Bend (36 page)

As usual, the alcohol flows freely and the table is crammed full with food. The perfectly grilled meats smell smoky and savory, and with sides like potato salad and coleslaw and baked potatoes and vegetable kabobs, there’s something to please every palate. Even Freya and Abigail are eating with gusto, munching on hot dogs and corn on the cob and gulping down their juice with the reverent expressions of children who are rarely allowed sugary drinks.

As soon as they’re done, their little bodies fly out of their chairs and off into the darkening backyard for a last round of play before bed. Cameron, who has wolfed down his food like a competitive-eating champ, volunteers to go keep an eye on them, and as he walks away, Gwen warns him that it’s too dark to take the girls up in the treehouse.

I don’t have much of an appetite, so after finishing a sparse plate, I settle back in my chair with my second bottle of beer of the evening, quietly listening to the chatter around me. The topic has inevitably turned to politics. The verbal sparring starts between Frank and Lily, who are at opposite ends of the table and have to raise their voices to hear each other. Soon the rest of them abandon their own conversations and are picking sides, and the discussion heats up.

With even Mia occasionally piping up with an opinion, the only ones staying out of it are me and Paige, who I notice is silently picking at her food and sipping her water and staring absently off into space. With an arm crossed over her growing midriff, she seems to be avoiding eye contact with anyone, including her husband.

When it’s time for Freya and Abigail to head inside to get ready for bed, it’s Logan who rounds up the kids amid much whining and protests and begging for just a little more time. Faced with their father’s lack of mercy, the girls tell everyone good night before Logan herds his daughters inside the house without a word or glance at his wife.

There’s something not right there. Has Mia noticed? I’ll have to ask her. Because apparently I care about the health of her sister’s marriage.

Which is because I care about all of them. Yeah, even Frank, who’s lounging at the end of the table with his wife on one side and his oldest daughter on the other, nursing his tumbler of booze at his chest. I hate to admit it to myself, but I do care about his opinion. As much as I want to dismiss him and the shit he said to me, I can’t. The brutal truth is, I’m pretty fucking devastated by it.

This family, with their camaraderie and their hedonism and their seductive
rightness
, has sucked me in. And sitting beside me, her shoulder almost touching mine, is the woman who ties me to them. Mia, who I was absolutely content to call my best friend, and only that, until that night when she opened that big mouth of hers and asked a question that should’ve brought me closer to these people. Except I’m pretty sure it did the opposite.

You’re not right for Mia. You know that.

I do know that.

I know I don’t fit in with these people. Mia is unaware of that and why, but thanks to Frank’s bullying, she’s going to find out.

And a guy who won’t be around much longer, whose foreseeable future has no room for a serious girlfriend? He’s also not right for Mia.

Not to mention that I’m most likely not the man she really wants, anyway.

So I’m sitting here among this happy and boisterous group of people, and for the first time I’m edging aside the curtain hiding the thoughts that I’ve been aware of for a while but haven’t wanted to acknowledge: that maybe I should just cut my losses.

That maybe I need to end this while I still can.

A weight settles on my shoulders. It’s a crushing and desolate prospect.

Cameron returns to the table, stopping behind his chair and bracing his hands on the back of it as he looks around at everyone. “What time are you all leaving tomorrow?”

Across from him, Paige answers, “Our flight’s at noon.”

Turning to look past me, Cameron raises his eyebrows. “Mia?”

“We’re hitting the road first thing,” she says, widening her eyes at me. “Right?”

“Sure.” A knot of tension forms between my shoulders at the reminder that I’ve got another whole day’s drive home tomorrow. Just me and Mia, alone in her little car. So many miles. So many hours. So much potential for trouble.

Cameron straightens away from the chair. “Then I probably won’t see you before you leave.”

“Where are you going?” Lily asks sharply from the end of the table. “You’re not staying for our poker game?”

“It’s Saturday night, Grandma.” Her grandson throws his arms out, apparently thinking he needs say no more.

Pressing her lips together, the old lady rolls her eyes. “Well, hang on a minute. There’s something I wanted to say. While I have you all here.” She casts a glance sideways at the patio door. “I was going to wait for Logan to come back, though…”

“He’ll probably be a while,” Paige supplies. “Abi can take a long time to settle down when she’s in a strange bed, and he usually falls asleep while he’s waiting.”

With a nod and a sigh, Lily says, “Okay, then.”

Beside me, I can feel Mia shifting restlessly.

“Everything okay, Mom?” comes Frank’s voice from the other end of the table, low and rumbling with concern.

“Actually, no.” Hesitating, Lily Waters runs her gaze around the table. Her eyes go liquid and filled to the brim with emotion, filled with the love she has for these people. Unease curls in my stomach, and I’m sensing a similar sensation spreading through everyone else.

“I probably should have told you this sooner,” she goes on, “but I wanted to see you all together first. Celebrating my birthday and...being happy.”

A heavy silence falls.

Frank is the first to break it. “Mom. What’s going on?”

“Well.” Lily’s breath blows out with a puff. “There’s no easy way to say this. When I was in the hospital, they ran blood tests that came back abnormal, so then they put me through all these machines for more tests, and it turns out I have cancer.”

Oh, shit.
My stomach drops, and my heart jumps into my throat.

“What?” Frank barks, and there are several gasps and someone lets out a choked, “Oh, my God.”

“So they did a biopsy,” Lily continues, raising her stoic voice above the shocked murmurs around the table, “and it turns out I have pancreatic cancer. It’s spread to my liver. It’s not operable. I could go through chemo and radiation, but the odds of it making a difference are so low it’s a joke. So I’m not going to. Treat it, that is.”

Shit, shit, shit.
Closing my eyes briefly, I clench the handle on my chair. And then I turn to Mia, swiveling my head slowly toward her, dreading this, not at all prepared for what I’m going to find.

Her face, which I can only see in profile as she stares at her grandmother, is ashen, her lips bloodless and slightly parted. There’s a deer-in-headlights look in her eyes. I reach out and take her hand under the table, squeezing it.

She stays unmoving and silent, her attention still frozen and fixed on Lily, and the only sign of life is the heaving of her chest and her hand tightening on mine, clutching it like she’ll fall to her death if she lets go.

This time it’s Gwen who finds her voice first, quietly asking her mother-in-law, “How long did they give you?”

“Best-case scenario, I make it until Labor Day but not much longer.” Lily sounds business-like and almost brusque in her response. “Worst case, I don’t get to experience another Fourth of July.”

More shocked mumbling ripples around the table, and Paige’s voice is high-pitched with disbelief as she bursts out with, “The Fourth is less than two months away! Do you even feel sick? You don’t seem like it.”

Lily’s unflappable facade cracks a little at that, her weathered face twisting and twitching as if she’s fighting back tears. “Not really. I might be getting tired a little more quickly, but I’m not sure that’s not all in my head.”

“You need to get a second opinion,” Mia’s dad states, his resolute tone shooting like a bullet across the table at his mother. “I know a great oncologist—”

“Stop it,” Lily snaps. “Just stop it, Frank.”

Her son clamps his mouth shut and scowls at her.

Impatiently, the older woman continues. “I already did get a second—and a third—opinion, because I knew if I didn’t, you wouldn’t accept it. They all told me the same thing.”

Well. There’s not much to say after that, is there? Lily Waters seems to have accomplished something she probably never has before: rendered her talkative and opinionated children and grandchildren utterly speechless.

Beside me, Mia keeps her death grip on my hand, and I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around her and hold her. I can feel her shock and pain like it’s my own, know her well enough and how much her grandmother means to her to know that it’s taking all her strength to keep it together right now.

And I’m wishing she didn’t feel like she needs to put on a brave face at all. Wishing I could tell her to let go, that I’d catch her.

“Well.” Cameron’s voice sounds broken as he pulls out his chair and plunks himself back down in it, his urgency to head out apparently gone. “That is unbelievably fucked up.”

“Cameron,” his mother chides, tossing a dark frown at him.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Gwendolyn,” Lily says with a click of her tongue. “Don’t scold the boy for telling the truth.”

Mia’s mom throws a helpless and exasperated look at her mother-in-law.

And the older woman points a finger at her daughter-in-law and briskly goes on with, “Yeah, you go ahead and give me that look. Pretty soon I won’t be a thorn in your side anymore.”

Oh, Jesus. Just when I thought this whole conversation couldn’t get any worse…

“That was unnecessary, Mom.” Frank says this calmly, in contrast with his countenance, which is drained of color. He puts a hand on his wife’s shoulder. Gwen stares down at the table and fiddles with her paper napkin, looking stricken.

“What?” Lily scrunches up her nose as she glances around the table. “Did you think I’d stop speaking my mind just because I’m dying?”

There’s a short pause, and then Mia lets out a short burst of laughter. There’s very little genuine amusement in that sound, but I’m guessing her well of emotions flooded, and this is what spilled over.

A few others—Cameron, Paige, and Lily herself—join in with a few chuckles, and that seems to lift the lid of tension around the table. Paige gets up and walks over to her grandmother, throwing her arms around Lily from behind and burying her face in the older woman’s hair. At the opposite end, Gwen puts her hand on Frank’s cheek, and their foreheads touch. To my right, Cameron places his elbows on the table and rests his head in his hands.

Only Mia doesn’t move. She sits there staring at nothing. Still holding my hand. I want to swoop her up and carry her away. I also want to tell her to go give her grandmother a hug, but something tells me she doesn’t need any advice or direction right now. So I keep my mouth shut and just hold her hand.

The patio door opens, and Logan steps out. He’s thumb-typing on his phone, his attention absorbed by that as he walks back to the table. Then he takes his seat again, sets down the phone, and blithely announces, “Well, that was easier than expected. Pretty sure the girls were still exhausted from staying up so late last night.”

He picks up his beer bottle and brings it to his lips, but instead of taking a drink, he frowns and glances around the table. Lowering the bottle, he gives his wife a bewildered look and asks, “What’s wrong?”

And that’s when Mia tears her hand out of my grasp, her chair scraping on the concrete deck as she shoves away from the table. Muttering a hurried “Excuse me,” she leaves us and rushes to the patio door, fleeing into the house.

I don’t even stop to think before I get up and follow her.

She’s gone when I get inside, but figuring she would’ve gone up to her room, I start heading upstairs. There’s a painful knot in my throat that swells as I take the steps two at a time.

The door to her room is closed. I’m not sure why—some sort of reflexive politeness?—but I stop outside, knock, and wait. There’s no answer, no sound at all coming from beyond the door. Maybe I guessed wrong, and she didn’t even come up here?

Twisting the knob, I push the door open. It’s pretty dark in there, but I see her silhouette over by the window, a gray shadow in a room turned a whole palette of gray by the last few minutes of twilight remaining outside. She stands with her back to me, and I can just make out by the shape of her that she’s got her arms wrapped around herself.

Letting the door click shut behind me, I cross over to her. For a few moments, I’m wavering, at a loss for what to do or say. This is nothing like offering sympathy to grieving relatives of my patients. Even that is never easy, but people die in my line of work, and it’s part of the job. I have no problem with it. I’m actually pretty good at it.

But this…this is Mia. It’s Mia, and she’s hurting, and she needs so much more from me than strangers in the ER need from a physician.

“Hey,” I say softly. And when she doesn’t move, respond, or in any way acknowledge my presence, I put my hands on her shoulders.

She jerks and stiffens under my touch. Bracing herself, like she’s about to shut me out, push me away. No way am I letting her do that, so I tighten my grip on her shoulders and pull her back into my chest.