Chapter Twenty-Seven Tranquility Estates, Vermont Present Day
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Tranquility Estates, Vermont
Present Day
The next morning, Scarlett took a drastic turn for the worse.
“This happens a lot more often than you’d think.
In fact, I’d have been very surprised to see her up and about for too much longer.
” The end-of-life doula, a doe-eyed sixtysomething retired hospice nurse who seemed like a grandmother, mother, and confessor wrapped up in one, patted Chrissie on the shoulder.
“She’s probably been holding it together for your sake—for you and that sweet little family of yours.
But now that she’s here and the end is in sight, she can finally let her mind accept what her body has known for months.
” Her smile turned sad. “For most of our guests, it’s honestly more of a relief than anything else.
Like coming home after a long, exhausting day. ”
Chrissie nodded, feeling dazed as the doula issued further instructions about what she could do to make Scarlett comfortable and who she should call if the need arose.
“Not that I think it will. She has her pills and knows what she wants. All we can do now is give her all our love and support.”
The doula offered Chrissie a hug—which she gratefully accepted—before quietly stepping out of the cabin.
The hour was early enough that Chrissie would have appreciated a cup of coffee and the chance to take in the pink and orange streaks of the sunrise, but she paused only to take a deep breath before pushing her way into Scarlett’s bedroom.
“Hey, you.”
“Hey back.”
Scarlett was sitting up in bed, propped up by so many pillows that a few were already in danger of slipping to the floor.
Chrissie fought the urge to start fluffing them and organizing the bedside table, where pill bottles, a lipstick-rimmed teacup, and a framed photo of the two of them with Scarlett’s grandma smiled across the room.
Instead, she picked up the photo and slipped under the covers next to Scarlett.
“I remember this day,” she said as she dropped her head to Scarlett’s shoulder and let it rest there.
She had no idea how, but it felt as though Scarlett had lost half of her body weight overnight—a return to the seven-year-old girl she’d once walked past in a hospital bed that was both nothing and everything like this one.
Her fingers traced lightly over the image of their faces, just a few years younger than Kat.
“Your grandma took us to Broughton Beach to go swimming, but it was only like sixty degrees, so she bought us a cheap kite and we spent hours flying it up and down the riverbank instead.”
Scarlett tilted her head on top of Chrissie’s. The steady, even pace of her breathing and warmth of her body felt so natural that she found it almost impossible to believe they wouldn’t continue that way forever.
“I still would’ve gone swimming even though the water was freezing,” Scarlett said. “In fact, I dared you to go in. I offered you my best butterfly hair clips and everything.”
“Did you? I don’t remember that part.”
“You never do,” Scarlett agreed. She burrowed deeper into Chrissie’s side.
“You were always doing stuff like that—putting your foot down in that quiet, deceptive way of yours—so it never meant much to you. It did to me, though. I loved you more and more each time you did that. If I’m being honest, I hated you a little more each time, too. ”
Chrissie let the picture fall to her lap. “What are you talking about? When I was doing what stuff?”
“Being right. Being good.” Scarlett pressed her lips against Chrissie’s temple. “You’d better bring Kat to me. I thought we’d have more time than this—to chat and hang out and eat Walsh’s amazing cheeseburgers, but I’m just so tired.”
Chrissie was seized by a sudden panic. What had seemed so imperative back in Chicago and Buffalo now felt like an unnecessarily cruel trick to play on a woman who had no tricks left to play back.
“You don’t have to tell her if you don’t want to. We can just snuggle here and watch some Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen like we used to in the old days.”
“You mean back when all I wanted in life was the same glamour and intrigue as a pair of twelve-year-old millionaires?” The smile in Scarlett’s voice was unmistakable.
“I like to think I’ve done a decent job of living up to the Olsen twin legacy.
I visited every city with a living pulse.
I slept with just as many living, pulse-bearing men.
I got to spend hours of every working day talking to anyone who cared to listen to me.
And anytime I felt even the tiniest bit lonely, I could call you up and you’d be waiting for me on the other end of the line. ”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Yes, it is. Thanks to you and my grandmother, I was able to live my life exactly the way I wanted to. And now I’m going to die on my own terms, too. There aren’t a whole lot of people who get to say the same.”
Scarlett pulled away so that Chrissie could examine her face. She looked wan and exhausted, but she also looked at peace. In all the years Chrissie had known Scarlett, she’d never looked peaceful before.
“Let me do this for you, Chrissie. For you…and for her.”
Chrissie nodded and slipped out from under the covers. She didn’t trust herself to speak, but as she headed for the door to get dressed and introduce her daughter to her birth mother for both the first and last time, she did sneak a peek back at the bed.
Scarlett held the photo in her hand, a smile hovering on the corner of her lips as she traced the shape of the three of them.
Chrissie couldn’t help thinking that it was just like her to be the first to see what the next world had to offer.
Scarlett had always been the ringleader, the trailblazer, the one who forced Chrissie to confront a world that terrified her more often than it didn’t.
Of course she’d be the first to leave, to return to her grandmother’s arms. To step into the unknown and make sure there was something amazing waiting when Chrissie finally joined her.
* * *
“I don’t understand. Why are you being so weird?”
Chrissie had been striving to be as un-weird as possible as she led Kat into the cabin and directed her toward Scarlett’s room, but she’d clearly missed a step somewhere.
“I’m not being weird. I’m being honest. Aunt Scarlett isn’t doing well today, and she has a few things she wants to talk to you about before she… You know. Before tomorrow.”
Kat reared to a halt in the middle of the living room.
She was dressed in jeans and close-toed shoes, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail.
Both she and Lily had been awake and sipping energy drinks when Chrissie had arrived, the pair of them looking surprisingly spry for the hour of morning—a circumstance she soon learned was due to their determination to reach the stables for a morning’s ride before the horses got too tired.
“What kind of things?” Kat asked. “Is she going to yell at me some more about you and Coach? Because I’m not changing my mind. I think it’s wrong on every possible level.”
“Kat.”
Her daughter flushed. “What? I’m allowed to have my own opinions. You guys being old doesn’t make you right about everything.”
“No, but Scarlett dying does give her a perspective that neither you nor I could possibly understand. So maybe give her the benefit of the doubt, yeah?”
The flush seeped to Kat’s ears, and she lost some of the belligerence in her bearing. “It’s not fair. I love Scarlett, but she’s basically weaponized her cancer. She’s holding us hostage here.”
Chrissie laughed—not because what Kat said was funny, but because it was the most selfish and Scarlett-like thing she could possibly say.
“How do you think I feel? She’s been holding me hostage my whole life.”
Kat slumped her shoulders and started to head to the bedroom, but Chrissie called out before she made it more than a few steps. “No—wait.”
Kat stopped and turned, her eyebrows lifted in surprise.
Chrissie ached with the urge to pull her daughter into her arms one last time before the bomb dropped, but she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea.
The Kat who was entering the bedroom wasn’t the same Kat who would walk out of it, and she was terrified of the results.
In her own girlhood, she’d often dreamed of what it would be like to learn that her parents weren’t really her parents—that she’d been switched at birth or dropped off by a poor but loving mother who’d seen the big house and assumed the people inside would take good care of her.
Kat wasn’t wrong when she said her life was worse because of the isolation of it.
She needed to know that more than just one person loved her. She deserved more.
“What?” Kat demanded. She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did I do now?”
“Nothing. I just…” Chrissie tried not to let her voice wobble, but wobble it did. “I love you, honey. No matter what happens, I want you to remember that. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and nothing can change that.”
Kat looked understandably confused—and concerned—by this, but all she did was roll her eyes.
“Whatever. Don’t let Lily go to the stables without me, okay? If I don’t keep an eye on her, she’ll take Shadowfox out before I have a chance to call dibs.”
Chrissie nodded, not trusting herself to speak. As the door snicked open and closed again, Kat’s soft voice calling, “Aunt Scarlett?” before it was cut off entirely, she wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to speak again.
But first thirty seconds ticked by…then thirty seconds more. Just when she was considering pacing the floor like a caged animal or at least finding a dust rag and working out her anxiety that way, a knock sounded at the front door. She practically ran to answer it.