Liz

April 13, 2022·36 min·3 clips

Sarah Delashmit faked cancer and a stalker for 20 years, but one couple's Google search exposed her.

Liz's mother is taken with Sarah right away. She gets up early to make her a full breakfast, and the whole visit slips into a careful rhythm of looking after her. Brian makes tacos after he and Liz buy fresh fish. After dinner, they sit by the water under a bishopwood tree, with Sarah in the hammock calling the place happiness. Liz remembers the margarita, and even that starts to feel bigger than a drink. She is hosting, yes, but she is also weighing each kindness against the fear that Sarah is fighting a terminal illness. What should feel casual now feels charged, as if one wrong note could matter. They talk about life and death. Sarah says she does not want to be forgotten, and Liz pictures a young mother and wife imagining the world without her in it. That lands hard. The scene stays quiet, but the pressure keeps building through the little things: palm trees, cocktails, a beach chair, a rented car. Monday morning comes. Sarah has to leave, while Liz and Brian go back to work already wrung out. They take pictures outside. The three of them and the dog hold on as if this could be the last goodbye. Sarah cries. Liz and Brian cry too, or almost do. Then Sarah drives away, and by late afternoon they are flattened by the caring, the talking, the crying, and the worry that they may not see her again.

As heard by us

Quiet, intimate storytelling that turns a backyard goodbye into something hard to shake.

The episode keeps its focus on Brian and Liz as they open their home to Sarah, and that closeness gives the story its pull. The backyard, the fish tacos, the hammock by the water, and the goodbye all carry real weight because the episode trusts those everyday details to do the…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want an intimate story built around a backyard goodbye.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Sympathy Pains