Chapter 53 Louise
LOUISE
I’d get up early, get Kayley up and dressed and set her some schoolwork, make breakfast, rush off to my job, work a shift, drive to the mansion and then work straight through until the evening, rush back to the apartment and cook dinner, then spend a few hours trying to figure out which bill to pay to avoid anything being cut off.
Kayley offered to help: “I’m four-freaking-teen,” she told me.
“I can cook my own dinner.” But every day, she was getting weaker.
No way was I leaving her to fend for herself, not now.
Dr. Huxler was starting to get worried. When I brought Kayley in for her next blood test, he took me aside. “I don’t need to see the test results,” he told me. “She needs to be in Switzerland now.”
“You said six months,” I said.
“Leukemia doesn’t stick to a calendar. I held it off for as long as I could—any more chemo would have killed her. Now it’s free to progress and it’s going faster than I’d hoped.” He shook his head. “From this point on, every day counts.”
Just another week, I thought. That’s all I need.
But every day, Kayley got paler and weaker.
I couldn’t leave her...but I couldn’t leave the plants, either.
I felt like I was tearing myself in half: if I left Kayley on her own, I was the worst mom and sister ever.
If I left the plants on their own, I was going to blow it all and Kayley would die.
Something had to give, but I couldn’t take any more time off work: I’d used up every bit of vacation time and every personal day I had.
“Quit,” Sean told me one morning.
“What? We need that money!” Sean had been contributing some cash from the jobs he still took from Malone and the other dealers, but it wasn’t nearly enough.
He put his hands on my shoulders. “The plants need you. Kayley needs you. This’ll give you more time for both. And the money won’t make a difference—not now. If for some reason we can’t sell the crop, we’re fucked anyway.”
I slowly nodded. Going all-in made my stomach twist and tighten into a cold, iron knot.
..but it also made me realize that really I’d been all-in from the start, ever since that first conversation in Dr. Huxler’s office.
If we pulled this off, I’d just have to find a new job and a way to pay off my debts.
If we didn’t, if Kayley died...I honestly wouldn’t care about any of it, anymore.
So I quit my job and started running the grow house like the laboratory I’d always wanted to work in.
For the final week, everything was timed down to the minute.
I taped up the doorways with plastic sheeting so that I could control airflow, precisely timed the lighting cycles, brought in exotic mixes of plant nutrients to give them that final boost..
..I could see it working but I was utterly exhausted.
On the fifth day, I fell asleep face-down on a table and didn’t even wake when my phone’s alarm went off.
Sean, who’d been fixing a leak in the plumbing, had to gently shake me awake.
“Shit,” I said, looking at the time. “Shit, shit, shit!” I scrambled up out of my seat, tripped over the leg of the stool and went sprawling.
I got to my feet, waving away Sean’s hand, and lumbered towards the door, drunk with fatigue.
“I said I’d take Kayley to see a movie. I need to be picking her up now. ”
Sean stepped in front of me and put a big, solid hand on my chest. “Stop,” he commanded. “When did you last sleep?”
I shrugged and harumphed and pushed soil-flecked hair out of my face. “I have to go.”
“You have to go upstairs and sleep,” he told me.
“But—”
“I’ll take Kayley to see the movie.” He pushed me towards the stairs. “No arguments. Go.”
Before I could stop him, he’d left. And after a few more seconds of staring after him in disbelief, I reluctantly crawled up the stairs and collapsed on the bed. I slept for fourteen hours and woke to a text from Kayley saying how much she liked Sean and “could they do it again, please?”
My heart swelled. I rolled over and saw Sean stretched out on the bed next to me—he’d crept into bed without waking me, one arm wrapped protectively around me.
Kayley liked him and I needed him on a level I’d never known before.
It was so, so tempting to imagine some future where we could all be together.
But every day, he disappeared for a few hours to work another job for a dealer, smashing up someone’s car or house or business, scaring them into submission.
I knew now where all the anger came from.
I knew that he didn’t want to be doing that work.
But that didn’t change the fear I felt every single time he put his hammer in the trunk of his car and drove off.
What if he doesn’t come back? Or what if more of his enemies came looking for revenge, as the Serbians had done?
There was no way I could put Kayley at risk by having Sean in our lives, however much I wanted him.
Gradually, my efforts paid off. The plants shot up and the buds grew sticky, creamy and huge.
When the time came to harvest, I finally dared to admit that maybe this was going to work.
Me being me, I’d been cautious about my estimates all along: I’d planted enough that we could lose at least ten percent, but we’d lost almost none.
And judging by the look of the buds, this really was premium stuff.
Sean helped me dry it and cure it, sealing it into carefully-weighed plastic bags.
It really was a bumper crop: more like $550,000 worth, although I knew we’d be lucky to get that much out of Malone.
For a second, I actually felt aggrieved.
Who was he, to set the price? Maybe we could negotiate, threaten to go elsewhere… .
What the hell am I doing? I caught myself just in time.
When did I start thinking like a criminal, trying to squeeze every last cent out of the crop?
This is not what I do! This is just a one-time thing.
Getting greedy was tempting fate. All we needed was the $500,000 to pay for Kayley’s treatment and not a cent more.
I felt like I was stepping back from a deep, dark chasm and it took another hour focusing on the mindless task of bagging before I felt fully normal again.
When we bagged the last bag, the crop filled an entire large tabletop: we’d stacked the bags like bricks, making a solid mass of weed three feet high.
Sean whistled and ran his hand down the stack. “We’re going to need to rent a van to move it. It’s too much to fit in your car.”
I slipped my arm around his waist. “I can’t believe we’ve done it. We’ve done it, right? I mean, this is it.”
He squeezed me and nodded. “This is it. And we didn’t do it. You did. This is all you and your green fingers.”
I shook my head and put my arms around his neck, grinning.
“No. No way, I’m not letting you even start down that road.
I couldn’t have done it without you.” I winced when I thought how many ways I would have messed it up without him: I wouldn’t have known about hiding the smell of the plants, I would have fallen prey to some loan shark like Murray, I wouldn’t have had any idea how to set up a meeting with someone like Malone.
God, I’d been about to grow in my own apartment!
Sean shrugged and grunted, but he was smiling. “We should celebrate,” he said. “How about—”
My phone rang and he went quiet while I answered. I was still grinning so hard that it took several seconds for what I was hearing to sink in. Then I grabbed Sean’s hand and ran for my car.
Kayley had been rushed to the hospital...and she was critical.