cab smelled distinctly like eucalyptus. Maybe a little cinnamon. Peppermint? About halfway through the ride, caught up on email and tired of being inside my own head, my curiosity got the best of me. “What is that smell?” I asked.

I could see the driver’s smile in the rearview mirror. “Essential oils.”

“Why do you have them in the car?”

“Makes it smell better—and it’s supposed to promote good health.”

Good health. Those two simple words were all it took to catapult me backward, to staying up all night Googling Ayurvedic treatment centers, stem cell transplants, holistic therapy. When Greer opened her eyes that morning, I was filled with adrenaline. I was sure that one of these three packets I was about to present my wife held the cure. We would go to India or maybe just California or even the mountains of North Carolina. Three options. She could pick the best one.

But when I told her, she put her hands on my face. “My mother died of ovarian cancer, and now I am, too. It’s okay. It’s okay to just accept it, sweetheart. It doesn’t make you less of a man to admit when you have lost a fight.”

In the dark of night, I had been so sure this was the answer. This was going to save my wife. As I climbed in bed beside her, I realized that I hadn’t lost the fight, because it wasn’t my fight to win or lose. It was Greer’s. If this was what she wanted, then I had to take it like a man. Because it was her cancer. It was her choice.