Leah
Sunlight slips through the gap in the curtains and lands directly across my face, which feels unnecessarily aggressive considering how little sleep I got last night.
I pull the sheet higher over my chest and turn away from it, only to hear Nick laugh somewhere across the room.
“Morning, sleepyhead.”
I crack one eye open.
He’s standing near the dresser, pulling a T-shirt over his head, his hair still a mess from sleep. When his face appears through the collar, he looks entirely too pleased with himself.
“Although maybe I should call you the Energizer Bunny.” He grins. “Where the hell did that come from?”
I bury my burning face in the pillow. “I don’t know.”
“I thought you were exhausted.”
“I was.”
“And then suddenly you weren’t.”
“Endorphins?”
He laughs as he comes back toward the bed. “Whatever it was, I’m not complaining.”
“Neither am I.”
He bends down and kisses me, and for a few seconds I let myself enjoy the warmth of his mouth and the familiar weight of his hand against my cheek before the nausea rolling through my stomach reminds me that last night’s burst of energy apparently came with an expiration date.
When he pulls away, I sigh.
“I really don’t feel good this morning.”
His teasing disappears immediately. “Then you’re staying right here.”
“But the horses.”
“Will continue being horses without you.”
“I wanted to go with y’all.”
“I know.” He sits beside me and pulls the sheet back over my shoulder where it slipped. “We can go tonight if you feel better, or tomorrow morning. Nobody’s taking them anywhere.”
“Are you sure?”
“Leah.” He kisses my forehead. “Stay in bed. Sleep. Throw up. Watch terrible television. Whatever your body needs today.”
I reach for his hand.
“I hate missing things.”
“I know, darlin’.”
He threads his fingers through mine.
“But you’re not missing us. We’re coming back.”
I sleep through most of the morning and wake sometime after noon to the sound of voices downstairs. For a few seconds, I don’t know where I am, and then the smell of the ranch house and the unfamiliar ceiling above me bring everything back.
A soft knock comes at the door before Nick’s sister, Bonnie, peeks inside.
“Thought you might be awake.”
She comes in carrying a tray with a bowl of soup, crackers, and a glass of water, and right behind her is Grady.
“Mrs. Harrison!”
He climbs onto the bed beside me while Bonnie sets the tray across my lap.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell her.
“I know.” She smiles. “Eat what you can.”
Grady is practically vibrating beside me.
“We went to the corner store.”
“You did?” I pick up my spoon. “What exactly does one buy at a corner store?”
“Candy.”
“Of course.”
He reaches into the little plastic sack he brought with him and proudly produces a package of peach rings.
My heart melts.
“Buddy, are those for me?”
He nods, pushing them into my hands. “Because you like peaches.”
“I love them. Thank you.”
“And look.”
He digs into the bag again and pulls out a little sewing kit, followed by a folded piece of fabric covered in brightly colored dinosaurs.
I turn it over in my hands. “What’s all this?”
“Aunt Bonnie’s gonna teach me how to sew.”
I glance at her.
She shrugs. “He saw my sewing room and asked approximately forty-seven questions.”
“I did not ask forty-seven.”
“Forty-six, then.”
He considers that acceptable.
“Well,” I tell him, handing the dinosaur fabric back, “you better show me whatever you make.”
“I will.”
He carefully puts everything back into his bag, peach rings excluded.
Those, apparently, are mine.
I sleep again after lunch and don’t wake until I hear voices outside, deep and familiar beneath the open window. Somebody laughs, followed by Grady shouting something about a horse, and then Nick’s voice carries above all of them.
A few minutes later, he comes upstairs smelling like sun, leather, and dust.
“There’s my girl.” He leans over the bed and kisses me. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better.”
“We’re gonna eat in about an hour. You coming down?”
I think about it before shaking my head. “I think I’m going to stay up here tonight.”
“Okay. I’ll bring you something.”
No disappointment. No argument. He kisses me again before heading downstairs.
Eventually, I make myself get up.
The bathroom is only across the hall, but I keep one hand against the wall the entire way. Under the bright light, I catch my reflection and stop.
I look sick.
There’s no gentler way to put it. My skin is pale, my eyes look too big without my hair, and when I lift my shirt to change my colostomy bag, scars cross my abdomen around a piece of intestine that now lives outside my body.
I should hate this woman.
A year ago, I probably would have.
Instead, I look at her and think about everything she survived to get here.
My hand settles low on my abdomen.
There will never be a baby there.
That still hurts. I think some part of me will always grieve the children I thought I would carry, because for so long motherhood wasn’t simply something I wanted. It was woven into every version of my future.
Except somehow, the future I planned never gave me Grady.
It never gave me Nick.
Life took almost nothing resembling the path I begged God for, and somehow I ended up happier than I ever knew how to ask to be.
Then a thought hits me.
My eggs.
I grab my phone and call the storage facility before I can talk myself out of it.
After several minutes of verifying my information, I finally ask, “I know my account was delinquent. I just need to know if my eggs are still there.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Your account is current.”
I sit straighter. “What?”
“The outstanding balance was paid, and you’re enrolled in automatic payments.”
“I didn’t enroll in automatic payments.”
There’s a pause and the sound of typing.
“I can’t provide the card information over the phone, but I can confirm the authorized payer listed on the account.”
My heart starts pounding.
“Who?”
Another pause.
“Nicholas Crawford.”
Nick comes upstairs later carrying a plate with a grilled cheese cut diagonally and a handful of crackers.
“Before you judge me, everybody downstairs is eating enchiladas, and I figured your stomach probably didn’t need that kind of excitement.”
“You figured correctly.”
He hands me the plate, then settles beside me on the bed.
I take one bite before looking at him. “I called the storage place.”
His eyes flick toward mine.
“I know what you did.”
“Technically, you’re paying me back.”
“Nicholas.”
He smiles.
“When did you do it?”
“About a month ago.”
“A month ago?” I set the sandwich down. “Nick, you already knew I was losing my uterus. You knew I couldn’t carry a pregnancy anymore, so why would you pay thousands of dollars to keep eggs I can’t even use?”
“Because you don’t know that you’ll never use them.”
I stare at him.
“Maybe you don’t. Maybe five years from now you decide you don’t want anything to do with them, and that’s fine too.
But I wasn’t gonna let a billing department make that decision for you because your life fell apart and you missed some payments.
” He shrugs. “They’re yours, darlin’. I just bought you some time. ”
I lean over and kiss him.
Immediately, I pull back.
He raises an eyebrow.
“Enchiladas.”
He grins. “Too spicy?”
“Very.”
“Still wanna kiss me?”
I grab his shirt and pull him back.
“I’ll suffer.”
By sometime after three in the morning, I stop bothering to crawl back into bed.
There doesn’t seem to be much point when every twenty minutes another wave of nausea sends me stumbling back across the hall, so I stay on the bathroom floor with my back against the tub and one of Nick’s old T-shirts hanging loose around me.
The tile is cold beneath my legs, but I don’t have enough energy to care.
The door opens again.
“I told you to go back to bed.”
“And I told you I don’t take orders well.”
Nick comes in carrying my water bottle and the blanket from our bed. He drapes it around my shoulders before sitting on the floor beside me.
“I’m fine.”
“Darlin’, you’re sitting on a bathroom floor at three in the morning holding a trash can.”
“I’m aware.”
“Just establishing our definition of fine.”
I lean my head against his shoulder.
For a while, neither of us says anything. His hand moves slowly along my back while I stare at the opposite wall and try not to think about whether I’m going to throw up again.
“I ruined the whole weekend.”
His hand stops.
“You did what?”
“We came all the way here, and I’ve spent most of it asleep or throwing up.” My eyes burn. “I wanted to spend time with your family. I wanted to see the ranch. I wanted to ride a horse.”
“We can come back.”
“I didn’t even meet a cow, Nick.”
That makes him laugh softly, and I start crying, which only makes the entire thing more pathetic.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are.” He kisses my temple. “And I promise you, those cows aren’t going anywhere.”
I wipe my face against his shirt.
“I hate cancer.”
“I know.”
“I hate chemo.”
“I know that too.”
“And I really wanted to ride a horse.”
He wraps his arm tighter around me.
“Then when you’re feeling better, I’ll bring you back here and put you on the prettiest damn horse we’ve got.”
I close my eyes against his shoulder.
“And a cow?”
“I’ll personally introduce you to every cow on the property.”
By the time Nick gets me showered and back into the bedroom, I’m too tired to care that he’s helping me get dressed.
He pulls a clean shirt from my bag, but I shake my head and point toward the chair.
“Your sweater.”
He follows my finger to the old sweater I’ve been stealing from him since long before either of us admitted this thing between us was serious.
“The good juju?”
“Yes. I need the good juju.”
He smiles as he helps me into it. “Should’ve known.”
I sleep curled against him for the next few hours, and when I wake again, the nausea has finally settled enough that sitting up doesn’t make the room move.
Nick appears in the doorway a few minutes later.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Human-ish.”
“Good enough for a field trip?”
I narrow my eyes. “Where?”
“Wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you.”
He takes my hand and leads me downstairs and outside, where a beautiful chestnut horse is waiting near the barn.
I stop walking.
“Nick.”
“Meet Sweet Tart.”
“Sweet Tart?”
“She’s an old barrel horse. Retired years ago. She’s gentle, patient, and probably better behaved than everybody in my family combined.”
“You’re serious?”
“Only if you feel up to it.”
I look at the horse, then back at him. “I have absolutely no idea how I’m getting up there, but yes.”
Before we make it another step, the screen door bangs behind us.
“Wait!”
Grady comes running across the yard holding something in both hands.
“I got something for you!”
When he reaches me, he holds up the dinosaur fabric from yesterday, except now it isn’t just fabric.
It’s a head wrap.
The seams aren’t perfect and one side is slightly longer than the other, but I don’t think anyone has ever given me anything more beautiful.
“You made this?”
“Aunt Bonnie helped.” He pushes his glasses up. “But I did the sewing.”
I wrap my arms around him.
“Thank you so much, buddy.”
“You like it?”
“I love it.” I kiss his cheek. “And I love you.”
His arms tighten around my neck. “I love you too.”
A few minutes later, my old scarf has been replaced by dinosaurs.
With plenty of help and absolutely no dignity, they manage to get me onto Sweet Tart behind Nick. I wrap my arms around his waist while he covers my hands with one of his.
“You good back there?”
“I think so.”
“Hold on to me.”
“That part I can do.”
Sweet Tart starts forward at an easy walk, carrying us away from the barn and toward the open pasture.
I rest my cheek against Nick’s back.
The breeze moves over my bare arms and catches the loose edges of my new head wrap. The afternoon sun is warm against my skin, and underneath us, Sweet Tart moves with a slow, steady rhythm that eventually lets my body relax.
For the first time all weekend, I don’t feel sick.
I don’t feel like a cancer patient.
I’m just Leah, wearing a ridiculous dinosaur head wrap made by a little boy I love, holding on to the man I love while he takes me riding beneath a wide Texas sky.
And for right now, that is more than enough.
The longer we ride, the more my body gives in to the rhythm of Sweet Tart beneath us.
I let my eyes fall closed and rest my cheek against Nick’s back, breathing in sun-warmed grass and leather and the faint earthy smell of the horse.
The breeze catches the loose ends of my dinosaur head wrap, and for once, I don’t reach up to fix it.
I just breathe.
Then Nick goes completely still.
Sweet Tart slows beneath us before coming to a stop, and I feel the sharp pull of his breath beneath my arms.
I lift my head.
“What—”
The question dies before I can finish it.
Beyond us, the pasture opens into a wide stretch of green, but it isn’t grass.
It’s clover.
Thousands upon thousands of them, growing thick across the field, so bright beneath the afternoon sun that for a second, all I can do is stare.
My mouth falls open.
“Oh, Nick.”
He doesn’t answer.