“What’s going on, Amelia?” I asked.
“Oh, same old,” she said. She was lying. Amelia and Greer were totally, completely different people, but they had similar sparks that made it impossible for them to sit still. Amelia was always moving forward, just like Greer. I admired that about her, especially since, as my inability to talk about my deadwife in the past tense for three solid years indicated, moving forward was not my strong suit.
I didn’t say anything. That was the tactic I always used when I wanted someone to get to the point.
It worked. “Listen, Parker,” she said. “I need to meet up with you. It’s important.”
Suspicious. The casseroles had started flooding in the day after Greer died. If I hadn’t been so devastated, it would have been a huge ego boost. For a moment, I wondered if Amelia might be coming on to me. But then I remembered that she was married to Thad, a fact that I tended to conveniently forget. My family had teased me for years about my crush on Amelia.
“You’re-on-a-tight-deadline-and-need-a-quote important? Or a-secret-uncle-has-died-and-left-me-twenty-million-dollars important?” I smirked.
“Um.” She paused. “It’s decidedly more important than either of those things.”
“Can’t you just tell me now? My interest is piqued.”
She was quiet. I could tell she was deciding. “Yeah, no. I don’t think so. It’s a face-to-face kind of thing.”
“Well, damn,” I said.
“I’m leaving for Cape Carolina in the morning,” she said apologetically. “Maybe next week?”
“Oh my God,” I said. “It’s my mom. Or my dad. It is, isn’t it?”
She laughed. “No, Parker. You’re killing me. Everything is fine. Let’s just get coffee when I get back to Palm Beach.” I could hear noise on the other end of the phone, and as I wassaying, “Well, you might be seeing me sooner than you think,” she was talking over me, saying, “I’ll text you to set it up. I have to run!”
I am a harper. Once I want to know something, I can’t think about anything else. Fortunately, I was heading to Cape Carolina tomorrow, too. So I wouldn’t have that long to wait.
When we hung up, I rubbed shaving cream on my cheeks and chin and saw that I was smiling. Human interaction wasn’t my favorite thing these days, but that phone call had been less painful than most. It had to be that Cape Carolina connection.
When my face was smooth, I tapped my American Airlines app and checked in for my nine a.m. flight. I hadn’t been home in months, but now had seemed like a good time. I had all those points piled up, waiting. But who wants to take a vacation alone? I didn’t. All being on the beach would do was remind me that Greer wasn’t lying beside me. When I was at her office, I could be surrounded by her: her employees, her things, her energy. That’s why I had gone there almost every day since her death. Even more than our house, that office had become home.
Tomorrow, I would be in Cape Carolina, where I was defined by my baseball stats, not my marriage to a deceased heiress. Where I was the guy who made orangeades at the soda fountain after school, not the one running his dead wife’s company.
I walked into my bedroom. Even after three years, it still smelled like Greer. I pulled the green lattice comforter, whichmatched the wallpaper, up over the sheets so the bed was sort of made. I threw three shirts, three pairs of khakis, and three pairs of boxers in my roller bag.
As I walked out the door, heading to work, turning to put my key into the lock, it occurred to me, for the first time, that what Amelia had to say might be good news.
GreerFEBRUARY 16, 2015
IT’S WEIRD HOW SOMETHING YOU’VEnever considered can suddenly become all you can think about. Like the minute they came in and told me that I had ovarian cancer, all I thought about was my babies. The babies I didn’t have. The babies that, after three years of marriage, Parker and I had just started talking about. In some ways, I still feel too young to be a mother. None of my friends have kids yet. But the biological reality at thirty-one is that, whether our New York to Palm Beach lifestyles and our workaholism allow for it or not, eventually our biological clocks are going to start ticking loudly.
So, as Parker was asking the doctor how early she thought it was and about treatment options and heredity, all I asked was, “Can you save my eggs?”
Parker was near hysterics. “Youreggs? Are you serious right now, Greer? Who gives a shit about your eggs? All I care about is you.”
I just looked back at the doctor, who said, “I don’t see any obvious signs of cancer on your right ovary. I would suggest removing it to be safe, but we can retrieve your eggs from it.”
I told her I’d like to freeze embryos because I hear they have a better success rate than that of eggs frozen unfertilized.
Parker looked truly astounded. But I didn’t know how he didn’t know that. Articles about it were everywhere.
He kind of freaked out and said something like, “How about we discuss the major surgery you’re having tomorrow? Would that be okay with you?”
Parker is usually very calm. But that man loves me. He loves me hard. And I know his panic was from considering a world without me in it. To be honest, I can’t even consider a world without me in it, so I am, instead, considering what I will do after I am declared cancer-free.
What I will do is IVF.
I know what I am up against. I watched my mother go up against it, too. I watched her lose a swift but painful battle with what proved to be the only adversary that had ever beaten Karen McCann. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to focus on calling my dad or my sister or on my surgery or my chemo or what they might find inside me.
