Catching Serenity (Serenity #4) (8 page)

I sip my coffee ignoring him. “How would you know? This is literally the second time you’ve seen me. And in case you’re desperate, there’s a back yard to this place, you know. You can go out there to slowly kill yourself with those things for all I care.”

“You really are a fussy bit of stuff, aren’t you?” He follows me away from the swing, right behind me as I lean against the brick column and will Autumn to drive up the street. “You really that put off by me smoking? Care that much, do you?” He stands directly behind me, as though he expects me to be affected by how close he is, by how his chest is at my shoulders. All Quinn has to do is take a step and I’d feel the firm outline of his body against my back. But he doesn’t move. He only keeps a few inches between us as though waiting. As though he’s certain I’ll lean back just to press myself against him.

“What?” There is laughter in his voice that I’ve never heard from him before. It’s casual and annoying. “Afraid I’ll get cancer and die?” When I wince, straighten my shoulders, all the humor leaves his tone and I catch how quickly his smile fades from the corner of my eye. “What is it?” he asks, voice softer, but not sweet. When he gets nothing more, he steps in front of me, leaning his hand on the brick right next to my hip. I don’t move back.

“Who is it?” And just like that, he knows, as though he can sense where my attitude, my anger comes from. There is a look in his eyes, that quick frustration and anger that I’ve seen a dozen times in my own mirror. I have no idea why it’s there in Quinn’s eyes, as well. “Who?” he says again, this time he sounds almost concerned.

I can’t trust him. I’m aware of that. There is nothing remotely logical about telling Quinn O’Malley about Rhea. There is nothing that he can say or do that would give me even the remotest comfort. Yet, I tell him anyway. “My little cousin.”

“She’s ill?”

I stare at him, then down at the cigarette in his hand, reminding myself how cavalier he is about his own life. Wondering why he wants to know anything about mine. But I can’t stop myself from speaking, from offering up information that is not mine to share.

“She’s dying. Cancer. Bilateral optic glioma. She’s had it for four years.”

The news doesn’t surprise him. Quinn, in fact, doesn’t really react at all. Instead, he merely nods before looking out over my head, as though he needs to work out something for himself. Maybe there’s some memory that he takes stock of, something that keeps him from shifting focus back to me and what I just revealed. After a moment, he clears his throat, staring back at me again. “In and out of hospital?” I nod. “How old?”

“Eight.” Again, he looks away from me and I catch the small effort of his fingers, how he seems to subconsciously move the cigarette between his fingers.

“It’s a rotten thing to have to be stuck in hospital, especially when you’re a kid.” He steps back, then up onto the porch, making for the front door. He seems to be trying to keep his expressions neutral and his tone light, but there is that look again—the same one I know from my own eyes. Quinn crumbles the cigarette into his fist before tossing it out onto the front lawn. “And you…” he says, staring at me.

But whatever about me that made him pause, he doesn’t finish explaining as Declan and Autumn pull into the drive with their brakes squeaking in the damp. They are out of the car and racing through the weather and onto the porch before Quinn can disappear into Joe’s house. One look at Quinn, his stare still fixed on my face, and Autumn moves next to me, as if to protect me from whatever is happening on the porch.

Declan watches his brother, then glances between us. “Alright then?”

“Fine,” I say, watching Declan’s frown as Quinn shoots him a fierce glare.

It’s a tense moment, one that is too full of testosterone, but before I can call either of them out, Quinn rolls his eyes, opening the porch door. “Grand,” he says, before he disappearing into the house without a backward glance, letting the screen door bang behind him.

THREE RINGS AT
two a.m.

I’d gone through months waiting for this call.

“Hello?”

“Sweetie, it’s Carol.” There is a breath. I count the seconds. “Rhea’s back in the hospital. That fever didn’t lower. Her platelets have dipped.”

“For how long?”

“Depends.” Her voice is raspy, a deep sound that reminds me of mornings my mother just returned from her double shift at the hospital. She’d worked the ICU for decades and could never keep the tiredness from her voice when she woke us for school. “The doctors… hell, Sayo, they’re saying it might be indefinitely. It might be until…” but Carol can’t finish speaking. Her tone has become too weighted, the emotion, the desperation too heavy.

My room is pitch dark. The only light glows from my phone and even that bothers my eyes. I want darkness. I want silence. I want the nightmare to end. “Aunt Carol, what can I do?”

“Nothing.” She doesn’t hesitate and there is a second when her resolve falters. She is strong. She’s had to be. She is Teflon and remarkable, trying like hell to pretend she can take on these monsters, fight this battle for her daughter and yet, with that one word, I hear how weary she is. “She’s finally sleeping and I wanted you to know. I… oh God, honey, is that the time?” The rustle from the earpiece is dull, as though Carol has moved the phone. “I didn’t realize.”

“It’s fine,” I say, hoping she can’t hear that half-asleep, exhausted tone in my voice. “It’s fine… I’ll… I can come right now.”

“No, no get your rest. It’s not like you’ll be able to see her, anyway. Come tomorrow. After ten o’clock. She’ll be awake then and she’ll want more comics.” It is a halfhearted joke, one that is forced and even that humorless laugh sounds weak.

“I’ll pick some up,” I tell her falling back against my pillow in the dark. “Anything else? Anything at all?”

“Sayo—I didn’t want to say anything,” she pauses, then seems to gain a bit of strength. “There’s… there’s nothing to be done really, but Doctor Simmons brought up that new experimental treatment again. The one that targets the mutation in the tumor.” I knew what she was talking about; I’d done my research when the doctor first talked about it. But it was expensive, and insurance refused to cover it. It was a last resort. “Clay and I, we were talking to some of the nurses and they mentioned fundraising because… well.”

“Where can we get it? Locally?”

“We can’t. Not yet, Sayo. It’s… without the insurance it’ll cost eighty grand.”

“I have thirty.” I don’t hesitate to offer up my savings. My job is decent. Our 401(k) is paltry but I’m a single woman with a rent controlled apartment and no bad habits other than Netflix binges. The money I have stored away has no purpose and retirement is a long ways away. This could help. This was almost half way to what they needed. “You can have all that I have, Aunt Carol.”

“Sayo. No. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. We’ll do a fundraiser.”

“I want to help. I have to.”

“Oh, sweetheart…” I hear the defeat in her voice; she is utterly spent. I desperately want to help, but my offer is just one more weight around her neck. My heartbeat increases because I imagine my aunt there, in that damn hospital room again, the same one Rhea has lived in for four years. One step forward, ten back. It never seems to end and the good, the good is so fucking fleeting. But she rallies. She always rallies. “You help, honey. So much. You are such… Rhea loves you so much. You’re everything she wants to be and I can’t tell you how proud I am of you, how much we appreciate everything you do for her. We can’t ask this of you, too. We won’t allow it.”

“It’s selfish,” I admit, frowning when my voice cracks. The moment is unguarded and Carol knows it.

“What, love?”

“Everything. I do it because I want… I don’t want to miss anything, Aunt Carol.” I should hang up. I should try to sleep and let her do the same, and my aunt already knows what I’m trying to say. She has to. Rhea is her child. I am only the cousin. Still, I can’t help myself. “Oh, Carol, I don’t want time to… to…”

“To run out.”

“It will, though. It’s coming.”

“Sweetie, don’t.” She takes another breath, her resolve weakening. “Please don’t.”

I suddenly realize what I’m saying. I can’t do that to her. Not Carol. Not that determined, strong woman battling for her child. My palms over my face, drying away the tears, I channel her, hope that I can absorb some of her strength.

“I’m sorry.” I take another moment, clear my throat. Carol doesn’t need this. It’s late, she’s worried, she needed an ear and I gave her nothing. “We’ll talk about it, later.” Another breath and I sit up, stretch out my shoulders so my voice will be clear, firm. “I’m fine and I’ll be there in the morning. Give Rhea a kiss for me, okay, and try to sleep. You’re… you’re exhausted.” We all were. We had been for years and as I disconnect the call and lay back on my bed, watching the darkness around me grow dimmer, I realize that we had only just begun to be exhausted.

We’d only just started.

THERE IS MORE
anonymity to be had as of late. I’m not really hiding, just preoccupied. Rhea rests, sleeps and struggles with the reaction to her meds most days. It’s been weeks now that they’ve kept her in the hospital loaded up on pain meds, the poison of chemo keeping her tired, weak. The white blood cell count is so low now that they make us wear gloves and masks. They make no promises that the count will improve.

But that does not make up the anonymity. It’s the way I guard myself, how closed off I am from the life I knew outside of the hospital. Rhea has become a planet I orbit around, where everything else is less import. Nothing compared to that child and what she requires.

Even the distraction of Declan and Donovan spotting me last week as I rushed into McKinney’s to grab a bite to eat didn’t rouse me. The only thing that registered was how low they spoke to each other, which meant that I had distracted them, hushed them, raised their pity. And then Sam, my ex-boyfriend who still ran the place, stared a bit too long at me with that same look of pity, and maybe the mildest hint of guilt about how we had ended. He’d wanted to say something. That was clear in his features, in the way his lips parted as if to say something.. But I didn’t care what Sam had to say to me. I didn’t care that my best friend’s boyfriend and his teammate were gossiping about me, likely talking about how tired I looked, how disheveled, how worn.

I’d tossed the money on the counter and took the white bag stained with french fry grease and left McKinney’s without a backward glance at anyone.

I feel that orbit, the one that keeps me tethered to my cousin as I walk toward a coffee shop, bone tired and weary from the worst nights Rhea has endured in four years. She is frustrated, she doesn’t understand with the frustration of a child why her body refuses to behave the way she wants it to.

But tonight was the first I’d seen her argumentative. The first time she had retreated full into herself, not speaking to anyone, not wanting anyone’s company. Not even mine.

That hospital, and the small, defeated girl is where my mind is now. It keeps my attention and I can do nothing to take in the town around me or the people I know who smile, who may or may not have asked after Rhea. I barely register anything as I walk to the coffee shop, focusing on the thought of caffeine to keep my eyes from slamming shut. The smell of dark roast, the sweet hint of sugar that wafts out of the shop as customers leave, none of it really distracts me. Nothing keeps my attention for long but Rhea… Rhea and the look she gave me. That look and the last thing she said to me before I left.

“Just leave, Sayo. I don’t want you here.”

She hadn’t meant it. Logically, I know that. But the bite of her words sticks sharp. I feel wounded, feel the pain throbbing as I open the door, only to be assaulted with raised voices as I make my way inside. Even through my miasma, I recognize those voices.

“Layla, seriously?” Mollie is saying. “This shit has got to stop.” The brunette’s face is bunched and angry as she screams at her best friend. Layla’s eyes are darting between Mollie and Donovan, who is looking both ridiculous and enraged as his skin has been stained a fantastic shade of pink. Without having to think about it, I know that Layla is responsible. She and Donovan have sparred ever since they were kids. They stayed away from each other for years, but when Autumn and Declan started dating, they were thrown back together again, and an increasingly obnoxious prank war had ratcheted up around them.