There’s something about his posture that worries me. Something about it that makes my blood run cold. David and I are siblings, true, but we’ve been through so much together. He’s seven years older than me and when our parents died, David got a job and took over guardianship of me so I wouldn’tgo into the system. Then, when David got Hodgkin’s lymphoma and had to go into treatment, I pulled out of all my classes and took on jobs so I could pay the bills and he wouldn’t have to worry about anything except getting better. He’s been in remission for eighteen months now, and even though we’re drowning in his medical debt, we’re trying to get back to a semblance of normalcy, with both of us taking college courses again. David has always wanted to be a doctor—a pediatrician—and I just want to do something other than sling coffees for the rest of my life.
“I thought you had classes on Tuesdays,” I say to him. “Today is Tuesday, right?”
David is silent.
I cross the apartment to our small kitchen to check the calendar tacked to the fridge. “Did I get the day wrong? I could have sworn?—”
“I dropped classes, okay?”
David doesn’t sound like his normal self. He’s had a rough go of things (we both have) but at thirty-five, things are looking up. Or so I thought. I come out of the kitchen and face him. “You dropped your classes? But we’re mid-semester. That’s money we’re not going to get back?—”
“I don’t care about the money,” he lashes out. “Just let it go, all right?” and this time when I get a good look at his face, I see how red his eyes are from crying. How pale his face is. He turns to look up at me, and a trickle of blood leaks from his nostril.
“It’s back, isn’t it?” I whisper. My entire body feels suddenly cold. I can’t breathe. “The cancer?”
“I had an appointment yesterday. The scan shows that it’s metastasized.” He grabs a tissue from the coffee table and presses it to his nose. “It’s in my lymph nodes.”
I flinch because I know what that means. Spreading cancer that has returned means David’s options are limited. I move tohis side and crouch next to his chair, forgetting all about work. I hold my hand out to him, and he grips it tightly even as he holds the tissue to his nose with his other hand. “You didn’t say anything to me.”
“What am I going to say?” His expression turns bitter and full of despair. “That we’re going to have even more debt? That medical school doesn’t matter? That nothing matters because I’m going to end up dead by the end of the year?”
“We’ll figure something out,” I whisper, holding his hand tightly. “We always do.”
And instead of thinking about my poor brother or our already overwhelming debts, I’m thinking about the stranger in the coffee shop this morning. Lachesis.
She knew all of this was going to happen. She said she’d be back in the morning.
I grip David’s hand tightly as he cries silently.
I’ve got to fix this. Somehow. Some way.
This can’t be how it ends for my brother.
Chapter
Two
Ican’t concentrate the next morning. It has nothing to do with the early hour or the fact that I’ve gotten almost no sleep at all, or the fact that I got written up at my university library job yesterday and I’m looking down the barrel at unemployment. I make coffees and hand out orders, all the while watching the door to the cafe with a burning determination. Silently, I will for the next person to enter to be the forgettable-looking woman with the strange name.
I need her to return. I need it more than anything.
I need answers.
When she walks through the door, I don’t recognize her, even though I’ve been scanning every face that enters, looking for some hint of familiarity. “Caramel latte with a double shot,” the bland woman orders. “For Lachesis.”
“Can you spell that?” asks Nicole, who’s running the register.
“I’ve got it,” I all but bark out, immediately pumping caramel into a paper cup. My hands are trembling. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. The woman waits at the pick-upcounter, but I don’t know if she looks the same as yesterday. It’s throwing me off. She’s got a strange sort of sameness to her features, as if she could be any middle-aged white woman in America.
I hand her the cup and wait.
“Thanks,” she says, raising it up in a toast, and moves to the back of the cafe.
That’s…it? That’s all I get? No other mysterious warnings? No mentions of my brother’s nosebleeds? Have I hallucinated all of it? Am I going crazy?
I blink after her, then automatically glance at the screen for the next order and start prepping a green tea latte with extra matcha. With wooden motions, I fall back into the coffee routine, my mind whirling. How did I imagine something so crazy?—
“Oops!” There’s a loud splat—a sound any barista recognizes—and I immediately turn.
