Chapter Seventeen Black River Falls, Wisconsin Present Day
Chapter Seventeen
Black River Falls, Wisconsin
Present Day
The three-hour drive from the chain hotel to their first stop at Black River Falls—home of the Karner Blue Butterfly Festival—was one of the longest of Chrissie’s life.
She wished she was a teenager like River, who could simply plug in a pair of headphones as a way to avoid interaction with her fellow passengers, or a professional talker like Scarlett, who could while away the time in an endless stream of chatter that conveyed both nothing and everything, but she wasn’t.
She was a suburban single mom who’d spent the better part of the night crying into her pillow—and she both looked and felt the part.
“According to this, Black River Falls is the place to be if you want to go fishing or if you’re in witness protection and want to make sure the Mafia never finds you to finish the job they started.
” Scarlett folded up her map and tossed it in the back seat, narrowly missing River in the process.
“Personally, I’d choose somewhere like Florida if I had to go into hiding from the mob.
Not only is it a hell of a lot warmer than this place, but you could easily get lost in the crowd.
The best you could do here is slip on a black bear costume and hope a hunter takes you out before a hit man does. ”
Chrissie parked the car in a lot designated for daily ATV use and sat with her hands on the wheel. Long after the engine stopped purring, she found herself unable to move from that position, her hands locked in their ten and two positions.
“Sooo,” Scarlett said, imbuing the word with enough syllables to make all three of them feel uncomfortable. “Did you need to use the restroom, or are we just here for the view? Because I gotta say—at the very least, I expect a water feature if we’re going to do some local sightseeing.”
“River, could you please give us a minute?” Chrissie said by way of answer. She didn’t move her hands, but she did manage to toss a tight smile over her shoulder at the girl. “I know there’s not much to do here, but—”
“Say no more.” River had the door open and was halfway out before Chrissie could finish her sentence. “I saw some bored-looking guys over by the entrance. At this point, I figure I’m better off with them than stuck another minute between the two of you.”
Chrissie felt an immediate sense of guilt and was about to protest, but Scarlett’s rich chuckle stopped her short. “Sorry, River. We haven’t been very good company, have we? We’ll have a loud, cathartic airing of our grievances and be back to normal for the next leg of the trip.”
Chrissie didn’t share her friend’s amusement. Loud catharsis had never been her way of dealing with problems, and Scarlett knew it.
Naturally, that didn’t stop Scarlett from making the attempt.
“So much for being a caretaker,” she said as she pushed her seat back and gave a languid stretch.
In honor of her medical condition being outed, she’d opted to wear a formfitting tank top for the day.
It highlighted not only her too-thin frame, but also the fact that she wasn’t wearing one of her prosthetic bras.
And why would she? The cat was out of the bag, the lies exposed.
And Scarlett, in true Scarlett fashion, now only wanted to put it behind her.
Her past was a graveyard of all the skeletons that had been ripped unceremoniously from her closet and just as unceremoniously discarded once they’d been freed.
“It’s not like this was unexpected,” Scarlett added in a voice that was far too irreverent.
“Mantle field irradiation is a bitch. They told me that when I was a kid, and they’ve continued telling me every year since.
I should’ve had my stupid boobs removed years ago and saved myself the trouble, but you know how vain I am. ”
Chrissie was in no mood to be charmed. “It’s not funny. When were you going to tell me? Why did you go through all that on your own?”
“I didn’t. Mitchell was with me for most of it. He’s been a real sweetheart during the whole process.”
It was a good thing Chrissie was sitting down, because that bit of news—dropped like an anvil to the head—would have knocked her flat.
“You’re talking to Mitchell again? Since when?”
“I wouldn’t say that talking has been our primary activity.
” Scarlett laughed and slid a hand over to forestall Chrissie from jumping out of the car—a thing she hadn’t even realized she was in danger of doing until she felt the press of her friend’s palm.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t joke about that.
If Mitchell hadn’t been there to ferry me to doctor’s appointments and force-feed me protein shakes, I probably would have broken down and called you.
But he got a job at some tech company in San Jose last year, so he was there. And I hoped…”
She let her voice trail off and slid her hand from Chrissie’s.
For what was probably the first time since they’d started this trip, the insouciant mask slipped away and she looked exactly like what she was—a thirty-four-year old woman battling cancer for the second time.
The pixie-short hair, which had looked so chic a few days ago, now spoke of a struggle to grow back what had likely been lost to chemo.
The way she slept all of two hours a night said the same thing.
Scarlett had never been able to close her eyes when there was even a slight chance it might be the last time.
“I’m glad you had someone,” Chrissie said and meant it. She meant the next part, too. “I just wish that someone had been me.”
“I’ve already burdened you enough for one lifetime.” Scarlett spoke so quietly that Chrissie had to strain to hear her. “Especially since I—”
Chrissie’s phone rang before Scarlett could finish her sentence. She was tempted to ignore the call, since it seemed like the two of them were finally getting somewhere, but one glance at the screen showed her that it was from her daughter.
Chrissie winced. “Sorry. It’s Kat. I have to take it.”
“Of course you do,” Scarlett said in a voice that was difficult to interpret. Even though Scarlett knew Chrissie didn’t have a choice—that Kat, of necessity, had to come first—she’d always harbored an affectionate resentment over their relationship.
“Hey, Kitty Kat. What’s up? You caught me at a good time. We’re stopped at this cute little town—”
“Don’t you dare call me Kitty Kat right now.”
Chrissie pinched the bridge of her nose to keep her sigh from escaping. She should have known that a call could only presage disaster. “Is everything okay?” she asked, already knowing what the answer would be. “Lily? The cat? Walsh?”
Kat’s snort of derision was loud enough to fill the whole car. “I’m surprised you managed to list Coach last. That must have taken all your self-control—Oh, wait. You don’t have any.”
Scarlett waggled her fingers as if to take the phone, but Chrissie didn’t hand it over.
Something in Kat’s voice felt different than her usual angst. This was more controlled, somehow.
More dangerous. In some deep, untouched part of Chrissie’s brain, she registered the voice as an exact copy of her own when she was doing her best not to give herself away, but this wasn’t the moment for self-reflection.
Not until the bomb ticking inside her daughter was defused.
“I’m not a mind reader, Kat. Just tell me what I did so I can fix it.”
It was the wrong thing to say. “Lily has her dad’s phone password. Did you know that? She gets on there all the time to buy stuff from .”
“O-kay… Do you want my password? It’s pretty easy. It’s your birth date, only backwards.”
“Omigod, Mom. I’ve known that for like ten years.” Something like a sob sounded. “Lily saw the picture. We both did. How could you?”
In that moment, Chrissie felt the earth open up from underneath her.
In the grand scheme of things, her teenage daughter learning that she was a hot-blooded thirty-four-year-old woman who wore bikinis and took pictures of herself and sometimes accidentally sent them to hot-blooded forty-eight-year-old men wasn’t important.
Awkward, yes. Unfortunate, sure. But Chrissie was literally sitting inside a car with her best friend in the whole world—a best friend who had scar tissue where her breasts used to be, and who may or may not be facing a long road of recovery ahead of her.
Friends got sick. Brothers died. Parents stopped caring. The world freaking hurt, and Chrissie was tired of tiptoeing around a girl who’d never experienced that truth for herself.
“For crying out loud, Kat, calm down. It’s just a picture.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Scarlett clapping her hands in support of this response, but Kat literally howled into the phone.
“It’s not just anything!” Kat cried. “It’s everything. Coach is the one adult who doesn’t talk down to me, who isn’t nice to me just because he, like, pushed me out of his vagina or whatever. And now you’re trying to take that away from me, too?”
“I’m not—”
“What? Secretly pining after my volleyball coach? Dangling your naked body in front of him until it ruins everything?”
“Kat, don’t—”
“It’s fine. Whatever. You already drove my dad so far away that he wants nothing to do with me.
Why not do it again with Coach? Or my science teacher who thinks I might have a chance of a scholarship to OSU?
Heck—there’s a super-nice old man who always smiles at me when I grab a breakfast sandwich at the gas station on the way to school.
You might as well shove your tits at him and see what happens. ”
The bottom of the earth closed up again. Chrissie planted her feet so firmly against the gas that if the car had been on, they’d have shot through the parking lot back onto the freeway.
“Kathleen Genevieve Thomas, what did you just say to me?”
A scream sounded, so loud it could have belonged to a fire truck.
But it didn’t. It was her daughter, her beating heart, the best thing she’d ever done.