Chapter 42
Chapter Forty-Two
Henry
December 3rd, 2021
It takes weeks to get a complete picture of just how bad “bad” really is. More blood tests, ultrasounds, and finally, a multiphase CT scan that confirms the doctor’s suspicions.
Pancreatic cancer. Stage four.
It feels almost laughable how many terrible things one person can be forced to face in their lifetime. If I hadn’t witnessed it for myself, I couldn’t possibly believe it. Lucy, the most beautiful, tranquil, deserving person I know…diagnosed with a terminal disease. I cry until I laugh. I laugh until I cry again.
Lucy takes the diagnosis on the chin. The night she and Truett share the news, as we gather around their kitchen island with a spread of her favorite desserts between us, her bottom lip barely wobbles. Her eyes gloss over, but no tears fall. Later that night, after Truett has gone to check on the few cows he suspects will be calving soon, Lucy reclines into the couch beside me. We touch, for the first time in years. A rule we created for ourselves that suddenly seems so trivial in light of everything else.
“I’m not scared,” she says softly. Her voice is raw. I know without asking that she cried her tears where no one could see her. That they’ve ripped her vocal cords apart. When she glances at me, though, there’s a smile curving her lips. A peace settling over her features. “Not for me, anyway.”
My throat is thick with worry. I haven’t been able to take a full breath in weeks. I want to be as strong as she is. But the truth is, I’m absolutely terrified.
“Hey”—she taps my nose—“don’t do that.”
Her thumb dances over my knuckles, a metronome setting the pace of my thoughts. Back and forth. Here, and then in the future, one impossibly void of Lucy’s laughter. Her smile. Her light, in an otherwise bleak world.
“How can I not?” I whisper, not trusting my voice to go higher. A tear slips from my jaw onto the tan suede of their couch, blooming in the fabric.
She shrugs. “Because I said so.”
My eyes shutter as a chuckle scrapes my throat. “Not good enough.”
“I’m serious.”
She reaches up and cups my cheek with her soft palm. I cover it with my own, holding her there. This touch is so precious. So sacred. Why did we deny ourselves of it for so long?
“How can you say you’re not scared?”
“Because,” she says, shifting so she’s facing the muted television rather than me. “All I wanted in life was to be free. And these last six years, that’s exactly what I’ve been. No Waylon. No overbearing father. Just me and Truett. And you, occasionally.” She winks, but there’s an edge to her voice. A yearning that neither of us dares to acknowledge. Solemnity falls over her face, filling her eyes with a soft reverence. “That’s more than a lot of people ever get in their lives. I’m lucky. I know that I am. How could I be scared of dying, when I get the pleasure of leaving on a high note? ”
Tears blur my vision. I blink them away, wanting as clear a picture of her as I can get. “How long do we have?”
She rolls her bottom lip, glancing down at our joined hands. “Could be a year. Could be less. Depends on how I respond to treatment.”
A sob surges in my chest, begging for release. A year. Such an impossibly short time. A minuscule fraction of everything this life owed her, an insufficient repayment for all that it took.
“Can I ask you something, Henry? And please be completely honest.”
“Anything,” I manage to choke out.
She swallows hard. When she glances up, her eyes are more blue than gray. Damp with the remnants of her grief. “I know we agreed a long time ago that this would be it. A friendship. A beautiful one, I might add. One that I’m so grateful for. And before you panic, I’m not asking for that to change.” She pats my hand, laughing softly. “Turns out, cancer doesn’t lend itself to feeling much in the way of desire. And I guess it’s not a question so much as a confession.” Her lips part as she sucks in a quick breath. “Sorry, I’m rambling.”
I bite back a smile. “What else is new?”
That earns me a punch to the bicep. A surprisingly strong one. I rub at the ache, shooting her a glare. She giggles in response, and I smile. For a moment we’re not Henry and Lucy, with all the complications that entails. We’re just two people talking. Laughing. Grieving, too. All the rest falls away, and I catch a glimpse of who we could’ve been had circumstances been different for us. Had I made different choices, or the same choices sooner, and changed the entire course of our lives.
Perhaps the problem isn’t that I was selfish, but that I waited too long to be. And now it’s too late. It’s the saddest truth I’ll ever have to face.
“I need you to know that I love you, Henry. I really, truly do. And that love is the greatest gift, the greatest burden, I’ve ever had the privilege of bearing.” Her face crumples, careful stoicism fragmenting. A tear falls against her will, and her tongue meets it on the descent, swiping it from the precipice of her upper lip. “And I guess what I wanted to ask was if you felt it, too. If this big, impossible thing that’s taken up so much space in my heart for so long was one-sided all along. Because I don’t think it is, but I can’t bear to die without knowing for sure.”
There’s the validation of finding out the truth about a situation after so many years, and there’s the pain of finding it out far too late. This is both, and for a moment I’m broken so thoroughly by it that I can’t take my next breath, let alone speak.
Then I do, and my confession flows from me with abandon, no longer bound by the ties her words have snapped.
“I think the first time I considered the possibility that I might love you, I was maybe twelve? You were singing in the choir and I was thinking very not-church-appropriate thoughts, and I wondered if that was it. The feeling my parents talked about, or movies I’d seen on TV. Now I realize it was probably hormones, but I digress.”
She palms her face, peeking at me from between her fingers. Suddenly I’m seventeen again, and so painfully in love with her I can’t form a coherent thought, so I rip the rest of my admission out of thin air.
“It was the moment we played together that very first time that did me in, to be honest. That night I lay in bed with the feeling of that song still vibrating in my fingertips. With the image of you in that sundress, letting loose in front of me for the very first time, replaying in my head on a never-ending loop. I was a goner. So totally confident that I loved you.” I smile at the memory. At the phantom tingling creeping its way back into my fingertips. “And I’m sure I did, as much as any kid can love, you know? ”
She nods, her gaze distant. “I know.”
My throat constricts, holding my next words captive. Their passage from my lips is almost as difficult as the years they recollect were to live. And yet, here I am.
Here we are.
“Losing Dad…it forced me to grow up overnight. Then everything happened with Kimberly, and I told myself I had to forget that feeling we shared. That it was blown out of proportion, bigger in my memory than in reality.” My gaze drops, shame coloring my cheeks. “When you and Waylon showed up next door, I’d worked so hard for so long to forget how it felt to be close to you. To convince myself it was a product of teenage hormones rather than anything real. But you were here, right in front of me, and despite the circumstances, those feelings all came rushing back. Just as real. And even more impossible to act upon than when we were kids.”
I blink away the image, replacing it with one from the night of Delilah’s first volleyball game. “I denied it for years. Forced myself to believe that you were happy, and I was happy, and everything would be okay. But the day you showed up at the school with that bruise on your face, I could’ve killed Waylon. Do you know that? I wanted to. I’ve never wanted that before, or since. But knowing he had hurt you. Someone so precious, so perfect. I couldn’t bear it. And I knew then that I only felt that way because I loved you. Because I never stopped loving you.”
In the silence that follows, the room comes rushing in. The low buzz of the television. The tick of a grandfather clock in the hall. A cow mooing outside, and the engine of an ATV that follows.
We’re running out of time together, in more ways than one.
Lucy smiles, her gaze locked on something unseen. “I’m happy we never got to be together.”
I startle, one brow raising. “Why? ”
“Because,” she says, shifting so her knee rests on my thigh, and our joined hands are propped on that tower of limbs. “I’ll die without you ever finding out how imperfect I actually am. I’ll always be this tidy, beautiful thing in your memory. Never the broken woman I’ve seen in the mirror my entire life.”
Anger pulses in my temples, surprising me. I swallow hard, forcing my words to come out calmly, when the feelings behind them are anything but. “You’re forgetting that I know you, Lucy. Not some curated version of you, but you. To your core. I’ve seen you cower for your father. Take more shit from that asshole you married than anyone ever should. I’ve seen you weak, and I’ve seen you strong. Brave. Running from your bedroom window at midnight or standing up for yourself and preparing to leave that same man you gave your life to when he didn’t deserve it. Leaving him, when the time came to do it. I’ve seen you lose your cool with Truett, and I’ve seen you apologize afterward. I’ve seen every good and awful thing, and I love you anyway. Still. No matter what.”
She offers a watery smile that chisels at my heart. Drops a stone in my hollow chest. “It could’ve been amazing. You and me. We could’ve had something really special.”
That ATV engine grows louder, then cuts off right outside the door. Her gaze flickers to the door, but I’m not done. Not ready to let this moment pass without making her the only promise I can keep.
“We’ll get another life, Lucy. Another chance.” I lift our joined hands to my lips. “I promise. I’ll find you when I get there, and I’ll never let you go.”
Tru walks in. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know. She finds him, her eyes softening at the edges as soon as she does.
“Maybe we already got our second chance.” Her hand pulses in mine, and her words are barely above a whisper as she juts her chin toward her son and adds, “Maybe it’s them. ”
I glance over my shoulder. Truett meets my gaze, a question in his own. He’s welcome to search, but he’ll find no answers in mine. All I know of the future is hope. And hope is what I want to give Lucy.
“Maybe it is,” I reply, letting my thoughts drift to my daughter. I wonder how she’s doing. If she’s happy. If I’ll ever get to see her again.
She loved Lucy, once upon a time. Would she want to know Lucy’s dying? Would that knowledge bring her home?
It’s unfair and a bit manipulative, but I consider it for a moment.
Then Lucy releases my hand and rises, grimacing in pain as she does, and I’m pulled back from the cliff’s edge. I jerk to my feet, reaching for her, but she waves me off. “I’m fine. Not an invalid yet.”
She pads over to meet Truett, who’s still standing in the doorway with a raised brow and tearstained cheeks. “Everything okay, Mom?”
“More than okay,” she muses, reaching up to pinch one of his dirt-smudged shoulders. “Any new babies to name?”
“You know it’s not good to name them,” he says, a discouraging scowl on his face.
“Amuse me,” she replies.
A heavy sigh deflates his chest, but his eyes are warm when they regard his mother. “We’ve got a new girl. 542 calved sometime during dinner.”
“Perfect. We’ll call her Rosie.”
His expression softens. “Okay, Mama. Rosie it is.”
Lucy rises on her tiptoes to kiss her son, and it makes my chest ache with a jealousy I can barely stomach.
“I’m going to head to bed, you two. Big day tomorrow. Lots of needles.” She winks even as Truett and I wince. “Relax, y’all. It’s not the end of the world. Just of me. ”
“Mom!”
“Lucy,” I groan simultaneously.
“Good night!” she singsongs, ignoring our objections.
We both watch her disappear down the hall toward her bedroom, and when the door shuts, I keep my eyes on it as I say, “Dare I ask, what is tomorrow?”
“More tests. Determining a treatment plan.” Truett slips out of his boots and crosses the room, taking the seat beside me that his mother just abandoned. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you be able to come with us?”
I glance over, finding tears welling in his eyes. He looks so much like his mother that for a moment it steals my breath.
“I don’t know how to do this alone,” he admits.
I look at him and see myself, twenty-some-odd years ago, facing a funeral I didn’t know how to plan. A loss I didn’t know how to grieve. A responsibility like no other I’d ever had before.
So I reach out and pat his knee, catching his gaze and holding it tight. “I’ll be there every step of the way.”
“Thank you,” he manages to whisper. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
My smile is a pathetic, mournful thing. His responding one the same. But we aren’t alone in our fear, our uncertainty. For that, I’m eternally grateful.
May 1st, 2022
Lucy Parker dies on a Sunday morning, with sunlight streaming in her bedroom window, painting her sunken cheeks gold. “You’ll Be in My Heart” plays on the radio, and Truett holds her hand, weeping softly. Roberta, her caretaker, sits in the corner, tears streaming down her cheeks. I stand at the foot of her bed, counting each rise and fall of her chest, until there’s nothing left to count. Until loss collapses in on us like a demolished house, destroying everything we once knew home to be.
I help Truett plan her funeral. Stand beside him while his grandfather glares from the back row. It’s a graveside service, in the hillside cemetery behind their house, where she can rest in the shade of live oaks, kept company by Abel Johnson’s family and the birds that sing constantly overhead. The funeral director speaks nothing of salvation, but instead of living life with no regrets. A lesson Lucy and I learned far too late. As I watch the love of my life be lowered into the ground at far too young an age, regrets are all that I have. All that I am. They weigh so heavy on my mind that I wonder if I’ll ever be free of them. If this is how I’ll feel for the rest of my life.
I stumble home after the last of the attendees have left Lucy’s wake and Truett has passed out on their couch, one of her shirts cradled in his clenched fist. The sight of him like that, so large and yet so incredibly small, haunts me when I close my eyes. Is there when I finally drift off to sleep.
In the days that follow Lucy’s passing, grief deems me palatable enough to swallow whole. The world grows bleak and dark in a way I’ve never seen, cutting me off from my own senses. I do not hurt; I do not hunger. I sit on the couch, watching the light paint and repaint my walls with each new day. Another day without her in it.
It consumes me so thoroughly that I miss the calls from the music school. The texts from my coworkers. My students. At one point Truett calls, and it’s the first time I feel my hand twitch toward the phone. I cannot make my arm lift. The effort is too monumental. Eventually the screen goes dark. And then it dies altogether.
He resorts to showing up at my door, which I’ve neglected to lock, and letting himself into the dark mausoleum that is my home. I’m sure I smell. Can’t remember the last time I showered. But he doesn’t look much better than me. We sit in our numb brokenness and let proximity be enough. Let our shared hurt be the thing that pulls us through.
Months pass, and though I do eventually return to work, my heart is no longer in it. When Lucy left the world, she took music with her. Playing it feels like I’m stealing from the dead. I drop to part-time. Then occasional lessons. My savings dwindle, but I can’t bring myself to care.
My brain is filled with fog. I lose hours of the day to it, or sometimes a day in its entirety. I turn on the stovetop but forget until the smell of gas fills the house. Start the shower but never get in. My wallet goes missing. Turns up in a discarded flowerpot. I find my keys after three days in the bottom of a coffee mug. Truett seems to be getting better, while I fall deeper into the hole. I’d be happy for him if I could feel anything at all.
It happens so gradually that I forget to question it. I blame the misplaced words and forgotten tasks on grief, rather than recognizing them for what they are. I go through the motions. Put one foot in front of the other. Disregard Tru’s questions as him being overly concerned. Disregard my own confusion as a symptom of entering my forties.
It’s not until I’m mowing the lawn on a balmy summer day, and Truett stops me in my tracks that I realize something is wrong. He places a hand over mine, forcing me to meet his gaze, which is filled with genuine concern.
“Henry, the mower isn’t running.”
“Are you crazy? Of course it is.” But when I glance down, the sound of the world comes rushing in, and it’s notably absent of the growl of an engine. “Huh. Must’ve kicked off.” I bend over and yank the chain, but the engine doesn’t even gurgle. “Did you break this thing? What the hell, Truett?”
He’s silent for a long moment. When he swallows, I’m convinced it’s because he’s guilty. But his words land on me like a splash of cool water, pulling me out of the fog.
“It’s been broken for a week, and you’ve mowed with it every day regardless.” He steps closer but drops his hand from mine to rest on his hip. “Is everything okay, Henry? This goes beyond normal grief. Mom’s been gone for months. I’m really concerned about you.”
Panic lances my stomach. I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry to work. I feel like I’m suffocating in the open air. Like I’ll die if I don’t get oxygen, but I can’t remember how to for the life of me.
“I think I’m sick,” I finally manage to get out. “Fuck, I think I’m really sick, Tru.”
Concern flashes in his gaze, but his voice is level when he speaks. “It’ll be okay. Do you want me to call your doctor, or do you want me to take you to the hospital? I can do either.”
“I— I don’t know.” I bite at my lip, willing the pain to bring with it an answer, but nothing comes.
“Hospital it is. Come on, then.”
“Right now?” I glance down, suddenly aware of the tall grass tickling my calves. I’m in my underwear, socks, and nothing else. How did I let myself go outside like this? “I have to change.”
“No worries. I’ll help,” Truett says, offering me his hand.
I take it, and he guides me forward. Releases my hand to clasp my shoulder, which stings on contact. Sunburnt. I’m sunburnt. How long have I been outside without a shirt?
“I’m so sorry about all this,” I mumble.
“Don’t be. Let’s get you to the doctor and you’ll be right as rain.”
And I try to believe him, I do. But I know deep down what’s happening. I sense it like a cold coming on. A scratch of the throat that will inevitably metastasize into a full-blown illness.
I think of my mother’s pearl earrings, how they disappeared and she accused Kimberly of stealing them. I picture them in the glove compartment of my car, right where my mother had stowed them and then forgotten.
Those earrings were the beginning of the end. Cold dread sends a shiver down my spine.
Truett hands me a shirt and shorts from the laundry basket on the couch. The room is in disarray. Clothes, both clean and dirty, are strewn about every surface. Dishes fill the sink. When did I let it get this way? Where have I been in my brain?
He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t need to. We both know this isn’t right.
“Tru, I?—”
He glances up from helping tie my shoes. Why is he doing that? Surely I could’ve.
“What’s happening?” I say, not recognizing the desperation in my voice.
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.”
“I’m scared,” I admit.
He rises in front of me, offering a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay, Henry. I’ve got your back, remember? You had mine, and now I have yours.”
When did he get so grown? I study the man before me, remembering when he was just a little boy, chasing Delilah around my yard.
Delilah.
I don’t realize I’ve said her name aloud until Tru’s gaze narrows, an incredulous brow raising. “Do you want me to call her? I didn’t…I mean, I thought you two didn’t really talk, you know?”
“We don’t,” I say, my throat constricting around the words. “You have to…to…”
“Anything, Henry.” He cups my shoulder, ducking his head to meet my gaze head-on. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll take care of it.”
“That,” I say, lifting a finger to his chest. “Take care of Delilah. Promise you’ll take care of Delilah.”
His gaze softens at the edges. A dimple that makes him seem so young hollows out his cheek when he smiles sadly and nods.
“I promise.” He draws an X over his heart. “If there ever comes a day when you can’t, then I promise I’ll take care of our girl. Now let’s get you to the hospital and get you feeling better, okay?”
“Okay,” I relent. I let him guide me to his truck. Help me up, and buckle me in. I’m lost in another world. Another time, when Delilah was a child, and her grandmother lost so much more than her earrings.
She lost her memories, and now I’m losing mine too.
I know it before we even pull into the doctor. Before the tests that follow, over the course of the next few months. Before the diagnosis lands in my lap, and Truett closes his eyes to hide his devastation. I know that I’m going to forget, and this angry cycle will go on repeating itself if I don’t do anything to stop it.
So I take the meds. I do the therapies. And I put the plan in place, so that Delilah never has to choose between her life or mine. So that when I call, when I break the news, the wheels will already be in motion. Her life can go on without a hitch, while mine slowly winds toward the inevitable end.
It may be too late for me, but I’ll be damned if I let my daughter follow in my footsteps. I talk to the lawyers. I start to make plans. All of it while I still can, with a little help from Truett. I’m confident I have time, until I find myself in a ditch with the hood of my car caved in. That’s when I call Delilah, because the end seems closer than ever.
I listen to the phone ring while Tru sips coffee at my table, a carefully passive look painted on his face .
It goes to voicemail, which I expected. Am grateful for, really, because I don’t want her to think I’m asking anything of her. Pressuring her to change her mind and come home. She made her decision, and I’m so proud of her. I want her to put herself first. To truly live a life with no regrets.
To be better than me, in every way. Starting with this one.
The dial tone sounds, and I open my mouth, hoping my love for her laces every word. Hoping I can somehow convey, in the boundaries of a voicemail, just how much I love her. How much I dream for her. That I hope she’ll be something that happens to this world, rather than letting this world happen to her, the way I always have.
I picture her listening on the other end of the phone. But in my mind she’s fifteen and in the passenger seat of my car, gazing up at me with wide hazel eyes, a quiet demand on her lips.
“ Don’t call me Delilah, okay? No matter how old I get, I’m sweet pea to you. Promise? ”
I promised her then. And I keep my promise now.
“Hi, sweet pea. It’s Dad.”