Peter smiled and kissed her head. He could hear her breathing as he adjusted his leg and positioned a pillow behind his back. For an instant he saw himself on that very couch with Amy after a family movie night, as Sheila reached to wake them both for bed. He was twelve again, and Amy was eight.
He leaned his head against hers as she slowly fell asleep.
It was the next Wednesday afternoon, and Peter was staring at a framed photo of three anonymous girls curled together, hugging each other with matching smiles. The picture frame was white with a thin gold rim, the matting deep blue. He used to know the name for that shade of blue.
The doctor sat with his hands folded, nodding his head, and Tara sobbed into Peter’s handkerchief.
Peter squeezed her hand tightly in his, but he missed the forceful return squeeze with which she had stubbornly met both her previous diagnoses.
The doctor was speaking. “We’ll start chemo immediately, of course, but with metastasis this severe I don’t want to create false hopes. You’ve been through two tough battles already. It’s an even tougher battle ahead.” The doctor shook his head as his cell phone rang in his lab coat. “I’ll give you a moment together. If you’ll excuse me.” He stepped around his desk with the phone to his ear and closed the door quietly behind him.
“We’ll get through this.” Peter leaned over Tara and put his arms around her as her sobs became louder and her shoulders shook harder. “We did it before, and we can do it again.” He gently tapped her knee until she lifted her head and looked deep into his eyes.
“I’m so tired, Peter,” she whispered. She threw her head onto his chest once more and sobbed violently into her hands, and Peter pulled her close, holding back his tears. He clenched his fist against her back at the thought of Madeline. He would have to be strong for her. He would have to be strong for both of them.
“Nothing has ever stopped you from getting what you want,” Peter whispered into her ear as she leaned into his arms. “Never in your life. You know that right? Remember who you are, you are Tara.”
Night had fallen, and the house was quiet. The counters were wiped clean, and the dishwasher hummed. Peter turned off the light in the kitchen and removed his reading glasses to place them on a book on the table near Richard’s old leather recliner.
When the phone rang, he reached it quickly, before the second ring. He didn’t want it to wake Tara.
“Peter.” Jake’s voice was low and shaky.
“Jake, what’s up?” Peter sat slowly down in the recliner.
“Peter, it’s Amanda. The doctors think—” Jake hesitated.
“What? What about Amanda?” Peter moved up in his seat, his voice sharper.
“Breast cancer,” Jake whispered. “Peter, they think she has breast cancer.”
Peter dropped his head into his hand as he listened to Jake’s muffled crying.
“I can’t lose her.” Jake had never sounded like this before. “I could never live without her.”
“Jake! Where is she right now? Can she hear you?”
“She’s upstairs. In the shower.”
“Okay, buddy. Jake, you know what this is all about. You’ve been watching us handle it for years. You can do it. I know you can. We’re with you.”
“Peter, can you imagine what that would mean? A world without Amanda in it?”
Peter heard Amanda’s laughter again as he twirled her on the ice. He saw her face glowing over the tiny head of a newborn against the pillows of a hospital bed. He turned again in his mind and saw Jake’s hand on the elbow of a young woman he had never seen before, a girl with golden hair and laughing eyes and a glance up at Jake as though they shared a sweet secret.
Peter’s tears ran down his cheeks. “No, I can’t, Jake. I can’t imagine.”
“Peter, I couldn’t go on without her. I wouldn’t even know how to try.”
“Jake, no one is saying you’ll have to. You need to be strong for her now. She’s going to need your support. You’re going to have to be the one to listen, to care for her, to make hard decisions. She’s going to need strength from you like never before. You have it in you. It’s always been there, waiting for this very moment.”
“I know. I know. Thanks, brother,” Jake whispered into the phone. “I think I hear her. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You tell her how much we love her.”
“I will.” Jake’s voice was quiet. “I will.”
Peter hung up the phone and sat back against the creaking leather chair. After a long moment, he closed his eyes on the dark room and the heavy silence.
Chapter 39
Last Wish
Amy walked behind Peter as he cleared the dinner dishes into the garbage can and loaded the dishwasher. He felt her warm palm on his shoulder, and as he slipped the last dish into place. She touched his hand.
“How are you, my brother? I’m worried about you.”
“Please don’t be. I’m okay, sis.”
“I know you, Peter. This is been incredibly difficult. It all happened like lightning. I mean, I know you weren’t married to Tara, but she was Madeline’s mother, Amanda’s sister. You’ve suffered such a great loss.”
Peter glanced up at Amy, her look of deep concern transparent. He touched her chin and set the dishwasher, then closed the door. “Amy, I won’t lie and say it hasn’t been hard. It has been. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to get through it all. But I know that even though I never gave Tara what she really wanted, she understood. So even I, in the end, finally made peace with myself.”
“With yourself?” Amy crossed her arms and leaned against the kitchen island, watching him.
Peter pulled the garbage bag out of the bin and yanked the tie to close the bag with a knot. He set the bag aside and pulled out the coffee machine, opened the cabinet, and took down a bag of coffee beans. His hand shook as he poured them in the grinder.
Amy reached over and tugged on his plaid shirt. “What did you mean just now when you said, ‘even I’?”
Peter smiled a little grimly. “You know I always felt guilty.”
“For not being in love with Tara?”
Peter nodded as he punched the grinder, and the blade whirled.
“Honey, you can’t help who you do or do not fall in love with. You know that. It’s out of your control.”
“I know. I really do. But I felt obliged to take care of her because of it.”
“You took care of Madeline, as was your duty as well as your greatest joy. You’ve always been perfectly clear on that. The fact that you weren’t in love with Tara, or that she had cancer, or that she died—all those things—you weren’t responsible for any of it. Peter, you have to take responsibility of your own life now. Soon Madeline will be married and gone, and you’ll be on your own. When are you going to start thinking about yourself? About what makes you happy?”
Peter laughed quietly to himself. “You know, that’s what Tara said right before she died.”
“Tell me.” Amy moved closer and leaned her hip against the counter as Peter reached around her to the fill the coffee machine from the faucet.
“We knew it was almost over. She was so weak that morning, hardly able to speak. When I went in to check on her, she tapped her fingers on the bed so I’d sit down.” Peter took his time speaking. He selected his words carefully as the coffeemaker hissed quietly between them. “Her hand was so cold. I pulled the covers up over her and asked if she needed anything, but she shook her head and gestured for me to lean in close. Her voice was so weak. Her eyes filled with tears, and she squeezed my hand as she spoke.”
“What did she say?” Amy put a hand softly on Peter’s arm.
“She said—” His voice choked. “She said she wanted to go. That she was ready. She said she was so grateful she had gotten to finish her job raising Madeline, and she knew now that Madeline w
ould be fine. She had only one concern left, she said. Me.”
“Oh, God.” Amy wiped a tear with the back of her hand.
“Me,” he repeated quietly and nodded. He coughed hoarsely into his fist. “She said that I’d been wonderful to her. That she couldn’t have asked for a better friend and companion or father to our beautiful daughter. She told me she loved me.” He paused to touch the leather band of his watch, and after a moment he raised his voice. “But, she said, she was worried I wasn’t taking care of myself. When I told her I’d just been to the doctor and everything was fine, she tried to smile—you know that smile she got when she thought she knew more about you than you did?” He made an effort to laugh. “God, Amy! I miss that smile. She took my hand in hers, and that was when she asked me to do something for her.”
“What, honey?”
Peter closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them his gaze was far off.
Amy waited patiently.
“She asked me to go find Maddy.”
Amy covered her mouth with a gasp.
Peter glanced at her and nodded. “Yes. She said that I belonged with Maddy and Maddy belonged with me. She said she had always known it in her heart but never wanted to accept it. She—she apologized for all the years that she had kept us apart, and she made me promise I’d reach out to Maddy when she was gone and try to find my happiness.”
“Peter, sweetie.” Amy put her arms around him and hugged him tightly to her. “So many people go through illness and pain alone, but you were there for Tara the whole way, all those years. You never abandoned her.”
He nodded numbly. “I did love her. I did, I swear, I did. I told her that having Madeline was the greatest gift I could ever receive, and I would always cherish her for that. We cried a bit, and she reached up to wipe my face. I gave her a kiss and told her to rest. When I reached over and pulled her sheet up around her, I noticed she was trembling. She never let go of my hand. But she smiled as she passed—and that’s my last memory of Tara.”
“Peter, my brother.” Amy rested her head on his shoulder and hugged him. He felt her tears through the plaid flannel of his shirt, and his own tears ran down his cheeks into Amy’s hair. They stood still for a long moment, close in each other’s arms. Eventually, he shifted his face, and he noticed the gray hairs among the blonde on her low, resting head.
Chapter 40
Entertaining
The late afternoon August sunset streamed across the green lawn to the patio where Peter bent over the barbeque with a wire brush, working as well as he could for the pain in his knuckles.
It had been a long time since Peter had entertained in his home. Jake and Amanda invited him and his leggy, eighteen-year-old Madeline frequently to dinner at their familiar house with the classical woodwork and a fire always burning in the big stone fireplace. Madeline drove them occasionally to Chatham to see Amy and Lance, who had been living with teenaged Victoria and Matthew in the old Michaels place ever since Sheila passed.
Peter loosened his neck as it came back to him now—Madeline’s terrible grief the night of Tara’s final diagnosis, and the heartbreaking pain returning to her beautiful almond eyes. There had been the secret relief between Peter and Tara that Madeline had been able to enjoy her high school graduation and was starting college. He recalled Madeline’s dimple under her tears as he had read Tara’s favorite Henry Van Dyke poem over the shining coffin on that summer morning, Madeline’s delicate hand in his as they had stood by Tara’s grave and together thrown their roses down onto the heap of the others.
Peter looked up across the patio over the barbeque, where he had lit the coals and was fitting the grill back into place. The coals were almost ready. Thankfully, the heat had made this a good day. His arthritis was getting worse, and he missed being active. When Madeline’s friends had invited her to join them in the Berkshires, he had encouraged her to go. So much of her innocent young life had been lost to grieving. She needed to believe in the future.
Before she had left, Madeline had strictly forbidden Peter to drive. “You know your knees make it difficult.” She had attempted to take Tara’s bossy tone, but he had seen the pleading in her young eyes.
“All right, sweetheart.” Peter had patted her hands, recognizing Richard’s gesture, even as he did it. “I’ve invited Amy and Lance and Jake and Amanda to watch the Sox game on Saturday.”
Now he stretched his arms over his head in the August sunset. Just because he wasn’t driving didn’t mean he couldn’t sneak an extra beer or exert himself a little in front of Amanda as he worked the grill, both things his vigilant Madeline—with Peter’s quick eyes and Tara’s determination—would never allow.
He lifted the tray of chicken to the grill and glanced across the patio at Amanda with her hand on Amy’s arm, the sunset lighting their hair as they laughed, their heads close together. Amy, with her quick, light voice and greying blonde hair reminded Peter so much of Sheila it made his heart ache. Amanda had developed Tara’s characteristic dimple as she had gotten older, a crease that appeared and disappeared in one cheek. He looked over at Jake in conversation with Lance—he had aged well, maybe carrying an extra pound or two. Peter sighed.
As he laid the chicken on the grill over the hot coals, he heard Amanda drop her voice casually, and Peter paused to listen.
“Did he say yes?” Amanda took a sip of wine to hide her face.
“No, but we’re not giving up. You have to see him, Amanda. Sometimes he can hardly get out of his chair. Madeline tells me he doesn’t always take his meds.”
“He forgets?”
“He just doesn’t like to. They make him feel strange. He had a lot of pain one morning and took his pill, and when he finally woke up he had missed breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
“Did he tell the doctor?”
“The doctor says with the amount of pain he gets anything less won’t even touch the surface. It’s bad, honey. I mean—we look at him now, and he still looks great and strong, and he has his sense of humor like always. But when he’s suffering, it breaks my heart. He doesn’t want to be old.”
“Sixty-one isn’t old.” Amanda glanced quickly at Peter by the grill. His hair was still full and wavy, slightly long for his age but distinguished with white highlights.
“It’s the arthritis with the strain of caring for Tara, losing so much sleep over Madeline. All I want is for him to move back home to Chatham—to be with us.” Amy shook her head. “He’s so stubborn. I can’t stop worrying. Madeline will be going away to college soon, and I don’t want him to stay here in Boston alone. You and Jake made room for Peter years ago, but you’ve got the grandchildren now. He’s my big brother. I want to take care of him.”
“And you shall. Just give him time. I don’t have to tell you, when he gets something in his head—”
“So pigheaded!”
They glanced into each other’s eyes and laughed.
Peter smiled and shook his head as Jake leaned over his shoulder to poke the chicken. “They totally think I can’t hear them.” Peter stabbed a piece and turned it.
“Yeah, I heard.” Jake caught Peter’s eye and laughed. Jake looked at Amanda and a small smile crossed his face as he watched her laughing with Amy and Lance, light wrinkles radiating from the corners of her eyes. Peter followed his gaze and touched Jake’s arm. Jake turned to Peter and smiled. They stood quietly for a moment as Peter lifted and rotated the chicken one piece at a time.
“So are you going to move in with them?” Jake asked, his beer to his mouth. “I know retirement hasn’t been easy, and now Madeline’s applying to colleges.”
“I don’t want to.” Peter’s voice was strained.
Jake scratched his face with his beer bottle and raised his eyebrows. “Can’t you get one of those clap-on thingamajigs for when you can’t get up from bed or something? I mean you’ve always been kind of a
wimp.”
“Shut up!” Peter flicked the basting brush at him. “Don’t make me steal your wife and teach you how real men age.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Peter smiled as he lowered the cover of the grill. “Can I tell you something, Jake? Madeline has decided on pre-med for her degree. She’s looking into universities right now.”
“My best friend’s daughter is going be a doctor!”
“Did I tell you where the university of the week is?”
“Boston?”
“She’s going to Colorado.”
Jake nodded, and then his eyes widened. “As in, Denver?”
“As in.” Peter checked the chicken and took a sip of beer. “Jake, I told you what Tara told me right?”
“I know where this is going my friend. After all these years, you still haven’t let go,” Jake said as he watched Peter lift the hood and move the chicken around.
Peter’s eyes were shadowed with sorrow. “There’s nothing more I can do for Tara, she’s gone. You know that. Grief takes its own time. I don’t want Madeline thinking she has to stick around here taking care of her crippled dad. I certainly don’t want to move in with Amy and Lance to be fussed over like an old man.” He raised his eyes to meet Jake’s. “Life flashes by so quickly.”
Jake lowered his beer from his mouth, and after a long moment he nodded. “Then go, brother.”
Later they all sat around the teak patio table in the warm summer twilight, eating by the light of citronella torches. Amy had brought with her a picnic tablecloth of Sheila’s, and Peter smiled at the sight of yet another barbeque served over the familiar designs.
Jake passed a bottle of white wine. “Hey babe, Robby is three right?”
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