Now she exhaled, softly. “I just kept thinking I had time.”
My mom had always been the type to Deal with Things, especially as they Pertained to Her. So this inaction, the way she’d let it go, was actually scarier than anything.
“So by this month, my surgical team was insistent,” she continued. “I just wanted to get through your graduation, our New York trip. But then…”
We were hitting another curve now, passing a concrete motel—Calvander’s—where two girls in tie-dyes were pushing a cleaning cart.
“… they had me in for a scan last week and told me I needed to do the surgery now. Otherwise it might spread.”
“Spread?” That didn’t sound good.
“Which is why I had to come here. I’d pushed off Liz and Kasey for months about cleaning out the house. Again, I thought I… had time.”
“Do they know?” I asked. “About this stuff?”
“No,” she said, firmly. “And I don’t want them to. I am handling this my way.”
There was too much in my head, suddenly. All those medical words, the house, graduation. Colin. I’d forgotten about my broken heart, somehow, again. If I’d had my phone, though, I still would have called him to tell him about this. He was my best friend.
Just like that, I was crying, which was so stupid. My mom was the sick one. The guilt made the tears come harder, even as I tried to suck them down. “Oh, Finley,” my mom said. Later, this was what I’d remember so well. Us driving, the road unfolding ahead of us into everything that was to come.
If I’d been asleep, I would have definitely missed the sound of the front door opening. As it was, though, it was loud and clear. I sat up, pulling the thin blanket from my bed around me.
“Shit,” Lana said from the living room.
In our absence, Liz, Kasey, and the boys had gone to workdownstairs, emptying the living room bookshelves and tagging things for the sale. By the time my mom and I had returned from Bly Corners, where we’d had an early dinner, the couch had been pushed to one side and was piled high with boxes. Others crowded the floor.
I slid off my bed, going into the hallway. The room was dark, but moonlight was coming through the big bay window, so I could see Lana’s outline. I thought of her curled up, sleeping, the previous two nights. Ben asking if she was going home. Like components of an equation, adding up.
“There’s an extra bed in my room,” I told her. “I mean, if you want it.”
She didn’t reply. Or move. As if pretending either I or she was not there.Fine,I thought. At least I’d offered.
Back in bed, I tried to sleep, with no luck. Finally, I decided to count down from one hundred, a trick Hannah swore by. I’d gotten to seventy-eight when Lana appeared in my doorway. A beat later she came in, padding across the floor to take the bed by the window.
Seventy-seven. Seventy-six. Seventy-five.
I rolled, slightly, peeking over at her. She was again curled up with her back to me, knees to chest. Her shoes and bag sat on the floor between us. By the time I got to sixty, she was breathing like she was already asleep, or pretending to be. I lay there, acutely aware of the difference between being alone and having company as I began counting again. The last thing I remembered was something in the fifties. Then, nothing.
Bzzzz.
Bzzzz.
Bzzzz.
The phone had been making noise for over ten minutes.
Bzzzz.
When I’d first opened my eyes, I’d been surprised to see Lana still on the other bed in the growing daylight. Now, as the alerts continued, insistent, it occurred to me that maybe I should wake her up.
Brrrrrrinnnnnng.
I jumped. That was the landline. I got up and hurried into the living room. The phone sat on the floor, the table it had been on now gone. I caught it just as it began to ring again. “Hello?”
“Finley?” It was my dad. “Just wanted to check on you. How’s it going?”
“All right,” I replied. Like the day before, I picked up the phone and started dragging it toward the front door, the line jerking along behind me. “So… I know you said to wait. But I ended up talking to Mom.”
