I couldn’t talk myself into going upstairs to the bedroom. Not even to change my clothes or shower. I couldn’t bring myself to face the pictures on the dresser, the half-empty closet, the unmade bed—vestiges of a marriage that had felt strong enough to endure my surgery and treatment.
So I sat. I steeped in the silence. I let the shock and disbelief and upheaval torment my waking moments until my body escaped into sleep. But they were still there when consciousness returned, a gut-shocking, humiliating, dismantling force I couldn’t seem to shake.
At the end of the second day, I stood and found my purse. It was sitting by the front door, where I’d dropped it after our aborted Shake Shack trip. My phone was in the front pocket. It took courage to click the home button—once I connected with the world again, I’d have to speak the words my mind still couldn’t entirely fathom. Nate left me. Nate . . . left me. Nate. Left. Me.
There were too many texts to count. Congratulations on the end of my treatment from friends, from random coworkers. There were missed calls and voicemails. Two from my boss, Joe. Six from Darlene.
Those got my attention.
Darlene never left messages—it was a red line for her. “I’ll talk to you and I’ll talk to your husband, but I will not talk to that dang robo-voice on your phone.”
I let my head fall forward and focused on breathing through a panic I didn’t fully understand. Without listening to the messages, I hit Call Back and waited for my friend to pick up, but it was a male voice that finally said, “Hello?”
“Um . . . I’m sorry. I must have—”
“Were you trying to reach Darlene?”
“I— Yes.”
“This is her phone.”
“Oh.” My mind was still too muddled to engage in small talk. “Can I speak with her? This is Ceelie.”
I heard a sigh. “Ceelie. She’s been wanting to talk to you. This is Darlene’s son.”
“Is she okay?”
There was a pause. “I think it would be good for you to come over.”
“Right now?”
“When you can.”
Something in my body understood before my mind did. A jagged dread lodged in my veins. Clawed at my synapses. I could almost hear it pleading, “Please, no!” as if it knew I couldn’t take much more.
I glanced at myself in the full-length mirror next to the front door. Disheveled. Gaunt. Hunched over and pale. But Perky, bald, and cancer-free! still screamed from my red shirt. I borrowed—what had Darlene called it?—“cold-blooded courage” from the words and, with concern for my friend hastening my steps, headed for the bedroom.
Darlene’s house was a small Tudor on a quiet street in Geneva, just fifteen minutes from my home in Saint Charles. Her old, turquoise PT Cruiser sat in the driveway—a custom paint job, she’d proudly informed me—and icicle lights still framed the recessed front door. It opened before I reached it.
“You must be Ceelie,” Darlene’s son said. Concerned. Relieved. Though he was a few inches taller than his mother, there was no denying their resemblance. Same small frame. Same high cheekbones. Same direct gaze. His hair was dark blond, but just as unruly. He held out a hand. “I’m Justin.”
He stepped back to usher me inside. “What happened?” I asked, following him down the hall.
“She’s been feeling under the weather for a while—which was news to me, but you know how she is. She took a fall a couple days ago and injured her hip. When they did a CT scan . . .” He paused at the end of the long hall that led to the living room doorway and motioned me inside.
“Don’t hog the guest!” Darlene’s voice was loud, but more breathy than usual.
I stepped into the room, where an alarming number of garden gnomes perched on bookshelves, end tables, and an upright piano, and tried not to show my dismay when I saw my friend.
“But the hair looks good, right?” Darlene said with a small, weary smile, apparently spotting the shock I’d attempted to hide. She sat on the reclining portion of her couch, her legs covered by a crocheted blanket.
Justin’s voice came from behind me. “Things you don’t find in the model-son handbook: teasing mom’s pink hair while she recovers from a fall.”
Darlene laughed. Then she let her head fall back and inhaled a long, deep breath.
I took a step toward her, trying to school the emotions overwhelming my control. “Darlene . . .”
She patted the spot next to her on the couch. “Sit.”
I did as instructed and took a good look at her. Her face was pale under her pink and blue makeup. The lines seemed more deeply creased than usual and, though her trademark feistiness was in her eyes when she turned her head to look at me, there was weariness there too.
I remembered the texts and missed calls on my phone and guilt overcame me. “Darlene . . .”
She waved away my unspoken apology. “Hush now.”
“I’m so sorry I didn’t call you back or . . . or text. If I’d known . . .”
She sat up straighter and carefully adjusted her legs on the footrest in front of her. “Honey, that wasn’t me calling. Why would I expect you to get on the phone with me when you’re busy celebrating the end of Drip ’n’ Drain?” It’s what she called chemo—the IV treatment followed by the inevitable intestinal discomfort. Justin ducked out of the room just as she was saying, “I’m guessing my boy might have used my phone to summon the troops, when said troops should have been on a plane to . . . what was it? Sweden?”
“Switzerland.” I turned more fully toward her. “Tell me, Darlene. What’s going on?”
She pursed her lips and looked back at me. Then she reached out a hand to give mine a squeeze. “Turns out my version of the Drip ’n’ Drain didn’t take.”
I’d known as I drove from my place to hers that this was the news I’d receive. Still, my stomach dropped as I felt my breath catch. “It’s back?”
Darlene squeezed my hand again. “In the hip and femur.”
“Oh, Darlene . . .”
“No. Not ‘Oh, Darlene.’” She pushed herself up straighter and winced a little. “They’re going to start me on radiation—that oughta get rid of some of the pain—and a newfangled drug to slow the progress.”
I tried for a strong voice. “You’ll beat this again. I know you will.”
The smile she gave me somehow managed to be whimsical, strong, and grave. “Honey, I’ve beat this thing twice. It’s back to tell me my winning streak is over. But I’m fully planning on going out strong.”
I wasn’t sure what that would look like. I’d seen others die of the disease—my own mother from ovarian cancer—and couldn’t envision a “strong” exit under similar circumstances.
Justin materialized next to me with two cups of coffee. “Yours has the high octane stuff in it,” he said, handing one to his mother and the other to me.
“Of all my children, you’re my favorite,” she declared dramatically, then she winked at me. “A little Baileys is good for ailing bones, right?”
Justin left the room again.
“When did he get here?”