“Well, there’s all these…oh. I see.”
After Sally’s kids left home, she sometimes hired a teenage Ripley to weed her garden, then roped her into a cup of tea afterward so she could ambush her with good-hearted but mortifying questions:Have you gotten your period yet, sweetie? Let me know if you need birth control, okay? If you have womanly questions, you know you can come to me, right?
Ripley would burn her mouth trying to get through the tea, then sprint home, call her best friend, and roll around in agonized giggles over “womanly questions.”
Steve raises an eyebrow. “Something you want to say about me and Sal?”
Ripley shakes her head, handing him a steaming mug—black, no sugar, the way he’s always taken it. “I love Sally. You know that. But…what are you doing, Dad?”
“Pretty sure you know what we were doing, Pip.” To her shock, he stirs a generous teaspoonful of sugar into his coffee, tastes it, then adds another.
Ripley lets out a frustrated breath. “Incidentally, I’m willing to bet that’s why you’re messing with your flow rates. That and Ronnie, who lights up right next to your oxygen tank. I mean”—she gestures helplessly—“sugarin your coffee? It’s like you’re not eventryingto take care of yourself.”
“Oh, Pip.” He fixes her with a loving look, his blue eyestwinkling above his romantically crooked nose and full Sam Elliott mustache.
“Don’t you ‘Oh, Pip’ me. You’re acting like a teenager.”
“I wasn’t much older than a teenager when you were born. Seems I was mature enough.”
“Dad.” Ripley plasters a hand over her eyes. How is she supposed to argue withI gave up my youth for you?
His mug clinks softly against the counter. “I made a lot of mistakes as a parent, Ripley. For example, hiding my love life when you were little. Oh, yes, I dated,” he says, smirking at her shock. “I didn’t tell you because the parenting books said not to put that on you. That, and I sometimes went out with your classmates’ moms.”
“Please don’t tell me you dated Brittney Hatch’s mom.”
“Okay.”
“Dad.”
“You asked,” he says, spreading his hands in aDon’t blame megesture. “Looking back, I wonder if you assumed you were the only important person in my life. You thought you had to be everything to me. Do everything for me.”
“Yes,” Ripley says urgently. “You need someone to take care of you.”
“You gonna chaperone me and Sal?” Steve asks cheekily. “Make sure nobody puts too much sugar in my coffee?”
“Someone should. You can’t afford anything that could—” Ripley cuts herself off hard.
“Shorten my life?” he asks calmly.
She can’t stop the tremble in her lower lip. His arms come around her again; against her cheek, she feels his wry chuckle.
“Aw, Pip. I love you for wanting to take care of me,” he says, letting her go. “Believe me, I want to be around for as long as possible. But it’s damn joyless to look in the fridge and wonder if asalad will buy me five more minutes on this earth or if maybe nothing can do that.
“I’m doing better. Down to one liter a minute,” he brags, gesturing to his tank. “I’d rather eat bacon and eggs and rearrange my cupboards and act like there’s somethinggoodwaiting for me. Life’s too long, and too short, not to let yourself have something sweet.” He brings his sugary coffee to his mouth for an emphatic sip.
“Fine,” Ripley says grumpily. “You win, teenager. You can go out with your friends. Be home by midnight or you’re grounded for a week.”
Her dad laughs delightedly. “Now, this, I like. I may get grandchildren from you yet.”
There’s a soft, pointed, and very British throat-clearing.
James stands in the living room, looking rumpled and morning-soft. She didn’t trust herself to go through his bag last night, so she gave him a pair of never-worn gray gym shorts her dad bought not long before his diagnosis. On top, he’s wearing her oldT. rexsleep shirt that proclaimsLet’s Eat Kidsand below that, in a smaller font,Commas Save Lives.
She thought the shirt would be roomier, but a pale strip of belly flirts with daylight above the waistband of his shorts.
She’s never seen him without his glasses when he’s conscious. It’s oddly intimate and makes his face look a little naked—not unlike the rest of him. His bare feet are as poetically elegant as his hands, although his toes are scrunched in what she immediately knows is embarrassment at overhearing other people’s conversation.
There’s a humming tension between them, a constant awareness of all the rules they broke yesterday. All the rules they’rebreaking right now. She’s taken him home. They slept in the same room. He’s meeting herdad.
