Chapter Twelve
She’d found the lump the summer before and ignored it until Christmas. “I know,” she said, before I could react. “I was busy. And in denial.” Finally, she went in for a biopsy, which led to her doctor recommending the full surgery as soon as possible. That was in February.
“February?” I said.
We were in the car, curving around the lake.
All organizing had stopped while someone was summoned to remove the squirrels, during which time my mom had grabbed her keys and asked me to take a ride with her.
As soon as we’d gotten past the driveway and hit the lake road, she’d started talking.
Eyes ahead, voice level, as the motels and boat slips blurred past my window.
It turned out, to get what I wanted, all I had to do was… ask.
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 work downstairs, 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.”
“Oh.” He was obviously surprised. I guess it was pretty rare I went rogue on, well, anything. “How’d it go?”
“Actually, she ended up confiding in me.” I went outside, where it was very still and quiet, the sun coming up over the water. Once seated on the steps, I gave him the summary: lump, putting it off, biopsy, scan, surgery.
“Well,” he said when I was done. “Now we know why the house stuff was suddenly so urgent. Is she going to fill Liz and Kasey in?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “She asked me not to tell anyone.”
This had been one of the last things she’d said, just as we came up the driveway. Keep what we’ve discussed between us, she’d said. Promise me. I had. But my dad didn’t count. Or so I hoped.
Just then, there was a shriek on his end, some fumbling, and he hung up on me. I waited. When he called back—brrrrrinnnng!—it sounded like a gunshot in the quiet, even as I grabbed it on the first ring. “Sorry,” he said as Leo wailed nearby. “Someone woke up on the wrong side of everything.”
The door sounded behind me. Turning, I saw Lana carefully sliding out, shoes in her hands.
She glanced down at me before hurrying down the steps, just as the truck came puttering up the drive.
Ben was behind the wheel, his hair mussed like he’d just woken up himself.
Like his awkwardness, this struck me as unexpectedly cute.
“Sorry, sorry,” she said as she hopped in. “I slept through my alarm.”
Ben gave me a sleepy wave, then shifted into reverse. I lifted a hand in response. Meanwhile, in my ear, Leo was still crying.
“I should probably—” my dad said.
It was rare we ever got to finish a conversation, on the phone or otherwise, without this kind of interruption. “Go,” I said. “I love you.”
I hung up, then got to my feet, gathering the line as I went up the stairs.
After leaving the phone on the floor where I’d found it, I went and brushed my teeth, using the last of my travel toothpaste.
When I was packing, I’d just told myself they had everything in New York and I’d get more.
Here, I hadn’t even yet seen a drugstore.
I was heading back to my room when I looked out onto the porch and saw the dollhouse was now at the end of the table, right in front of the windows. The box of furniture sat on a nearby chair.
I walked over, bending down to peer inside: In miniature, there was the hallway I’d just come down, the room in which I was standing.
In the kitchen, two little cakes sat on the tiny counter.
The rest of the house was empty. Something about the sight of it made me even more aware I was the only one awake, so much stillness surrounding me.
I reached into the box, digging past a small bathtub, a coffee table, and an old steamer trunk with a lid that opened. When I found a long table, I slid it in by the windows on the porch. It fit perfectly.