Chapter 7
Mom was in the chair beside the bed when I came in.
She hadn't left the chair since dad's condition was discovered, not for any meaningful length of time.
A nurse had brought her a cardigan from her own car.
Cade had brought her a phone charger. I'd brought her a thermos of the coffee she actually liked because the cafeteria coffee was — in her exact words — an insult to a long marriage. The chair was hers now.
Dad was awake.
He turned his head toward the door when I came in, and the turn took a beat longer than was natural.
He smiled at me. The smile took another beat.
The skin at his temples and his cheekbones had gone hollow.
His face had skewed subtly out of place.
The blue cotton hospital gown was loose at the shoulders.
"Beau." His voice was thinner. He stretched his right hand out across the blanket toward me. The hand didn't come up clean. The fingers fumbled at the blanket and then made it up.
I crossed to the bed, took the hand, and held it. "Hey, Dad."
Mom let go of his other hand, pulled my face down, and kissed my temple. Her cardigan smelled like the floor cleaner and the wax in the air.
"My dear."
"Hi, Mom."
I stayed over the bed with my father's hand in both of mine. "How are you doing, Dad?"
His hand under mine pressed once. He took a breath and searched for the next word — his mouth open on it.
"I'm…fine." He gave up on the next word and went sideways. "Could be…worse."
He gave me a smile that tried.
I sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand back down on the blanket carefully, like I'd been handed something I didn't want to break.
It had been three weeks since I'd seen Sabrina, reached out, or had any business thinking about another woman while my father was dying eight feet from where I was standing.
The pharmacy had been a relief I couldn't afford.
I'd walked away from her stoop with the smell of her hair in my hand and the memory of her cheek against my palm, and I'd thought, on the drive home, that I would call her tomorrow, and then in the morning that I would call her tonight, and then in the night that I would call her tomorrow, and the days had stacked up.
What was I supposed to say to her? I need you? I couldn't text that. That wasn't a phone call, but a confession a man should pay for in some other currency.
Theo arrived not long after I did, with no announcement and a paper bag from the bagel place around the corner. He came into the room like the room had been waiting for him.
"Hey, guys."
Mom turned in her chair. Her face went up a notch — there was actual color in her cheeks for the first time since I'd walked in. "Theo."
He bent over the chair, kissed the top of her head, and put the bagel bag on the rolling table beside the bed. "I brought you the bread with the seeds. Stop telling me you're not hungry — you're hungry."
He clapped me on the shoulder on his way past. "Beau."
He went around to the other side of the bed and took my father's other hand. "Mr. Cross. Hi."
Dad's smile reached his eyes for the first time since I'd walked in.
"Theodore."
Theo grinned. "You look like hell."
"Don't…give me…that face."
"I give you the face I have. You raised three of us. You knew the risk." He squeezed Dad's hand. "I want you at Sebring next year for my race."
Mom looked up from the bagel bag. "Theodore — "
"I'm telling you now because you'll need to RSVP early. Vivvie, you're getting an upgrade — fence pass, the suite, the whole thing. You'll wear the team colors and pretend you don't know me."
Mom laughed, wet and surprised. "Sebring is in March."
"I know when Sebring is. We're going."
He turned to me. "And you? How is your social life?"
The smile came up naturally. "My social life is fine."
"That isn't a real answer. Vivvie, has he told you anything?"
Mom pulled the bagel bag toward her. "I think there is something he hasn't told me, and he isn't going to tell me either."
"I'm not telling you because there isn't anything to tell," I shrugged.
Theo grinned at the ceiling. "Liar."
He turned back to my mother and put a hand on her shoulder. "Vivvie, do you have any idea how beautiful you look right now?"
Mom flapped her hand at him. "Theodore, stop. I haven't showered today. I didn't shower yesterday. I'm wearing the same cardigan I was wearing the day before, and my hair is — "
"She is gorgeous," Theo told the room.
Dad rolled his eyes — slow, but he managed it. "I'm…right here, Theo. No need to make moves…on my wife."
Theo didn't look up from her shoulder. "I'm simply paying her a compliment, sir."
"Pay her…a compliment…when I'm not in the bed."
"Sorry, boss."
The room laughed.
I wished I could be Theo. I'd wished it before and hadn't yet figured out how. Theo could walk into a room with a dying man, tell his wife she was beautiful, and change the whole mood for a moment. I couldn’t do that.
Cade came in after Theo had been there a while, in a navy coat that meant he came from the office, and he greeted the room, checking who was in it. He kissed Mom on the head, gripped Dad's foot through the blanket, nodded at me, and clapped Theo on the back.
"Sorry, I'm late. The Adler installation went over."
Mom perked up. "Adler? The gallery you'd been telling us about?"
"That one." Cade unbuttoned his coat. "Suzanne's piece is the centerpiece. They moved it three times before they decided where to hang it."
Dad looked at him. "Suzanne — Suzanne works as an — " He blinked at the ceiling.
Mom reached over and put her hand on his wrist. "As an artist, baby."
"The artist." He nodded at her. "Yes. Suzanne."
He found Cade with his eyes. "How is she doing? How is her work?"
"It's doing well." Cade put both hands in his coat pockets. "We've been turning down more shows than we accept now."
"Good. Good."
Mom's hand stayed on Dad's wrist. "And the wedding? Are you planning yet?"
Cade looked at the foot of the bed. "Suzanne wants to wait. She — she thinks we should wait until…"
Dad finished it for him. He worked on it for a beat — the words coming slowly, the breath between the words — and got there.
"Until I'm…not here."
The room got very quiet.
Dad waved his good hand. The wave was small. "Cade, don't wait. I would…at least like to be at one of my sons' weddings."
My mouth opened without anything to put in it. "What is that supposed to mean?"
Theo, who had been peaceful for two minutes and was apparently bored of it, turned to me. "Isn't it obvious, Beau? You're depressingly single."
Cade snorted. Mom laughed and immediately covered her mouth like she hadn't meant to. Dad laughed, and the room, which had been on the edge of falling, went back to where Theo had pulled it.
They laughed at me.
The conversation went back to Sebring. Theo had something to say about a new car.
Cade had something to say about why Theo would crash.
Mom had something to say about Theo’s mother, who she hadn’t seen since spring.
They talked and talked around the bed of a man who’d just been told he wouldn’t live to see his sons married.
I sat in the chair on Mom’s side of the bed and watched them all, while something wordless shifted inside my chest.
Can you not see what is happening? I wanted to grab the bed's railing and shake it. He is dying right in front of you. The Sebring trip isn't real. The car isn't real. Things are never going to remain the same. He is —
The doctor came in.
She nodded at the room, and her eyes landed on Cade and on me. "Mr. Cross. Mr. Nightingale. Could I borrow you for a minute outside?"
Cade had already stood up. Theo didn't stop talking — kept Mom occupied, told a story about a track at Daytona — and Cade and I followed the doctor out into the corridor.
She walked us a few doors down, turned, lowered her voice, and didn't waste time.
"I want to be honest with you both. The treatment isn't slowing the progression as much as we hoped. Glioblastoma at this stage is aggressive. Your father was diagnosed late, and we are seeing a decline that I can't manage with what we have on the table."
Cade had crossed his arms. "How long?"
"I would tell you to plan in weeks. I'm sorry."
"Weeks?" I'd said it out loud.
"Mr. Cross, I know — "
"He looks fine."
She didn't contradict me. Instead, she let the sentence sit.
I looked at Cade. He was looking at the floor.
I looked at the door of my father's room. Theo's voice was coming through it, telling Mom about Daytona.
He had eaten half a bagel with seeds. He had given Theo the rolling-eyes thing about Mom. He had told Cade not to wait on the wedding. He had said his sentences in pieces, but he had said them.
He was still Dad.
Cade thanked the doctor, and the doctor left. Cade put a hand on my shoulder. "Come on. Coffee."
The cafeteria was in the basement, and the lighting was an offense against the public. Cade got us two coffees, and we sat at a table in the back, near a window that opened on a parking lot, and he put his cup down and looked at me.
"Beau."
I held the cup with both hands and didn't look at him.
"I want to say something, and I want you to listen."
He waited until I looked up.
"I wasn't close to my dad." His voice was even.
"When he died, I hadn't seen him for two years.
I had told myself several times that I was fine with that, but losing him wasn't easy.
It wasn't what I expected. It won't be easy for you either.
I'm not going to pretend it will, and I'm also not going to let you do this on your own.
Whatever you need, whatever this looks like for you, I'm here. "
I held the cup and didn't speak.
I hoped, for one half-formed second, that there wouldn't be anything for Cade to help me through. I hoped the doctor was wrong, that my father would simply continue. I hoped it against everything I knew because it was the only hope on offer.
Cade waited.