3 Days to Live

MY LIFE FELT like a dream. I guess that happens when you elope, hop on a plane, drift off to sleep, and wake up in a foreign country.

Adding to the dreamlike effect: my watch had decided to stop working somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, and not knowing the exact time was driving me a little crazy. My body was telling me it was the middle of the night, but the midday winter sun blazed bright over the historic center of Berlin.

“Do you see a clock anywhere?”

Kevin Drexel, my loving husband of eighteen hours, smiled and squeezed my hand. “You may have forgotten, but we’re on our honeymoon. No schedules, no cell phones, no plans, just us— remember?”

“True. But if I knew it was . . . say, four o’clock, then we could check into the room. And I could take my shoes off already.”

“The Adlon said the suite would be ready in a couple of hours. Let’s get the lay of land.”

“Interesting choice of words,” I replied, raising my eyebrows. I slipped my arms around Kevin from behind and squeezed him tight. He turned to face me. As a woman who has always been on the freakishly tall side, it felt pretty amazing to have found a partner who a) was just as freakishly tall, and b) didn’t mind seeing eye-to-eye. Literally.

“You know there’s something seriously wrong with you,” he said, bringing me in for a kiss.

“Yet, you married me anyway.”

“I sure did.”

We’d left everything— our bags, jackets, my useless watch— to take a stroll down the Unter den Linden while we waited for our room to be ready. Interesting, the things you learn about your spouse on the first day of your marriage. I knew Kevin was a very chill guy, and I was sure by now he’d picked up on my obsessive need to plan everything down to the microsecond. But had I known Kevin Allan Drexel would be this chill . . . okay, don’t get me wrong. I still would have married him. But I would have also packed an extra watch battery.

“Isn’t this amazing? I never get tired of this city,” Kevin exclaimed. “Where we’re walking right now used to be nothing but a field of rubble, just after the war. Now look at it!”

“It’s not exactly Paris,” I teased.

“That’s exactly the point!” Kevin said. “Paris is always the same old Paris. But Berlin is never the same city twice.”

I’d never been to Germany, let alone Berlin. But Kevin had spent a lot of time here because his best friend and former business partner, Bill Devander, lived here. The whole flight over, he’d been gushing about how excited he was to show me the city.

“Looks like that church over there has been here quite a while.”

I gestured at a huge and elaborate Gothic pile situated next to the city’s iconic TV tower.

“That’s the Berliner Dom,” Kevin said, “and it’s kind of a miracle the old cathedral is still standing. During World War II, a wave of Allied bombs blew out the windows, and another explosion destroyed the roof. We’re now in what used to be East Berlin, by the way, so the communist government wasn’t all that worried about restoring it. They’re still trying to raise funds to restore it to some of its prewar glory.”

“You think maybe there’s a clock somewhere inside that cathedral? One the Allies didn’t destroy?”

“I don’t know. But ooh . . . you have to see the organ!”

“Now that’s what a bride wants to hear on her wedding night.”

Kevin laughed— one of his trademark, unrestrained boyish giggles that made me fall for him. “You’re impossibly naughty.”

“Is it our wedding night?” I continued. “Or is it the day after? See, without my watch or a phone, I have no idea . . .”

Kevin touched my hand. “You know what this is, Samantha? It’s the beginning of the rest of our lives.”

If I could go back in time and live in a particular moment, it would be this one. Kevin holding my hand. The sound of his laugh still hanging in the air. The endless possibilities.