Chapter Fifteen Hutchinson, Minnesota Present Day #2
“Good swimsuits always are. It took me a long time to realize that one should never skimp on socks, bras, or swimwear. I spent most of my twenties being stabbed by rogue underwire.” Then, when Scarlett still didn’t say anything, Chrissie turned toward her with her best warning scowl.
Honestly, Scarlett had worse manners than Kat sometimes.
“You’re the one who taught me that. Remember the first time you took me to La Perla? I took one look at the price tags and—”
But here she cut herself off. Scarlett’s own warning scowl was impossible to ignore, especially since it was being directed at River.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking back and forth between the two. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing is wrong,” Scarlett said. “I’m totally fine.”
To Chrissie’s surprise, River clamped her mouth shut and nodded. She thought she heard the girl mutter something under her breath, but the words were impossible to make out over the sound of the hot-tub bubbles kicking into action.
Scarlett yanked the towel she was lying on and pulled it up over her chest. The action was a childish one, but it didn’t make Chrissie soften. It only made her realize a thing she should have figured out days ago.
In the Scarlett Sanderson she knew, a boob job was an excuse to pull on skimpy tops and plunging necklines, to bend and twist until a nip slip was all but guaranteed.
But, no. This Scarlett Sanderson had been drowning in high-necked shirts and flowy tops the entire trip, looking thinner and paler the more the miles wore on.
And the pills in her purse. Chrissie couldn’t forget the pills in her purse.
That conniving, lying, sneaky little bitch. I can’t believe she’s doing this to me…again.
Chrissie sat bolt upright on the lounge and stared—not at Scarlett, but at River. “River, when you say that your mom had a suit like that, do you mean before or after her cancer diagnosis?”
“Um…”
“Don’t answer that, River,” Scarlett warned. “It’s none of our business.”
“Did she have breast cancer?” Chrissie persisted. “Is that what took her life? Do you recognize the pills Scarlett is taking?”
“River, I mean it.” This time, Scarlett’s words held less of a warning and more of a snarl. “Proceed at your own risk.”
Unfortunately for Scarlett, River was made of sterner stuff—a thing Scarlett would have realized for herself if she’d taken any time to consider the girl’s situation.
An eighteen-year-old was practically a child, yes, but this was a child who’d been through hell and back again, who was even now trying to claw her way free of it.
Vague threats from a woman wearing a mastectomy bikini top would hold very little sway over someone like that.
“Yeah, uh. I think I’m gonna go get dressed.” River took one look at Scarlett’s furious face and Chrissie’s even more furious one and added, “And then I’m going for a walk. A long one.”
Chrissie hated the thought of leaving that poor girl to her devices for the entire afternoon, but not as much as she hated Scarlett right now.
They had one rule—one freaking rule. Months could pass without communication between them.
One of them could get fake-proposed to at a baseball game without telling the other.
Another one could spend every Saturday night in her pajamas binge-watching Schitt’s Creek for the fifteenth time without judgment.
But when it came to the big stuff—the health stuff—they were supposed to be honest with each other. Always.
“When were you going to tell me?” Chrissie asked, her voice flat.
Scarlett was wearing her oversized sunglasses, so it was impossible to see her reaction, but Chrissie could guess how panicked her friend was right now. When trapped in a corner, Scarlett was the type to lash out as hard as she could. Kat wasn’t the only one with a mean-girl streak in her.
“When, Scarlett?”
“I was working my way up to it, I swear. I just needed the right time—”
Chrissie flung up her hand. “Bullshit.” The word snapped out of her like the crack of a whip. “The right time was the minute you got the diagnosis—no, the minute you started feeling under the weather. And you know it.”
A feeling unlike anything she’d ever experienced before came over her. With as much radiation and chemotherapy as Scarlett had been subjected to as a child, they’d always known that another bout of cancer was a real possibility, but Chrissie had assumed it was a possibility they shared.
That was the whole point of them. Everything they did was supposed to be together. It wasn’t just the two of them against cancer. It was the two of them against the world.
“Do you still want to touch them?” Scarlett asked as she allowed the towel to slip down her chest to reveal the two pert globes. “The swimsuit inserts are surprisingly realistic. I probably went a little too big, but at this point, I figured, why the hell not?”
Chrissie burst into tears. She wished she could concentrate her anger and use that as a shield, or at least ride the wave of her fury long enough to get a few answers, but this was who she was.
When anger came for her, she cried. And when her best friend of twenty-seven years had been diagnosed with cancer and undergone a double mastectomy all by herself, she cried even harder.
She couldn’t contain an audible sob at that last thought, all the interactions of the past week pinging her like a hailstorm. It was all so obvious now—the oversized clothes and the way Scarlett refused to sleep one minute longer than she had to, the water she’d ordered at a swanky cocktail bar.
I should have noticed earlier. I should have made her tell me the truth.
“Chrissie, please don’t cry.” Scarlett was on her knees by Chrissie’s side in an instant.
Somewhere in the back of Chrissie’s mind, she knew this was backwards, and that she was the one who was supposed to be comforting Scarlett, but the hot tears kept scoring her cheeks.
“I’m a monster for waiting this long to tell you. A horrible friend. I just didn’t want to worry you or add to your burdens more than I already have.”
“My burdens?” Chrissie echoed. Nothing Scarlett was saying was making her feel any better about this. “You mean Kat? That’s what this whole thing is about?”
“That’s what everything between us is about, and you know it.
Since the day she was born, she’s been a wedge between us.
” Scarlett hesitated in a way that made Chrissie’s entire body grow cold.
Or maybe that was just the sun slipping behind a cloud and taking the warm temperature with it.
“It was always my intention to tell you as soon as the trip got underway, but then we were having such a good time and you started inviting stray teenagers to join us, so—”
Chrissie stood up so abruptly that her head spun.
Scarlett tried to rise with her, but Chrissie pushed her down with a hand on her shoulder.
The ease with which she was able to do this—Scarlett’s body weakened by her cancer and surgery and god-knew-what-other treatments she was currently undergoing—should have made her feel ashamed of herself, and she did, but more than that, she was furious.
Trust Scarlett Sanderson to make a diagnosis of cancer about more than just the uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells. With her, it was a production worthy of the Broadway stage—and Chrissie was once again relegated to the audience.
“I’m going to join River for that walk,” she announced.
“Chrissie, don’t. I’m sorry, okay? I should have told you about this a long time ago. I just hoped… I thought… Oh, hell. You already know what I hoped and thought. You always have.”
“Don’t you dare. You’re not turning this around and putting the burden of discovery on me.
This is about you and the fact that you think my life is too small to handle any of the things you deal with on a daily basis.
Poor little Chrissie Thomas, stuck in Medford raising a child all on her own.
She’d never understand what it’s like to travel the world and fall in love a dozen different times.
She’s too busy being a drudge to help me in my hour of need. ”
Her voice shook with each additional word—not because of her anger, but because of the truth that lay underneath.
In all honesty, Chrissie’s life was small.
In the past sixteen years, it had shrunk to the size of exactly two people and one cat, and most days, even that was more than she could handle.
But she wasn’t weak. And she didn’t deserve to be treated like an afterthought in a big, glamorous life she’d only ever applauded and supported from afar.
“I’m going to the drugstore,” Chrissie announced suddenly.
“The drugstore?”
“Yes. I’m going to see if they have any of those tiny emergency bottles of vodka, and I’m going to drink them in the parking lot until I can breathe again. Do you need anything while I’m there?”
Scarlett’s only response to this was a long, hard stare that Chrissie had no difficulty in interpreting.
“I’m not asking because I’m a pushover. I’m asking because taking care of other people is what you’re supposed to do in situations like these.
” Chrissie’s legs were starting to grow numb, but they held her up just fine.
They always had. When everyone around her got sick and struggled and fell, she was the one who kept putting one foot in front of the other.
“It’s who I am, Scarlett. It’s who I’ve always been.
You’re just too busy thinking of yourself to see it. ”