Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
ALEX
Neither Daniel nor I speak as I withdraw my hand from his stomach. He gives me a grimace of apology and lowers his shirt while I sink onto the edge of the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask in a whisper.
He lets out a little sigh as he straightens his t-shirt. “I didn’t want to add to everything, but…I suspected you already knew.”
My head drops toward my chest, and I close my eyes. He’s right, I did know, even if I was trying my best not to.
“From the radiation?” I have to force the words out.
“I’d guess so.” He sighs. “I wasn’t as honest with you as I should have been. When I went to get Sam and then Jenny there were a lot of people fleeing the fallout. Some people even had burns…I mean, it’s not something you can see, so I was always wondering—is it bad? How bad? Am I breathing it in right now? What will it do to me?” He shakes his head. “I just didn’t know. I tried to keep them both indoors as much as possible, either in the car or a house, but…”
I’m both completely unsurprised and deeply shocked. Of course the radiation was that bad. I wanted to believe Daniel’s glib assurances, gleaned from sci-fi series and disaster movies, but did I really accept his version, deep down? No, I never did. Which means…
“Do you think Sam…” I begin, and then find I can’t finish that sentence.
Daniel gives me a look of mute appeal. “I did my best, Alex, I swear, but of course I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He looks abject, and so very apologetic, and I feel guilty for making him think this could, in any way, be his fault. Dear God, I think, what sort of wife have I been?
In any case, I tell myself, my son isn’t sick like my husband. Sam isn’t struggling to breathe or to eat; he isn’t falling asleep at six o’clock at night. His skin isn’t gray; his body isn’t gaunt and wasting away.
Silently I reach over and take Daniel’s hand. He twines his fingers through mine, and we sit there for a few minutes without saying a word, because it feels like there is nothing more to say.
We can’t leave this camp, I realize belatedly, with Daniel this sick. Will Vicky and the others understand, or will they still put it to a vote? And how sick is Daniel? I glance at his familiar, beloved face, now so weary and lined. Will it be a matter of weeks, months, more? Or maybe less…maybe just days. Like with the radiation, there’s no way to know.
A sound escapes me, ragged and hitching, and Daniel squeezes my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
I shake my head. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who should be sorry. I made you?—”
“You didn’t.”
“If you hadn’t gone?—”
“Then we wouldn’t have Sam back.”
He sounds so certain, but some part of me is determined to rail against it all, finding fault and blame because for some inexplicable reason that feels easier .
“Still,” I insist stubbornly. “I shouldn’t have asked that of you.”
“Alex.” Daniel’s voice is gentle, and it forces me to look him full in the face—his tired eyes are full of love and sorrow. “I would have gone anyway.”
Another sound escapes me, half hiccup, half sob, and I know I can’t take any more, not now. And Daniel can’t either, I tell myself, because he looks exhausted. So I change the subject, the switch as abrupt and obvious as a screech of tires, and say, “Let me tell you about this place. It’s kind of crazy, but in a good way.”
Daniel smiles and settles back against the pillows. “Okay,” he replies. “Tell me.”
I tell him about the community and all its members, the solar panels and the artesian well, the farm fields and greenhouses, the fishing and the boats, the fact that this place is pretty much self-sustaining, or soon will be.
“Vicky said if we wanted to stay, they would put it to a vote,” I finish before adding firmly, “I think we should stay.”
Daniel smiles and shrugs. “Well, I don’t think I’m going anywhere in a hurry.”
I know he’s just trying to be realistic, but I can’t bear to hear it, and he must see that in my face, for he catches my hand, staying it with his own. “Alex. We need to be honest about this.”
I avert my gaze from his, recognizing it’s cowardly, but it’s the only way to keep from crying. “I know.”
“I have no idea how long I’ll last,” he continues steadily, “but I’m pretty sure this is terminal.”
A tear leaks from my eye and trickles down my cheek before dripping off my chin. “Don’t…” I whisper.
“I don’t mind dying,” Daniel tells me as he traces the lines of my palm with his thumb. “Maybe I should, I’m not that old, after all, but I’m not afraid. Tom helped me see that.”
I turn to face him. “ Tom? ”
“Yes, Tom, from the NBSRC and before. He’s a good man, a man of faith, and…” Daniel pauses, his throat working. “I was feeling guilty about…about something I did. Or really, something I didn’t do.” He closes his eyes. “And Tom helped me to forgive myself. He assured me that God had forgiven me. And I hadn’t even realized I’d needed that until he’d said it.”
“Daniel…”
“I don’t want to tell you,” he continues, his eyes still closed. “Not yet, anyway. Maybe not ever. I’m forgiven. That’s enough.”
“I killed a man,” I remind him, my voice wobbling all over the place. “A good man, a man of faith like your Tom, maybe. And I don’t think Sam has forgiven me for it, never mind God.”
“I think,” Daniel says, opening his eyes, “that you’re the one who can’t forgive. You can’t let it go, Alex, just like I couldn’t, for so long. You need to.”
I nod jerkily and slip my hand from Daniel’s. He’s tired, and I really can’t handle any more of this kind of conversation. I have to take it in small bursts in order to keep going, and, now more than ever, that’s what I need to do. “You should rest,” I tell him. “I’ll come back in an hour or so to check on you, give you something to eat.”
He gives a small, sad smile, and I know he understands why I’m pulling away, but he lets me do it.
“I love you,” I blurt. I wonder how many more times I’ll have a chance to say it.
“I love you, too,” he replies, and then his eyes flutter closed.
I’m feeling too raw to face everyone back at the main cabin, and so I end up going for a walk down by the lake. The ground is frozen hard, the lake a mix of ice, slush, and frigid water. Above the sky is a pale, hazy blue that looks like it might morph into the slate gray that promises snow.
I walk steadily, putting one foot in front of the other, doing my best not to think. As long as I keep my mind full of this buzzing blankness, I’ll be okay. I won’t give in to the grief, or the regrets that I wasn’t the wife I should have been to my husband. That I stayed angry and resentful when I could have been kind and, yes, forgiving. I have a lot to forgive myself for, and I’m not sure I can do it, or even if I should.
Eventually I run out of space; the shoreline becomes impassable, a thicket of fallen evergreens blocking the way, their dead branches looking like hundreds of skeletal fingers. Slowly I turn around, and come, to my surprise, face to face with Nicole.
“Have you been following me?” I demand, my breath a frosty puff of air between us.
She shrugs. “I’ve been walking in the same direction.”
I shake my head and start to walk past her. I’m not in the mood for Nicole’s peculiar brand of orneriness, not now.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, just as I walk by her.
I hesitate, and then, with my back still turned, I admit recklessly, “Daniel has cancer, from the radiation. He’s dying.” Saying it out loud makes me feel worse. This is happening, and there’s nothing I can do about it. No matter how hard I fight or how fast I run, no matter how many promises I make to protect my family, to forge or force a way through…
Cancer will beat me. Us .
“I’m sorry,” Nicole says quietly. “That sucks.”
A ragged laugh escapes me, torn from my being. “Yeah, you could say that.”
She turns and falls into step alongside me, and, by silent, mutual agreement, we start walking back toward the camp. “You’re going to stay here, then?” she asks.
“If we’re allowed. They have to vote.”
“Yeah, there’s that.”
“What about you?”
A sigh escapes her, long and weary. “I’m running out of road. I mean, I can’t cope on my own. I’m fully aware of that. Maybe it’s why I stayed with William for so long. And I need to be strong for Ben.” She sounds angry with herself, and I feel a stirring of sympathy.
“You’re stronger than you pretend, Nicole,” I tell her, and she laughs.
“No, I’m actually not. This whole tough-cookie-who-doesn’t-care schtick? It’s just an act. You’ve seen me cry.” She says it like an accusation. “You know I’m not up for any of this. Plus, I have no idea how to garden, knit, pluck a chicken, skin a…I don’t even know, a deer. I’m totally, totally hopeless at all that stuff, and, frankly, I’ve been okay with that.”
Improbably, I find myself smiling. “You could learn. I did. Ruby’s got a great book that teaches you all that kind of stuff, step by step.”
“A book?” She sounds understandably skeptical.
“Yes, but nothing like a little hands-on experience, though, it’s true.” I turn to face her, summoning a strength of conviction I didn’t realize I felt until this moment. “You and Ben could make a good life for yourselves here,” I tell her. “Let go of that tough cookie act, put how William treated you behind you as best as you can…This could work out for you, if you let it. If you let go of some of that cynicism—understandable, why you have it, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep it—and just…embraced this. What it could be for you, as well as for Ben…” I run out of steam as well as breath.
Nicole cocks her head. “Thanks for the inspirational talk.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Can I have that on a poster?” she asks musingly. “Or actually, a coaster? Too bad VistaPrint isn’t around anymore, or you could do a roaring business in the inspirational logo field. I really see this kind of thing taking off.”
I laugh. The sound is rusty but real. “Yeah, too bad. I could order a round thousand and sell them out of the trunk of my car. I mean, everyone needs a little motivational slogan in these times, right? To keep you going? ”
“What about you?” She drops the joking, her expression turning serious. “You sound like you aren’t going to stay here.”
“I don’t know. We have to for now because…” I can’t make myself say it. “But as for the future? The rest of my life?”
Her eyebrows—still elegant—lift. “Can any of us think that way anymore?”
“Maybe not,” I allow. “Maybe I just need to be in this moment, crappy as it is, and not worry about the next one, never mind the one after that.”
“That sounds like good advice,” she replies, sounding sincere for the first time since I’ve met her, and we walk back to the camp in a silence that feels like solidarity.
I know we need to tell the kids about Daniel’s condition, but I’m not ready to have that conversation quite yet. So I help Vicky and Sheryl prepare lunch—pickled beets and bread made from nut flour—and then wash up. As long as I keep busy , I think, but I know that’s not true.
After lunch, I head back to the cabin to check on Daniel, to find he’s asleep and sweating out a fever. When I rest my hand against his clammy forehead, he doesn’t even open his eyes.
I decide it’s time to face some hard truths and figure out a plan for all of us.
Sheryl offers to keep Phoebe occupied in the kitchen while I gather my troops around me. We’re sitting in the living room of our cabin; Kyle started a fire in the log-burner and it lets out a cheery glow as well as a comforting warmth. The door to Daniel’s bedroom is firmly closed.
“So,” I tell them all. “We need to decide if we want to stay here.”
Mattie, quick as ever, answers incredulously, “Why wouldn’t we? I mean, where else are we going to go?”
“Remember what the Strattons said about something happening out in North Dakota?” I remind her. “There might be places, whole cities, being rebuilt out there. If there’s a government, they’re going to want to restore order.” Even if it’s almost impossible to imagine life getting back to some kind of normal.
“I don’t want to live in North Dakota,” Mattie replies, obstinate now.
“You’d rather live in northern Ontario?” I ask with an attempt at a smile.
“I like it here.” She gives me a look that manages to be both accusing and sympathetic. “People are nice, and it’s got a cool vibe. You don’t have to keep running, Mom.”
Which makes me look at Sam, for some reason, and once again he looks away. “I’m not running,” I reply, but my tone is unconvincing, even to myself. “Anyway, that’s not the point. I just wanted to know what you guys thought.” I glance at Sam, at Kyle, at Ruby. “Do you all want to stay?”
One by one they nod, although Ruby ventures, “I want to go where you go.”
“Thanks, Rubes.” I give her a quick, reassuring hug. “I’m willing to follow the consensus on this,” I tell them all. “If you want to stay, we’ll stay, and the community here will put it to a vote. Nothing is guaranteed, unfortunately?—”
“Don’t I get a vote?”
I turn to see Daniel standing in the doorway, looking terrible. His face is gray, covered with a sheen of sweat, and he’s leaning against the door frame like he doesn’t have the strength to stand up.
“Dad…” Sam begins, sounding alarmed.
“You already told me you wanted to stay,” I tell him, pressing my lips together to keep from crying. I can’t stand to see him looking like this, and I’m pretty sure, judging by everyone’s horrified faces, that my children feel the same, along with Kyle.
“Yes, but I need to tell everyone why I want to stay,” Daniel replies, his voice both steady and gentle. He knows I haven’t told them about his cancer, and they need to be told.
I swallow and nod, giving permission, even if I’m unable to put it into so many words.
“Dad…” This time it’s Mattie who protests, a wobble in her voice. “What…what’s going on?”
“I have a tumor in my stomach,” Daniel tells them without preamble. “Probably from radiation exposure, although who can say for sure? But it’s been growing and I’m feeling it and eventually it’s going to get me. I’m sorry, guys. I really am.”
For a few seconds, everyone simply stares. It’s like they can’t take in what he’s saying; it simply won’t compute. They won’t let it.
Then, finally, Sam says in a faint voice, “You mean…you have cancer?”
Daniel nods, as unflappable as ever. “Yes.”
“And…” This from Mattie. “It’s going to kill you?”
“Well, it’s not like I can get treatment around here.” Daniel tries to smile, but then his face collapses with sadness. “I wish it didn’t end this way,” he admits in a low voice. “I don’t want to leave you all. I don’t want you to be left .”
“But…” Mattie gulps. “I thought you said the radiation wasn’t that bad.”
“I guess I was mistaken.” Daniel spreads his hands wide. “I don’t think it’s as bad now, at any rate, because it’s had to have dissipated so much. But back then—when I was getting Sam—I think it was bad then. Worse than anyone realized, at least for a while.”
“You knew,” Sam says suddenly. His voice is hard, and he almost sounds angry. “You knew, and that’s why you kept insisting I stay inside, and Granny too, for all that time.”
Daniel gives our son an appraising look. “I was trying to protect you, Sam. ”
“Well, you shouldn’t have!” Sam shouts as tears start from his eyes. “You shouldn’t have! You don’t have to be such a damned martyr all the time.” Abruptly he pushes up from the sofa and storms out of the house, slamming the door behind him so hard it feels as if the whole cabin rattles.
For a few seconds we all simply sit there, silent. Then I rise and head to the door. “I’ll talk to him,” I say, and I go outside.
Sam is striding toward the lake, taking more or less the same route I did a few hours ago. I follow him at a distance, wishing I knew what to say or even how to say it, but I don’t. I feel empty inside, used up, and yet somehow I’ve got to be here for my son—say the right thing, make the whole situation if not better, then at least bearable.
“Sam.” I start with his name, keeping my voice gentle, as I come to stand a few yards behind him. He is facing the lake, his hands laced together on top of his head, elbows akimbo.
“I’m not in the mood for a pep talk, Mom,” he states wearily.
“I’m not in the mood to give one.”
“Good.” He drops his hands abruptly, so they smack down by his sides as he continues to stare out at the lake.
“I know this is hard,” I begin, wincing inwardly at how feeble I sound. You think? I imagine Mattie firing back at me, eyebrows raised, but Sam just sighs.
“It is hard. I’m just…I’m so mad at him.” His voice breaks, and he bows his head as he takes a few shuddering breaths to control himself.
“Sam…” I step closer, reaching one hand out, although I don’t touch him. That is not what I’d expected him to say. “Help me understand. I get why you’re mad at me, but why…why at Dad?”
“Mom,” Sam tells me in that same weary voice as he scrubs at his eyes, “you do not understand anything. Sorry, but it’s true. You have gotten it all completely wrong from the beginning. ”
I blink, absorbing this, trying not to let it sting. “So tell me what I got wrong,” I say finally, keeping my voice gentle.
Sam sighs. “You think I freaked out because you killed that guy on the road, right?”
“Well…”
He floors me with what he says next.
“That’s not it at all,” my son tells me as he turns around. “I wasn’t freaked out because you killed that guy…I was mad because I should have been the one to do it.”