I shook my head. “No, I know. I’m sorry. I’m worried and I’m taking it out on you. It will be fine. We’ll be fine.” I nodded now, reassuring myself. “It will be fine. I have this.”
“I’ll call you when I land—no, I can’t. How am I going to get in touch with you?”
I shrugged. “Carrier pigeon? Call me at the NGS, I guess.”
Luke pursed his lips. “I’ll figure something out.” He got out of the car, and walked to the passenger side. Checking to see that Charlie was still asleep, he bent and kissed me, then looked at me, and kissed me again. “I wish you were coming home with me.”
I shivered. “Me too.” Luke nuzzled me.
“I love your neck.”
“Uh huh….”
He took my butt in both hands, kneading it. “I love your ass.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, gasping into it. I loved that he loved it.
Luke’s hands moved up to my back, stroking gently. He kissed back up my jaw to my mouth, then pecked my nose. “I don’t want to leave you here.”
“It will be fine. I’ll take care of everybody,” I said.
“Take care of yourself too, all right?”
“I will.”
Luke nodded slowly, then kissed me again.
∞
Mike was in the living room drinking a beer when Charlie and I came in. There were three or four empties on the floor at his feet and an overflowing ashtray. “The TV is still broken,” he announced, waving his bottle at it.
Yes. And it would remain so, until the Money Fairy arrived, or we found a pot of gold.
“Hi Daddy,” Charlie yawned. “We went in an airplane and saw so much stuff.”
Mike nodded, looking at the fuzzy picture of a baseball diamond on the TV.
“Head up to bed,” I told Charlie. “Brush your teeth, don’t just wet the toothbrush. Use toothpaste!” He shot me a wounded look, but I was on to his tricks. “I’ll be up in a minute.”
“I got your groceries,” Mike announced.
“Really? I mean, thanks!” Maybe we were turning a corner. “How was Cassie today?”
Mike shook his head and took a long swig of beer. “She’s a fucking mess.”
“What’s wrong? What happened?” I started to go to the stairs.
“Don’t bother,” he called to me. “She’s just the same, lyingaround.”
I walked slowly over to him. “She’s really sick, Mike.” He made a face. “Don’t you believe that?”
“I don’t know what to believe. She says she’s fine, you come storming up here from Ann Arbor, taking over, saying she’s so sick. She has the surgery, I guess it doesn’t work. She tells me she’s getting better, so I come back and find out she’s a fucking mess. A fucking mess,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to belabor this, but she is your wife. Right? In sickness and in health?”
He looked up at me, squinting his eyes. “There you go again. Always have to be the smartest one in the room, don’t you. Be-fucking-labor. You think because you wasted some money at the University of fucking Michigan, you’re a hot piece of shit.”
I breathed in and out. “I don’t want to fight.” This was an old, old argument. “Are you coming tomorrow to her chemo?”
