The Deathbed Promise
Do you keep the promise or tell her?
Level 3 · 4 / 22
The Deathbed Promise
A friend dying of cancer asks you to promise something small but strange: never tell his wife about the year he spent in debt to a man she disliked. You promise. He dies. Two years later his wife is trying to make sense of a gap in their money and their history, and she asks you straight out.
Do you keep the promise or tell her?
Then ask
- Does a promise to someone who no longer exists still bind you?
- What if the secret were an affair rather than debt?
- Have you ever kept a secret for someone that started to feel like a lie you were telling?
The classics and some new ones. A scenario, the question it forces, and the follow-ups that make it bite.