EVERETT
“Cancer?”
The word falls on me like a sack of lead to the ground., and my entire world goes so unnaturally still that I can hardly breathe.
“I’ll be alright, Everett.” He’s trying to be reassuring, but he mostly just sounds exhausted. “They think chemo will work. I’ll be back on my feet soon enough.”
Where did things go so wrong?
It’s one blow after another. Mary, Jenny, now Al. I’m supposed to be focusing on the day-to-day of the ranch while my daughter whips things back into shape with Mary’s help. Instead of any of that, I’m listening to Al comfort me about his own damn diagnosis, trying to see a way out of this hell. I wonder if anything will ever feel real again, or if I’ll just be stuck in this dazed state until I’m six feet under.
“I’m heading up for some testing,” he says. “I’ll give you a call in a few days, alright?”
I want to argue, just a little, to demand to hear him talk for longer. I’m not ready to hang up, to say goodbye, even if it won’t be for the last time. I find myself agreeing anyway, and soon enough the dial tone is buzzing in my ear.
“Cancer, huh?” I say quietly.
The words settle into the dirt between my feet, and I laugh humorlessly.
It’s been a long time since I’d let myself feel hopeful. I thought I lost that part of me—the part that wants me to look for the positive, the part that sounds a lot like Laura—when I walked out of the hospital without my wife for the last time. Fate’s a bitter, cruel bitch, though, isn’t she?
It’s tough to realize that when I finally found that hope again, it was just in time to lose it all over.
I watched my wife fade away to nothing in front of me, and I was powerless to stop any of it. How am I supposed to go through it all again with Al? He wasn’t supposed to call me and sound frail and tired as he told me he wouldn’t be coming back. He’s supposed to stay with me. He’s supposed to behere.
I wish I could panic. I want to put my fist through a wall, but all I can find is a gaping, empty hole in the middle of my chest.
I recognize it all too well.
It’s the same apathy that buried me alive next to Laura when I lost her. It threatens to do the same this time, and I don’t think I can find the resolve to fight it.
“If you’re done moping, Dad, the guys are looking for you.”
My head snaps up at the sound of Jenny’s voice, and I find her leaning against the wall of the barn. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she’s glaring at me. I wish I could break down and hold her close, just to remind myself that I still have her and her brother, that I’m not alone.
I’m not dead yet.
“Jenny.”
“That’s my name,” she says, arching an unimpressed brow. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah,” I say blankly, glancing down to the dark screen of my phone.
“Great.” She rolls her eyes when I don’t move and gestures back toward the barn. “So are you?—”
“Al has cancer.”
She flinches back from the words, the annoyance draining from her posture to be replaced with confusion, and then horror. Her lip trembles as she tries to find words. I can hear her response clear as day even though she doesn’t say anything. First comes the denial, then the rage, then the blame. It’s all a mask for fear.
I only know because the same thing is happening in my mind, and I’d do anything to avoid facing that fear again.
“What kind?” she chokes out, her voice losing all its edge.
“Lung,” I say. “Don’t know what stage yet. He’s doing more testing now.”
“Lung cancer?” Her voice cracks over the words, and a laugh that’s halfway between furious and disbelieving drips from her lips. “He doesn’t smoke!”
The thought brings bile to my throat. Life really has a twisted sense of humor.
