And when I went back in, my husband was upset in a way I had not seen in fifty years of marriage.
He took my hand and said: “Aggie. If you ever have a question about what I did for work — the name is Evanthia Kastellis.”
And I thought it was an old man worrying about paperwork.
So in that office, eleven years later, I said that name out loud.
And Dov’s whole face changed.
“Mum. Did you just say Kastellis?”
“Yes. Why?”
He was staring at that folder on the desk.
“Because Dad worked with her.”
“Dov, your father sold insurance for forty years. What would he be doing with a medical researcher?”
And my son looked down at his own hands.
“Mum. There’s something I’ve never told you.”
“What?”
“After Dad died, I found a safe in the basement. Behind the shelving.”
I did not say anything.
“There were contracts in it. Research papers. Four or five medical files.”
“And?”
And Dov Vanterpool said: “One of them had your name across the front of it, Mum.”
“What did it say?”
“PROJECT AGNES.”
And nobody in that room said anything for about four seconds.
And then I remembered the envelope.
Rutger gave me a sealed envelope in the October of 2014. Cream, about the size of a card, with nothing written on the front.
He made me promise not to open it unless something happened that I could not explain.
It has been in the drawer of my bedside table for twelve years.
“Dov. I need you to go to the house and bring me something.”
“What is it?”
“A letter your father left me.”
“What letter?”
And I said: “The one I promised not to open unless something happened I couldn’t explain.”
PART 2
The mass is a mucinous cystadenoma.
I had to have that written down for me on a piece of paper before I could say it to anybody.
It is an ovarian cyst. A benign one.
It is not cancer. It never was cancer. The pathology after the operation confirmed every bit of that and Dr. Opoku made me say it back to her twice before she would leave the room.
I am putting that in the second paragraph on purpose, because I know four people who will not read past the first page and I would rather they had it.
What it is, is enormous.
On the CT it measured thirty-eight centimeters across.
When they took it out at the end of January it weighed twenty-one point four kilograms.
Forty-seven pounds. I have had to say that number to about eleven people and every single one of them has asked me to say it again.
The surgeon told me afterward, sitting on the end of that bed, that he has seen four of them in a twenty-two-year career.
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