by Lori Wilde
“Do you have a migraine?” Gia asked.
Madison opened her eyes and nodded. “Travel . . . stress . . .”
“C’mon, sit down.” Sympathetic, she took Madison’s hand and guided her to the chair Gia had vacated. “I’ll fetch coffee and aspirin.”
For the first time since coming into the waiting room, Madison smiled. Worn and wan, but the smile counted. “How did you know?”
“You carry all your tension in your head. You always have. Me? I’m a gut girl. Tummy aches.” Like the one she had now. Gia rummaged in her purse, found the packet of aspirins she carried with her—never knew when she’d find someone in need—and passed the pills to her sister. “You think too much.”
“Curse of the oldest.”
Gia turned to Darynda. “Would you like coffee?”
“If I drink coffee this late, I can’t sleep a wink.” Darynda shook her head and sank down on the couch where she’d been sitting before she’d gone outside to stretch her legs. “Not that I imagine I’ll get much sleep tonight.” She took material from her tote bag and started hand sewing a quilt square.
Gia went to the coffee station in the corner of the waiting room and poured coffee for them both. Black for Maddie, creamy and sweet for herself.
“Thanks.” Madison took the coffee and Gia sat beside her and for a moment, things were nice.
Sighing out loud, Madison cradled the paper cup in her hands, leaned her head against the wall, and shut her eyes.
Maddie was such a force of nature when she was in motion, but resting, she looked utterly worn out. Her face was far too pale and there were long-standing dark shadows beneath her eyes.
This was more than just Grammy. Something else ate at her oldest sister and had for some time.
Gia’s heart lurched. She hadn’t seen Madison since Christmas. They had exchanged polite chitchat and token gifts but shared nothing deep. Nothing meaningful. And they had said absolutely nothing about Shelley. Their middle sister’s absence was the invisible elephant in the room, unseen but there all the same.
When they were children, she and Madison often teamed up against Shelley. Gia had adored her oldest sister. Not that she didn’t adore Shelley as well, but Shelley was closer in age. That closeness created squabbles and sibling rivalry.
Madison and Gia never had a fight. That is until The Incident with Raoul and the wedding gone awry.
RIP, sisterhood.
Gia fiddled with her bracelet and wished for a fidget spinner.
A door leading to the surgical suite opened. Every head in the waiting area swiveled in that direction and people sat up straighter in their chairs.
A weary-looking woman in scrubs, lab coat, surgical cap, and mask dangling around her neck shambled into the waiting area, paper shoe covers on her feet. “Chapman family?”
Simultaneously, Madison, Gia, and Darynda jumped to their feet. Madison squared her shoulders. Darynda dropped the quilt square into her tote bag. Gia interlaced her fingers and clasped her hands over her heart.
“Please, follow me into the conference room.” The woman nodded.
Darynda plunked back down.
“What are you doing?” Madison asked.
“You girls go on. I’m not fami—”
Gia reached for her hand. “C’mon, Darynda, you are family.”
A hopeful smile twitched at Darynda’s mouth. Her lips were lined in mauve pencil, but she’d chewed off the top layer of her lipstick. She shot an uncertain glance at Madison.
With a half-hearted lift of one shoulder and a brief nod, Madison turned and followed the doctor into a small room with two couches, a coffee table, and several boxes of tissues.
Darynda picked up her tote, clutching it with both hands as if it were her lifeline. Gia settled an arm around Darynda’s shoulder and guided her after Madison.
“Please have a seat.” Looking somber, the woman directed them to the couches.
They settled in.
Madison was on the corner closest to the coffee table where the doctor perched, her knees cocked as if ready to run for an emergency at a moment’s notice. Gia sat beside her sister. Hesitating, Darynda slid down next to Gia.
“I’m Dr. Hollingway. Your grandmother’s neurosurgeon.” She shook their hands, and they all murmured hellos and nice-to-meet-yous, which seemed both silly and inadequate in the context—civil, polite, and utterly worthless. Then the doctor launched into the details of the nine-hour surgery.
Gia fixated on Dr. Hollingway’s feet, noticed specks of blood on her shoe covers and the hem of her scrubs. Grammy’s blood? Her gut reeled, and she wished she hadn’t drunk that coffee without something in her stomach.
The doctor crossed her legs. “Your grandmother is a fighter. Her resilience will go a long way in her recovery.”
Darynda made a small sound, a tiny, tight eep like a hiccup. Gia reached over to take her hand and Darynda clung to her like a tether.
Dr. Hollingway cleared her throat. She directed her gaze straight at Madison.
“Yes?” Maddie’s voice sounded strong, but Gia could detect a faint tremor. Madison fiddled with the crystal necklace at her throat, rubbing it like a talisman.
“I was able to resect the entire tumor.”
“That’s good news, right?”
“It is excellent news. But—”
“But what?”
Gia wanted to yell at Madison and tell her if she’d just shut up for half a second, and let the doctor finish, they’d find out faster.
“With complex brain surgery we expect complications—”
“Such as?” Madison leaned forward as if getting closer would pull the information from the doctor faster.
The doctor ticked off the points on her fingers as she spoke. “Swelling of the brain.”
“Oh dear,” Darynda exclaimed and sagged against Gia.
“Brain swelling is . . .” Dr. Hollingway held her hands parallel in front of her, palms cupped as if cradling a human brain. “Part and parcel of brain surgery. So please, don’t get overly alarmed.”
Gia rubbed her hand up and down Darynda’s back to soothe herself as much as the older woman. Darynda was trembling. So was Gia.
“Continue.” Madison’s gaze never left the doctor’s face.
“Because of the swelling, we’ve put her in a medically induced coma. Brain surgery is a lot for the human body to cope with and recovery takes time. When she regains consciousness, we need to watch out for complications—”
“Such as?” Madison tapped a fingernail on the couch arm.
“Weakness, dizzy spells, poor balance, seizures.”
“She had those symptoms before the surgery,” Darynda said.
Madison shot Darynda the side eye. “She had seizures?”
“Once. A big one. At Walmart. There was this flashing sign—”
“Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you call me?” Madison’s voice sounded like gravel dragged across concrete.
Darynda seemed to shrink into the couch. “Helen asked me not to.”
Madison pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes. She looked as if she had gone Marie Kondo on her closet, sorting things into a “keep” or “discard” pile based on how much joy the items brought her and Darynda had fallen solidly in the discard pile. Gia kept quiet for fear of joining Darynda in the reject heap.
Madison whipped her gaze back to the doctor. “Survival rates?”
“From the surgery itself or the cancer?” The doctor steepled her fingertips, studying Madison with cool eyes. She was not afraid of ending up in any discard pile.
“Both.”
“Her heart is in excellent shape, and she has a ninety percent chance of recovering from the surgery.”
“And the cancer?”
“Talk to her oncologist about that,” Dr. Hollingway deferred. “But I can share that resecting the tumor has bought her extra time.”
“She could live for years, right?” Gia’s knee bumped up and down in a nervous
jerking of its own accord. “If we got her on a healthy diet and juiced vegetables and gave her supplements and fed her probiotics. There was a woman on YouTube who—”
“Anecdotal.”
“What does that mean?” Gia asked.
“There’s no proof that juicing cures cancer.”
“But we could try, right? It’s something.” Gia’s knee bounced higher, the muscles in her leg drawn tight.
“It won’t hurt,” the doctor conceded. “But I caution you against getting your hopes up.”
“That’s what hopes are for, right? To give you strength when all seems lost—”
“There’s hope . . .” Dr. Hollingway’s voice softened, but the look in her eyes said it all. She was a surgeon. She cut. Bedside manners weren’t her jam. “And there is delusion.”
“So the cancer will kill her.” Madison’s face was flint.
Dr. Hollingway’s lips pulled taut. “Talk to her oncologist.” She took three business cards from her lab coat, passed them out. “If anything comes up concerning her surgery, please call my office.”
“When can we see her?” Darynda asked.
“She’s in the postanesthesia recovery unit and she’ll be there overnight. The nurses are at her bedside constantly. You’d only be in the way. You can visit her in the morning when they take her up to the neuro intensive care unit. There’s nothing more you can do tonight except go home and take care of yourselves. I know she’d want that.” The doctor got to her feet.
They did too.
Madison shook the doctor’s extended hand. “We appreciate what you’ve done for our grandmother.”
“Thank you,” Darynda said.
“We’re so glad you’re in our corner.” Gia made a mental note to send the doctor and her staff a thank-you fruit basket.
“You’re most welcome.” The doctor nodded and swept out a side exit, leaving them to go out the way they’d come in.
Madison opened the door and ushered them ahead of her; Gia went first but stopped dead in her tracks.
There, in the middle of the waiting room, dressed head to toe in gossamer white, shouldering a raggedy backpack, and sporting beat-up Birkenstocks, stood a woman Gia barely recognized.
Waist-length blond hair frizzed around her face, her cheeks hollowed, her limbs way too thin, her eyes glazed and spaced out, as if she’d just jolted wide awake from a long, dreamless sleep.
She looked lost in a fundamental way. As if she no longer had an internal compass and no way to get her bearings.
It was Shelley.
Chapter Five
Shelley
TRIAD: Any three colors equally spaced on the color wheel, one of which usually takes precedence in a color scheme.
DOES ANYONE HAVE two hundred dollars?” Shelley mumbled, the bedrock of her shame as hard and unyielding as marble. This was not the triumphant return she’d dreamed of for five long years. “I need to pay the taxi.”
Gia’s gaze jumped from Shelley to Madison.
“Seriously?” Madison sneered.
Donning emotional armor, Shelley drew herself up tall underneath Madison’s withering gaze. Height. The one advantage she had over her older sister. Even if it was only an inch. “The driver is waiting.”
“Why didn’t you take an Uber?” Maddie scolded. “It’d have been cheaper.”
“Complicated story.” Yeah, like she didn’t even have a cell phone or credit card, much less an Uber account.
Maddie rolled her eyes hard. “With you, isn’t it always?”
“Are you going to give me the money or not?”
“I’ve got fifty dollars.” Gia dug in her purse. “Can you chip in, Darynda?”
“I’ll handle it.” Madison gritted her teeth. “Where’s the driver?”
Shelley hung her head. “He’s at the emergency room entrance.”
Shouldering her purse, Madison marched off.
Shelley felt like shit and longed for the days before their rivalry started back in high school. Back then, it was a subtle thing, the middle child’s insecurity, as Shelley attempted to find her place in the limelight that shone continuously on Madison.
She’d tried the proper channels but repeatedly fell short. She’d run for class president and lost, whereas Madison won class president four years in a row. Shelley enrolled in AP courses like her older sister, but her grades plummeted, and the principal moved her back to regular classes. She snagged second chair clarinet in the band, but Madison sat first chair.
By her junior year, Shelley surrendered. Waved the white flag. Took up with the rebels. Skipped school. Smoked. Drank. Wore short skirts and too much makeup. Frolicked with the summer tourists. Earned a reputation as the “fun” Moonglow sister, although she’d never caused any real trouble . . .
Until The Incident with Raoul.
“You made it,” Gia exclaimed, rushing over to wrap Shelley in a big bear hug.
Ahh, this was more like it.
Tears welled in Shelley’s eyes. She bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. What the fudge? Shelley wasn’t a crier, but after what she’d been through to get here, her emotions were razor sharp.
“I was worried about you,” Gia said. “My goodness, you’re as thin as a rail.”
“I was a vegan.”
“Was?”
“I ate bacon for breakfast this morning.”
“Well, good for you . . .” Gia gave an anxious laugh. “I guess.”
Shelley didn’t blame her. She was nervous too.
“It’s good to see you again, Shelley.” Darynda came over for a hug.
“Thanks for hanging with Gia during all this,” Shelley said.
“And Madison,” Gia added.
Shelley ignored that.
Darynda nodded, a mist of tears in her eyes.
“So . . .” Shelley sank her hands on her hips. “Grammy? What’s up with that?”
Gia shook her head and made a sad little noise. Told Shelley about the cancer diagnosis, the nine-hour brain surgery, and the medically induced coma.
Shelley’s heart dropped to the bottom of her Birkenstocks. Grammy had been their lifeline. Ever since the Child Protective Services worker dropped three little orphaned girls off on her front porch twenty years ago.
A grandmother they’d never met. A grandmother they believed long dead. A grandmother who loved them instantly, and soon they loved her right back.
Guilt curled up against Shelley’s heart. She hadn’t spoken to her grandmother in five years. Why had she waited? She’d allowed feelings of remorse and betrayal to keep her isolated. Well, that and Cobalt Soul.
“Is she . . . ?” Shelley couldn’t bring herself to ask more than that.
“She’ll survive the surgery.” The tone in Gia’s voice and the sorrow in her eyes said that cancer was a whole other topic.
“How have you been?” Shelley’s gaze fixed on Gia’s bracelet. She still had the silly thing? Involuntarily, Shelley fingered her own bare wrist.
“Hanging by a thread.” Gia’s voice trembled. “If it hadn’t been for Darynda . . .” She shot the older woman a grateful look and reached over to pat her arm.
That drew Shelley up short. Gia hated to admit her own needs. Or at least that’s how she used to be. So much time had passed, Shelley felt as if she didn’t know her sister anymore. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”
“Me too,” whispered Gia. “I missed you so much.”
Shelley couldn’t hold on to the tears. A big fat one trickled down her cheek. She swiped it away with the back of her hand. Sniffled. Hiccuped. “I’ve missed you, too.”
“You’re here now. That’s what matters.” Gia touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. “But where have you been?”
“Costa Rica,” Shelley said, offering as little as possible. She did not want to get into that. She still hadn’t processed it herself. At least not the part about . . . well . . . She shook her head.
“Where is your luggage?”
Shelley patted her backpack.
“That’s all you’ve got?”
“I travel light.” Because she had no choice. Everything she owned was in that backpack.
“How did you get home if you’re so broke?”
Gak! Shelley didn’t answer; instead she asked, “How is Madison holding up?”
Gia looked as if she might push her to elaborate, but let it go. “You saw her. She’s not taking this well.”
“Grammy’s illness? Or me?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I’d hoped she’d mellowed in five years.”
“I think something else is bothering her,” Gia said. “But she’s not talking. It’s been tense ever since she arrived.”
“I’ll say,” Darynda muttered.
“But she’d rather die than admit she’s hurting.” Shelley sighed. “Typical.”
“Never mind Maddie right now.” Gia kept twisting the bracelet at her wrist.
“Back to you.” Shelley placed both hands on Gia’s shoulders. “What’s going on in your world?”
“I’m okay.” Quickly, she filled Shelley in. The art degree, Japan, opening a kite shop.
“Wow, little sister, you’ve blossomed. That’s amazing. Congratulations.” Shelley was truly happy for her.
“It’s been an adventure.”
“When can we see Grammy?”
“The doctor said we can’t see her until they move her to neuro ICU tomorrow morning. We were headed home when you showed up. You can ride with me.”
“Maybe I should stay elsewhere.” Shelley wasn’t sure why she’d said that. She had nowhere else to go and no money for a motel.
“Don’t be silly. It’ll be fine. Maddie can get over herself.”
Define “fine.”
Madison returned, and they took off for the inn. Shelley rode with Gia, Madison with Darynda. On the drive, Gia told Shelley about Madison’s shooting-star success. Her TV show and glamorous life in Manhattan. Well, bully for Maddie, fairy dusted as always.
Petty much, Sanpreet? Shelley clenched her teeth. No. No more Sanpreet. That dog and pony show was over.
At the Moonglow Inn, Darynda didn’t get out of her car.
“Aren’t you coming inside?” Shelley went around to the driver’s window as Madison got out of Darynda’s forest-green Mini Cooper.