One Mountain Away (45 page)

“I’d rather do this inside.”

She was too exhausted to argue. She left him to decide what to do next and started through the house back into the media room, flipping off the television, then settling herself in a corner of the sofa with her feet on the cushion beside her.

He followed close behind. She watched him take in the afghan rumpled on the floor, the prescription bottles, the water glass and plate of fresh fruit gathering fruit flies that Harmony had left for her to snack on. The bananas and apples had turned brown, and the yogurt dip had dissolved into a watery layer.

“Have you eaten anything this evening?” he asked.

“You don’t need to worry.”

“I could make you an omelet.”

Her stomach flipped, either in revulsion or hunger, she really wasn’t sure. “No thanks.”

“You used to love my omelets.”

“I’m not up for a trip down memory lane. You’ve done your duty, Ethan. You’ve apologized, and now, if I die sooner than later, you don’t have to wish you’d been kinder. I understand that impulse, believe me. I’m coming at it from a different angle, but it’s all part of the same thing.”

He sat gingerly on the sofa, a cushion away, but still close enough to touch.

“How’s the treatment going?”

“As treatments go, not that bad. I haven’t spent time in the ICU. I haven’t seen strange visions beside my bed. I just feel like I’ve been turned inside out. And I need a lot of naps, starting now.”

“You were in the hospital for a month in the spring? That’s what you told me the other day.”

She didn’t answer.

“I can’t imagine what that must have been like. And nobody knew?”

“It seemed like the thing to do.”

“You weren’t taking the leukemia seriously, were you? I remember whenever you came down with a cold or the flu, you just kept going. I had to drag you to the hospital to have Taylor. I think you would have worked through the delivery, if I’d let you.”

She stared at him and didn’t say a word.

“Did you think if you didn’t tell anybody, maybe you could just ignore it?”

“Are you going to give me a lecture on facing a deadly disease? Because you have so much experience yourself?”

“I’m just trying to figure it out.”

“It’s not calculus. I wanted to be me. I didn’t want to be me-with-leukemia. I knew I would have to tell everyone eventually. I would have told you when the moment was right.”

“Right before you headed down Merrimon Avenue to pick out a coffin?”

“That’s unnecessarily cruel.”

“Do you know the only thing I could think about when I discovered the truth?”

“That I’d set you up? That I was leading you on? Manipulating you?”

He reached for a foot, bare and sadly in need of a pedicure. Despite her resistance, he pulled it into his lap and began to slowly massage the instep with his thumbs.

“No, what I was thinking was I’d finally found you again, and before I could even be sure, I’d lost you for the last time.”

His hands were warm against her skin, the pressure exactly right. But of course it would be, since he’d done this so often so many years ago.

She tried to pull her foot away. “That’s not what you said. And stop doing that.”

He held firm and didn’t stop. “I know what I said, Lulu. Maybe as far as it went, the rest of it was true, too. We have a history of not being straight with each other. But here’s the news flash, one I’ve been trying hard for years not to read. You aren’t the only one who wasn’t straight, and you never were. Years ago I saw things were falling apart, and what did I do? I closed my eyes. I wanted our marriage to succeed, so I refused to see that it wasn’t. And I waited until everything finally exploded, then I walked out on you and everything we’d built together. Just the way I walked out on you the other night. If I don’t like what I see? I guess I disappear.”

This was so unexpected, she didn’t know what to say. And when tears slowly filled the silence, she knew she was too tired to control her emotions.

“I am so, so sorry,” he said softly, his hands still now. “For all those years ago when I didn’t try to put things right. For walking out with Taylor instead of trying to find a way for all of us to stay together. For walking out last Saturday when I learned how sick you are.
That
most of all.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Most of that…” She swallowed helplessly, but the tears kept falling. “It was a long time ago.”

“Time’s one thing. Love is another.”

“Love?”

“Apparently
I
disappear but my feelings
don’t
. Tonight somebody told me I never stopped loving you, that I’m a one-woman man. And as angry as that made me, as convinced as I was that she was crazy, what was I really thinking? That you were here in this big house alone, and I could be here with you if I just dropped the act.”

“I don’t want your pity!”

“I
do
feel sorry for you—how could I not? But it’s a small part of what I feel.”

“You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to be nice to me. I’ve made it this far just fine.”

“Not so fine.” He slid closer, until they were face-to-face. He touched her cheek, then he pushed back a lock of hair. “I love you. Live forever, but if you don’t? Let me be with you while I can.”

She looked for reasons other than the ones he’d expressed to explain why he had come. She tried to push away her own feelings, because she couldn’t face another disappointment, not now, when she was hanging by a thread.

“You love me, too,” he said softly.

“I’ve never been sure what that means.”

“Oh, you know.” He reached for her hand and put it over his heart. “You were always afraid to acknowledge it, but you did love me, and you’ve never forgotten.”

She wilted. “I don’t think I can survive if you walk out the door again, Ethan, so be sure you know what you’re in for. I don’t have the strength…to pick myself up and go on.”

“If you don’t have the strength to go on, Lulu, let me carry you for a while. Until you’re better.”

“I don’t know that I’m going to get better.” She wiped her face on her sleeve, then she met his gaze. “The odds aren’t good. You need to understand what you’re getting into.”

He let out a long breath, and she could see something close to despair in his eyes. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. She rested her cheek against his chest, and her arms slipped around his waist.

“Then die holding my hand,” he whispered against her hair. “Because I’m never going to let go of yours. Not ever again.”

Chapter Forty

WHEN TAYLOR AND Maddie stopped by Ethan’s house on Sunday he wasn’t home, and a neighbor told them his car had been gone all weekend. Since he hadn’t mentioned a trip out of town, Taylor was concerned, but not very. Ethan liked to hike, and sometimes he took a backpacking tent and a few basic supplies, in case he found a particularly pretty spot to settle in for the night. As a young teen she had often gone with him. She wished she and Maddie could accompany him occasionally, but she worried Maddie might get hurt on the trail during a seizure and Taylor wasn’t willing to take chances.

She tried her father’s cell phone, but when she got voice mail, she hung up without leaving a message and drove to Samantha’s.

The day was beautiful, and she hoped Maddie and Edna could play at the park while she and Sam chatted. Except for the brief trip with Willow, Maddie hadn’t been to the park since her fall. It was time for her to go back now, time to let the other children see she wasn’t afraid to be there.

Samantha’s VW was parked in her circular driveway. Taylor parked behind it, and Maddie skipped ahead to ring the doorbell.

Samantha, in faded jeans and a black ribbed tank top, greeted them and sent Maddie in search of Edna.

Taylor followed her daughter inside. “Feel like taking the hobbits to the park? While they’re still young enough to be seen with us?”

“I’m dying to get outside. I was just trying to pay bills and replace a couple of lightbulbs first. I’m behind on everything.”

Taylor had forgotten her friend had been working with a bunch of volunteers for the past few weekends. “How’s your project coming?”

Samantha yelled at Edna to comb her hair and put her shoes on before she answered. “It looks great. Soon as we can get the first volunteers all trained, we’ll be in business. That should be soon.”

“Volunteers?”

“Ladies from the Women’s Fellowship at Covenant.”

“Covenant’s involved?” Taylor was surprised, considering that Samantha’s mother had been sent packing as headmistress of Covenant Academy.

“Nice group, too.” Samantha paused just long enough to show she had to consider her next sentence, then she shrugged. “It was your mother’s idea.”

Taylor tried to reformat that piece of information, the way she might reformat an old computer file that wouldn’t work with her new operating system.

Samantha saw her predicament. “She was at the clinic with a young woman who’s living in her house, and she noticed that a lot of our moms had to bring other children with them when they came for prenatal care. So she thought of the playroom and got Covenant involved.”

Taylor’s reformatting wasn’t working. “My mother was at your clinic?”

“Harmony—that’s the woman who’s living with her—is pregnant.”

“She has a pregnant woman living with her?”

“Young one, too, without a lot of money. She’s a sweetie. Harmony told me she needed a place to stay, and Charlotte opened her door.”

The girls came running out of Edna’s bedroom, so there was no more time for Taylor to question Samantha. On the walk to the park, both girls raced ahead and back, and Taylor watched her daughter carefully. As they drew closer Maddie slowed, then inched along, despite Edna spurring her on. Once they arrived, Samantha took one look at Maddie, grabbed her hand, climbed to the top of the dome and pulled her up, too, where they sat together, cross-legged. Samantha laughed and pointed out silly things going on around them until Edna joined them. After a while Samantha climbed back down alone.

Taylor made room on the bench where she was sitting, and Samantha joined her.

“You’re such a good friend,” Taylor said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Should she really be up there?”

“You tell me.”

“I used to have answers. Now everything just seems harder and harder to figure out.”

“I can imagine.”

“I used to be sure letting Maddie play here was the right thing. She deserves to do everything a child without epilepsy can. Of course, we have to be smart, but I always thought the park was safe enough we could chance it. Then look what happened.”

“But she came through the fall okay, because the dome’s really not very high, which you factored in.”

“Everything’s a decision. What drugs she should be on. Whether I should make her go to school after she’s had a bad seizure. Whether I should let her take ice skating classes after school next year. How about gymnastics? Yesterday somebody asked me why I don’t make her wear a helmet, so if she does fall, she’ll be safer.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Because she doesn’t fall often enough to need one.”

“Then that’s one decision all taken care of.”

Taylor knew what Sam was trying to do, but not every decision was that easy.

She ticked off what she did know. “No to ice skating, no to gymnastics. No to Jeremy.”

“Guess what? Jeremy just crept into the conversation. All the way from Nashville.”

Samantha knew what Jeremy had done. She had asked good questions but given no answers, good or otherwise. She had, as she often did, just listened.

“I guess I’m going to find a lawyer,” Taylor said. “I made an appointment and talked to Dr. Hilliard. I made sure he had the records from Vanderbilt first. He looked everything over, and he still believes Maddie’s best option is medication, not surgery.”

“Well, you knew that going in.”

“But there was new information to consider.”

Samantha didn’t reply.

Taylor went on. “He said there were all kinds of potential side effects after surgery. How can I take those kind of chances? This is her
brain
we’re talking about.”

“So you’ve made up your mind.”

Taylor had expected Samantha to agree with her. “I guess I have.” She turned to gauge her friend’s expression. “You don’t think I’m right?”

“Whoa, not going there.”

“No, I want you to. Not just as a friend, but as a professional. I’d like your opinion.”

Samantha considered long enough that Taylor grew uncomfortable. “What?” she asked, after the silence had gone on too long. “You don’t want to tell me what you think?”

“It’s not something you’re all that fond of.”

“What’s not?”

“Other people’s opinions, at least not once your mind’s made up. What are you going to do if I don’t agree with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t like to listen to other people if they don’t share your views. I’m not talking about little stuff, but you’re not good if it’s important. It’s your way or the highway. I’m not in the mood to thumb a ride.”

Taylor was surprised. “I can’t believe you think that.”

“You’re saying you don’t have strong opinions and you’re always open to having your mind changed?”

The question was so pointed that Taylor tried to think of a reply just as pointed. She searched for an example of a situation when she had willingly changed her mind about something that really mattered to her. When nothing presented itself, she scurried back to the root of the conversation.

“I’d like you to be honest. I
will
listen, I promise.”

“Listen at your own risk then.”

“Samantha!”

“I think Dr. Hilliard’s old-fashioned and just plain old. Now some of my favorite doctors fit that last part, but never the first. They keep up with everything, stay fluid in the way they think, and they don’t fall back on ideas that served them well years ago, unless that’s all they’ve got. Hilliard’s not one of them. He has the best bedside manner this side of
Grey’s Anatomy,
and he’s as genuine as they get. But he’s also set in his ways.”