Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
JADEN
I’m crouched on the sofa, arms wrapped around my knees. The last light of the day falls in through the window. The sky slowly turns orange, then red. As if blazing away could keep it from having to surrender to the night.
I watch the spectacle without really seeing it. Again and again, my gaze drifts back to the coffee table.
The bag is lying there. Transparent, slightly crumpled. Inside, the scraps of paper. White, some with pencil marks, some folded.
I tore up this list irrevocably before I drove to Lilly’s house this morning.
You don’t have to decide right away, just keep it with you. That’s what Nyla said before she slipped the bag into my pocket.
And she said I love you, her voice choked with tears, but so urgent that her words are still echoing inside me.
I love you too, I wanted to call after her, but my voice was only a soundless croak.
She was right about everything she said. Part of me knows that, the other is paralyzed. Again I look at the bag. I could open it and put the pieces back together. And then I could go on, just like I promised Camee.
I stare at the bag the way you watch a sleeping monster—quietly, holding your breath, full of worry it might wake up—and I can’t shake the chaos inside me.
My conversation with Nyla this morning in the hospital park drifts through my head. Unlike yesterday, she didn’t want to force me into either an examination or a treatment.
Again and again over the past few hours, her words have surfaced in me, along with everything she told me about her own fear, so convinced it also had something to do with me. And it does.
I’m scared.
Of the test result, of the treatment, of death, and also of Camee’s list.
The worst part is the fear, I hear Nyla whisper.
Shit, yeah, and that doesn’t just apply to the tentative diagnosis, but to my whole life. This life in which, for years, there was no fear, no pain, no grief.
With trembling fingers, I pick up the bag. The crinkling of the plastic sounds deafeningly loud in the quiet room. I hesitate for a moment, then tear the bag open.
The scraps of paper flutter out. They’re barely bigger than postage stamps, sharp-edged, torn, hurt. I smooth them out on the table, one after the other, and turn the written side up.
My pulse speeds up as I take the first piece and look for a connection. Some parts fit together surprisingly quickly, others I set aside in confusion.
A word appears. Then a second. Half a sentence. I recognize the handwriting, see my little sister in front of me, handing me the list with a pleading expression.
The third item on the list is the first one to lie finished in front of me.
3. Learn to dance tango.
There is a warm feeling between the words I’ve pieced together.
I lean back on the couch, an image flickers up. Nyla’s hand in mine. Her eyes holding on to me as if she senses that I’m about to fall. The first steps. The bumpy beginning, that feeling of not being able to do it because it hurts too much.
And then her. How she laughs. How she gets me to talk about Camee. How she is there for me, going through the grief together with me.
I remember the moment when, for the first time, I let go of the fear of feeling close to my sister through dancing. Not because she had disappeared, but because of Nyla. Because she was with me.
Step by step. Moment by moment.
It wasn’t just a dance. It was a victory. Because I could be close to Camee without breaking apart.
And now, looking at this torn-up list, I understand: without Nyla I never would have taken that step. Our tango was like the silent promise of a future that suddenly seemed possible.
Another promise that I’m just about to break.
I keep piecing the list back together. Every piece that finds its place feels like a new fragment of a hope I would lose if I let the fear inside me win: the hope for a life that outlasts the moment.
That’s what I wanted, together with Nyla. That’s what a part of me still wants. I could have the tests done. To see how good or bad my chances are, and after that I can still decide what to do next.
That would be an option too, wouldn’t it?
But what if I really am sick? Could I handle that?
Heavy with thoughts, I reach for the next scrap of paper. There’s no writing on it, so I study the edges to figure out where it might belong.
What’s that strange shadow on the paper?
I look closer. It’s a slight indentation.
A line.
A word, maybe two.
Written and erased again, yet the traces are still there. Like a memory you can’t erase, no matter how hard you try.
The letters are faint, ghostly. ‘...at you l…’
What is this? Another one of Lilly’s dreams? But why did she erase it again? Feverishly I search for pieces to complete the sentence. Find edges that might fit, put them together. Piece by piece, word by word.
‘…at you love him.’
Whom do you love? Who did Lilly mean? A man? No, there was no man in Lilly’s life.
My gaze darts over the pieces.
There.
Bright lines.
It’s an eight. The eighth item on her list, which I always thought only had seven.
Where’s the last piece?
That could be it… yeah, that looks good.
I fit the pieces of paper together and reveal Lilly’s eighth wish.
8. Tell Brian that you love him.
She wrote it down but erased it again. Maybe this wish wasn’t meant for my eyes, but now it’s here—and it breaks my heart. Because while I know exactly who Brian is, I didn’t know he was one of Camee’s dreams.