Chapter 12
Twelve
“ R ita!” Becky said, opening the door and enveloping her sister in a huge hug.
Her sister’s heat was turned down too, although not as far as the heat in her little apartment above the barn was. Now, with the horses gone—they had left earlier that afternoon—she didn’t need the water to not freeze. So she turned it completely off and shut the heat off as well.
If she had to go back to her apartment, she could turn the water back on, and it should be fine.
“Becky. I’m so glad you’re here,” Rita said, walking in and closing the door behind her. Becky was surprised to see her all dressed up.
“Well. You look like you’ve been at the opera or something,” Becky said, standing back and looking at Rita in her long dress coat and beautiful ball gown-type dress.
“I picked this up at the Goodwill store. It was five dollars. It’s got a hole in it right here,” Rita said, shoving her finger through a hole in the side of the coat. “The shoes were a buck, and the dress was seven.”
“So you were at the opera,” Becky said, wondering where in the world Rita was. She was much less interested in where Rita got the outfit than that she actually was wearing it somewhere.
“No. I went out to eat with Rodney.” She paused. “It was a fancy restaurant.”
“Well. I’d say fancy. Rodney, huh?”
She tried not to look jealous. Was Rodney with Rita?
“Is that the father of your babies?” Becky couldn’t stop herself from asking.
Rita jerked back, like Becky had slapped her. “No!” She took a deep breath before she continued. “No. Sorry. I guess that’s a logical conclusion considering how little we talk. But I know what the plan is on your phone, and you said you try to be careful, so…”
“No. I’m not blaming you. Like you said, it was a logical conclusion.”
“Yeah. No, that’s not it at all. I told you who the father was, and that’s who it is.
And Rodney and I are not together. I just knew that you and he would be the two best people in the entire world to raise my children.
And if anything happens to me, I wanted you to.
He just wanted to talk to me. The same reason you’re here early instead of showing up tomorrow at the hospital. ”
“Oh. Okay. That’s nice. What’s a fancy restaurant like?” Becky asked, having never been to a fancy restaurant. Rodney had told her that someday they would, but those had been more of the empty promises he’d made a lonely girl who was too in love with the boy to see that he was just lying to her.
“It was awesome. I mean, black ties, the waiter looking so serious,” she said, lowering her voice a little and doing a little imitation of the waiter, “flipping his towel over his forearm. Everyone was so beautiful, but…it lacked soul, you know?”
“Okay.” She could kind of see what Rita might be saying. “And the food?” Becky asked, the practical girl in her coming out.
“Oh my goodness. It was really, really good, but you can get food just as good at the diner in Blueberry Beach. In fact, I told Rodney that the food in Blueberry Beach is better.”
“Well. That probably hurt his feelings, because I’m guessing that the meal was not cheap.”
“No. It was not cheap. It was so expensive they didn’t even put the prices on the menu.” Rita lifted her eyebrows, just to show how shocking that was.
“I see.”
“Do you mind if I change into something more comfortable? The dress is really pretty and made me feel beautiful tonight, but I’m exhausted.”
She’d already kicked her shoes off, and Becky felt terrible for making her stand.
“Of course. And didn’t you say that you were supposed to be on bed rest?”
“I promise, I spent the entire day in bed until it was time to get up and get ready to go. And I have every intention of going back there now. You don’t mind talking to me while I lie down, do you?”
Becky almost gave her a hard time, because she sat up while she talked to Rodney, that she was going to lie down while she talked to Becky, but…
that probably showed that she was a lot more comfortable with Becky than she was with Rodney and was more of a compliment than anything.
Regardless, she wanted her sister to be comfortable, and she definitely did not want her to go into labor before she got to the hospital the next day. And certainly not with a full stomach.
She went into the bathroom, and when she came out, she was dressed in a T-shirt and comfortable yoga pants.
“All right, all I’m allowed to have from now until four AM is water. After that, I’m not even allowed to have that.”
“All right. You want me to wake you up at four and make sure you take a drink?” Becky asked as Rita walked to her bed.
“If you don’t mind, I’d love it if you would do that. I can set my alarm, but sometimes I sleep through it. And then sometimes I can’t sleep for anything.”
“I’ve heard pregnancy is hard like that.”
“Yeah. I’ve heard that twins is even harder.”
Rita looked terrible. Her eyes were sunken in black rims, and out of the dress, she looked pathetically skinny, except for the huge ball in her stomach.
It looked like she was putting all of her energy into making the babies and none into taking care of herself.
“I just want to go over some things that you need me to do. I mean, what are you expecting?”
“The only thing I expect is for you and Rodney to get along. I want you to parent the babies together as much as possible. I know you have your horses and he has his business, and you might not have time, but… I don’t want you guys fighting.”
Becky looked down. First of all, she didn’t have horses anymore.
She fingered the eye drops in her pocket.
She had cried for two hours after they’d left at one o’clock.
Then, she turned the water off, drained the lines, turned heat off, and put eye drops in her eyes before she packed a few clothes and headed toward Blueberry Beach.
The people who had bought the horses had wired the money the day before, and that morning, Becky had gone to the used car dealership and traded her old truck on a car that was supposed to be guaranteed to start for six months.
She figured that Rita should be better by then or at least well enough to be taking care of the babies again, and that’s what she needed.
A six-month guarantee that the car wouldn’t leave her sitting beside the road with newborns in the back.
Regardless, it had started like promised and had brought her to Chicago.
It was not her Clydesdale horses, but…it was what she needed in order to be the sister that she wanted to be. She couldn’t be the person she wanted to be without making the sacrifices that were necessary to be that person. Even she, amid her muddled-up, mistake-ridden life, knew that.
Regardless, Rita would not know that she had been crying. She brought the eye drops along just in case she got hit with another crying spell at any point. Hopefully by now, if she cried, Rita would think it was for her.
And it very well might be.
“Are you gonna tell me about what’s going on?”
Rita lay back, her eyes closed. “I had to have car seats in order for the babies to leave the hospital. So, maybe you saw them sitting on the floor in the kitchen. They’re still in their boxes.
I… I want to get that and clothes and monitors and bottles and all the things that you need for babies, but…
I couldn’t work for the last six weeks, and I needed the money to pay the rent on the apartment.
I’m sorry.” She opened her eyes and looked directly at Becky.
Becky wished that she had sold her horses two months ago. She would have, too, if Rita had told her what was going on.
“I don’t understand why you kept this from me. It makes me angry, but I don’t want to waste our last night together before your surgery fighting.”
That was the only reason she wasn’t yelling at her sister right now. Well, that, and in order to be the person she wanted to be, she had to make sacrifices that led her to become that person. Sacrifices like not yelling when she felt like it.
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” Rita went on to explain that they might be taking the cancer out during the surgery and that there was a possibility that she might not wake up.
Becky gasped. “What?” This was not what she was expecting. From her phone call, she knew Rita had said cancer, but she thought she meant a little cancer, like, she didn’t know, something on her finger or something.
No, she knew it was going to be more than that, but she was thinking breast cancer, like they just take the babies and a boob or two.
“Yeah. It’s…a pretty big mass from what they can tell, but I wouldn’t let them do any imaging that was going to hurt the babies. So, since I’m already going to be out, and they want to get it as quickly as possible, they’re going to do whatever they need to do and then take as much as they can.”
“All right. And then you’re going to be better, right?” Becky couldn’t help herself. She had her arms crossed over her chest as though to protect herself from all the hits that she was taking as she paced back and forth at the foot of the bed.
Becky hated it when she paced. Absolutely hated it, but she couldn’t stop herself. This was way too much.
But no, actually it wasn’t as much as what Rita had to say.
By the time she was done, Becky needn’t have worried about the eye drops in her pocket.
She really was crying, and it wasn’t for her horses.
It was for her beautiful, brave sister who was facing the fight of her life and who had already admitted that most likely she was not going to win it.
“So now you see why I needed you. And Rodney. What better people to raise my babies than the two of you? I know that both of you will sacrifice whatever is necessary for their good and their welfare. And I know that you will do whatever I ask, so when I say that my one request is that you and Rodney get along and raise the babies together, I know you’ll do it. ”