The Lingering Grace (19 page)

“Mom always makes it,” Alice said, then added, “You might want to turn on the burner.”

He threw his hands in the air and fumbled with the knob on the stove until the burner finally ignited. Alice watched him with a mixture of pity and amazement. She’d never realized how completely he relied on her mom. Her dad had always seemed so invincible to her—able to take on any project, destroy any threat—that seeing him helpless against the challenge of boiling water was unnerving.

“Must have slipped my mind. Can’t think without coffee, can’t make coffee without thinking. Talk about a Catch-22.” He watched the flame burn blue for a second, then turned back to Alice. “What’re you having for breakfast? Eggs? Cereal? Want me to get you a bowl?”

“Um … I can manage,” she said. She wasn’t even sure he knew where the bowls were and she’d rather not find out. “I usually just have a granola bar anyway. Tony’s coming to pick me up in a minute.”

“Okay,” he said.

She fetched her usual breakfast bar. It
was
nice not to get a lecture on “Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day” for once.

“You never answered my question. Why didn’t Mom tell me she was leaving? Did she even tell Jeremy?”

“Tell me what?”

Jeremy trudged downstairs, half of his hair flat against his scalp and the other half standing straight up. If Alice’s mom had been there, she would have made him go back upstairs and comb it, but Alice’s dad didn’t even seem to notice.

“How’s Big J?” her dad asked with forced cheeriness.

Jeremy reached the bottom of the stairs and looked around, confused. “Where’s Mom?”

“What? No one’s happy to see Dad for once?” asked her dad, who did, in fact, look a little hurt.

“Is Bill okay?” Alice asked.

“No, no … Bill’s fine. The boys are fine.”

“Then I don’t understand.”

“Don’t understand what?” Jeremy piped in as he grabbed a box of cereal. “Where’s Mom?”

“Look, honey,” her dad lowered his voice and leaned in, as though he could block Jeremy out of the conversation. “Your mom just needed a break. She has to do some thinking and I told her we’d be okay without her for a day or two.”

“What does she need to think about? What’s going on?” Alice demanded. Jeremy stared at them, cereal box in one hand, bowl in the other.

“I think … ” Her dad glanced at Jeremy. “I think you should hear it from her.”

Alice swallowed hard; her mouth was dry.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” she asked softly. Her dad grimaced and pulled away, and Alice’s heart seemed to drop to her toes. All kinds of terrible diagnoses ran through her mind: Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Cancer.

Cancer
.

“It’s cancer, isn’t it?” she whispered through trembling lips. “She said she wouldn’t get it. She promised.”

“Hon, she doesn’t have cancer,” he said, but once again he averted his eyes. A car honked outside. “Is that your ride?”

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

She hurried out the door without a goodbye and ran down the walkway. She wished she could keep running.

She wished someone would just tell her the whole story for once.

She wished her mom were here.

The ride to school seemed short. Tony was very excited about some plan he had cooked up to stop his brother from bothering Alice once and for all, but Alice was too dazed to listen. She nodded and asked dumb questions and generally didn’t pay much attention until they pulled up to the school. The second she kissed Tony goodbye and got out of the car, she called her mom again. Her mom answered just before Alice would have gotten sent to voicemail.

“Hi, sweetie.”

Alice nearly burst into tears then and there. She cleared her throat and stared at the cement under her feet. The students walking by paid her no attention, but she still kept her voice quiet.

“Mom, where are you? Are you okay?” It came out more accusatory than she meant it to, but the truth was that beneath her fear ran an equally strong current of anger. How could her mother disappear like that—without notice, without even a note? Alice didn’t count on her mom for much anymore, but she did count on her to be there. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

“I’m sorry for taking off so suddenly,” she said, not answering either question. Her voice was quiet and sounded stretched, thin. “Isn’t school about to start, Alice?”

“I have five minutes,” Alice said, irritated that her mother was questioning her about something as mundane as school at a time like this. “I’ve been really worried about you.”

“Oh, sweetheart, I’m okay.”

Alice didn’t believe it. “Mom, seriously, what’s going on?”

Her mom sighed. “I just needed some time. I’m at a bed and breakfast in Mendocino.”

“Dad said you were at Uncle—”

“I’m sure he didn’t want you to worry.”

“Does he even know where you are?” Alice asked. More students were arriving now and she pressed the phone harder against her head, covering her other ear against the noise.

“He knows. He made the reservation.”

“He kicked you out?”

“No, of course not!” Her mom sounded horrified at the thought. “No, he was trying to help me. He knew I needed some time alone and I just needed permission to take it. I didn’t want to leave you kids, but he convinced me it would be fine.”

Her mom didn’t sound angry with her dad, which Alice took as a good sign. Still, she couldn’t imagine that anything good had triggered this sudden vacation.

“Mom, please,” she begged. “The bell is about to ring and I should probably go inside. But I can’t spend all day worrying about what’s going on. Please just tell me. PLEASE.”

Her mother hesitated. “But I don’t want you to—”

“Either way I’m going to be worried!” interrupted Alice. “Either way! But if you don’t tell me I know I’ll drive myself crazy imagining all kinds of horrible things. I don’t think whatever it is could possibly be worse than the stuff I could make up.”

There was a long silence; Alice held her breath. Crowds of kids were passing her now, but she barely noticed.

“Fine,” her mom sighed at last. “But promise me you won’t say anything to Jeremy until I get a chance to talk to him when I get back.”

“I promise,” Alice assured her at once.

“Okay then. You may as well know. I had the test done.”

Alice didn’t ask for any further elaboration. She didn’t need to. There was only one test that they spoke of in hushed tones—The Test. The one her mom had been avoiding for years, the one her dad had been pushing for. After Alice’s aunt died of breast cancer, the doctors had practically begged her mom to get tested for a certain gene. It was a no-win test. If you tested negative, you still had a chance of developing cancer. But if you tested positive, you would almost get it for sure.

The doctors told her mom that with her family history—a sister and a mother who had both died of the disease before the age of thirty—there was a fifty percent chance she would have inherited the gene. She would get cancer and it could kill her too.

But her mother, terrified at what a positive test result would mean, had refused. Until now.

“What—what did it say?” Alice nearly choked on the words; she could hardly breathe. She felt sure she knew the answer, but it wasn’t real until she heard it from her mother’s own lips.

“I’m positive for BRCA mutation,” her mom said in a tone so flat that it could only have come out of absolute emotional exhaustion. “Because my mom and … because my sister died so young—because it was early onset breast cancer … they want me to get a double mastectomy. They say it’s the only way to be sure I won’t … ” Her voice caught.

Alice struggled for air. She leaned against the wall for support; her chest ached as if she’d been hit in the ribs by a fifty-pound weight. Surely a double mastectomy would crush her mother—her mother, who worked out an hour a day to keep her figure. Who would do almost anything in the name of beauty.

“You’re going to do it then?” Alice whispered.

“I—I need to think about it,” sighed her mom, some of the deadness in her voice giving way to a trembling nervousness. “You know, it’s funny, but I’m not sure what I’d be without them.”

“But they can do reconstructions. Some are almost as good as the real thing.”

Her mother’s voice was distant. “Yes. I know.”

“Mom, if it’s the only way … ” The first bell rang and she rushed toward the gates, clutching the phone and speaking more urgently now. “I’d rather have you. I don’t think I could stand …. Mom, please …. You have to. Please.”

“I need some time, sweetheart. It’s just … ” She stopped and may have sighed, but Alice was having trouble hearing in the crowded hall. “It’s hard.”

“I know. I’m … I’m so sorry.”

She imagined that her mother nodded, wiped away the tears, then put on her chipper “mothering” face again. She certainly sounded more herself as she said, “You should go, Alice. I don’t want you to be late. But I love you. And I’ll be back in a day or two.”

“Will you call?”

“I’ll call.”

Alice paused outside the door to her first-period class. She held the phone close, and in a hushed voice she said, “I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, sweetie. More than anything.”

Eva was a transformed person. The shy, grieving grayness had melted away overnight. She was effusive and energetic, answering questions, participating in discussions. She even looked different. Her eyes shone and her smile gave her face an attractive softness. Instead of her typical muted colors, she was wearing a bright blue dress. She wore hot-pink lipstick that not many people could have pulled off but that somehow made Eva’s face come alive.

People noticed. Kids in their classes stared unabashedly. Students in the halls watched her walk by with expressions that ranged from interest to shock. Eva absorbed the stares with casual disinterest, and Alice was certain she must have been popular at her last school. Only people who took attention for granted could accept it so dismissively. With the bond between them, Alice expected she would feel at least a gut-level reaction seeping from Eva’s consciousness into her own. The fact that she hadn’t noticed anything made her wonder if the spell was still intact.

As they were walking back inside after lunch, a freshman boy actually stopped in his tracks and gaped at Eva as they walked by.

“Doesn’t that creep you out?” Alice asked.

Eva shrugged. “Being looked at? Why should it?”

Her lack of concern made Alice wonder if she was being paranoid, but it did explain why she hadn’t been getting any spell-related nudges in the brain. It seemed like those only happened with very strong emotions, and, a little bizarrely, Eva didn’t care at all who was noticing her.

“I don’t know,” Alice said, trying to put on the cool air that came so naturally to Eva. She would have thought that since they were magically bound now, it would have been easier—that maybe some of Eva’s unflappable attitude would have rubbed off on her. It hadn’t. “I guess it’s nothing.”

Eva looked at her, brow slightly furrowed. “Are you ok?” she asked. “All day you’ve seemed …”

Upset?
Eva didn’t have to finish the sentence. Clearly the spell was working on her end though it had taken her long enough to mention she’d noticed anything. Alice resented being ignored, but now that she had Eva’s attention, she found herself short of words. Blurting out “my mom has cancer” seemed too reductive. So much pain, so much worry wrapped up in a single sentence … it was laughable.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Alice said.

Eva’s lips pursed; she didn’t like being kept in the dark. Alice thought she would insist on an explanation, but what she actually said was, “I understand.”

The silence was long and awkward.

“People asked me about Penny a lot at first,” Eva said at last. “It didn’t help.”

Alice looked away. “Thanks.”

“Anyway,” said Eva, brushing off the topic with a flick of her hair. The tension eased immediately. “We have work to do. I’ve been working on writing the spell for a while, but now that you’re helping and now that we have another spellbook to work from, I don’t see why it would take longer than a few days. Of course, we’ll have to test it somehow before we try it for real. But I think we should be ready for action by the weekend.”