by Leddy Harper
Normally, she’d smile and take all the credit for whatever meal she’d transferred from the freezer to the table, but this time, she didn’t. Rather than say anything, she sat there, fork in hand, food untouched on the plate in front of her, and stared across the table at me. Just stared. With a grin lazily tugging on her lips, and my heart beating with so much gusto I could hear it echo in my ears.
“Everything all right?” I asked with caution, worried about her reaction.
“Yeah. Everything’s great.”
“You’re kinda making me worried with the way you’re staring at me instead of eating. Like maybe your fork is going to haphazardly land in my chest instead of your chicken.”
“You clearly know how to cook. Not just crap, either, but real food. Good food. You can do it without a cookbook or recipe, and you don’t have to stand in the kitchen to make sure you don’t mess it up. So how come every night when you eat the shit I’ve fed you, you tell me how good it is? You and I both know it’s not amazing like you claim.”
Slowly, I set my fork down on the side of the plate and used a napkin to wipe my mouth. “I’ve never had anyone cook me dinner…not like this. I mean, I used to eat at your house when I was younger, but your mom didn’t cook specifically for me, she fixed food for everyone. And my mom…well, she worked a lot. So when she wasn’t home, the delivery guy fed me, and when she was home, we ate reheated takeout.”
The infectious grin fell from her expression, and her eyes turned soft with concern.
“Don’t feel bad for me. Most kids used to beg their parents for pizza or fast food. Me? I got that shit shoved in my direction without even asking for it. I was in heaven. In case you’ve forgotten, I wasn’t some sad, lonely child. I wasn’t neglected. I had your family, and got to enjoy plenty of meals around a bunch of people sitting at the same table every week.”
“Yeah…I don’t think my mom ever had food delivered to the house. And if we had fast food, she was probably sick and couldn’t cook—although…” She tapped her chin and stared above my head. “There was at least one child at home who was old enough to make dinner if she couldn’t.”
“You’ll never hear me complain. That woman fed me some of the best meals of my life. I used to tell Matt I needed to find a woman who knew how to make the same stuff your mom did, because I’d marry her and never let her go.” I laughed beneath my breath and shook my head. “He told me she made up every recipe, and they were secret, that she would never tell anyone how to make them. So I said I’d marry her and be his stepdaddy, and he’d have to call me Father Dearest.”
We both shared a laugh, followed by brief silence while we took bites of our food. “Who cooked for you in college when you lived with Matt?”
I winked and said, “Take a wild guess.”
She pondered it for a moment before her lips tightened with mirth. “My mom?”
“Yup. She used to bring us pre-prepped meals for the week. All we had to do was heat them up.”
“Oh my God, you two were so spoiled.”
“I wasn’t complaining.” I shrugged while chewing another bite. “But all that changed when Matt started to date Christine. Your mom said it was time to grow up—I’m pretty sure those were her exact words when we went over there to collect our weekly meals, and she handed us each brand-new frying pans. Somehow, Matt convinced Christine to come over and she took over duties as head chef for at least a few nights out of the week. Then they got married and moved out, and I had to finally learn to do something for myself.”
“Well, it’s amazing. The food, I mean. This food.” She snickered before shoving a forkful of rice into her mouth, and then swallowed it down with some water. “But at least we know one thing…our marriage was doomed from the start. You want a wife who can cook like my mom, and it’s evident I can’t make anything that doesn’t come out of a box with microwave instructions.”
“Janelle…” I waited until I had her full attention, and then said, “Regardless, if it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or Hamburger Helper, I appreciate the time you spent to make it for me. So believe me when I tell you it’s amazing.”
She fluttered her eyes and went back to her plate.
She didn’t believe me, but she didn’t have to.
We joked while we finished eating, but she seemed quieter than normal. Part of me wondered if it had to do with her phone call, but I wasn’t about to ask. I didn’t care to know anything pertaining to that prick. Granted, I didn’t want her to stay quiet, but if it was between that or listening to her talk about the loser, I’d take her silence in a heartbeat. I figured if it got too bad, I’d give her a book and ask her to read it out loud—maybe a cookbook, but only if she didn’t find that offensive.
Though, while washing the dishes, I realized something was wrong. When I asked her about it, she just said she was tired, but I knew it had to have been more than that. Her eyes were distant and she appeared worn out, exhausted. So I sent her to bed and finished cleaning the kitchen.
That night, I realized how lonely the house was without her. Even though we didn’t always spend the evenings together, at least we were both home bustling around. Sometimes we watched TV, while other times, I watched it and she played on her phone—or vice versa. There had even been a couple nights we weren’t in the same room, but I could hear her from across the house, and I was sure she could hear me, both of us knowing the other was within reach.
But this night, it was silent.
Eerily so.
I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like with her gone.
Forever.
And I didn’t like how that made me feel.
13
Janelle
My phone buzzed on the table next to me, but I couldn’t answer it. My head pounded and any amount of light only made it worse. Even the slightest movement exasperated my pain. And to add to that, my throat felt like it was on fire and punished me every time I swallowed. So I not only couldn’t answer the phone, I had no desire to. It could’ve been the Pope himself calling, and I wouldn’t have cared—unless he called with a magic prayer to heal me. That I would’ve gotten out of bed for. But nothing less.
I had no sense of time, no idea as to how many days I’d stayed curled up on the mattress, burrowed deep beneath the covers. It could’ve been a month for all I knew. I’d briefly wake up, immediately remember how much pain I was in, and then surrender to sleep once more. That’s where I wanted to stay—in the unconsciousness where I didn’t hurt and things were good. It’s where I was able to live in sheer bliss with Holden forever and ever.
“Janelle,” a soft voice whispered, sounding very much like an angel coming to take me away. This is it, I thought to myself, I must’ve died, and now I’m going to heaven. The angel touched my forehead and said, “Come on, Janelle. You need to get up. We have to take you to the doctor’s office.”
I groaned and rolled over, and that’s when I knew I wasn’t dead, nor was I on my way to the pearly gates in the sky. I cracked my eyes open enough to see Christine perched on the side of my bed. I tried to speak, tried to ask her why she was here, but all that came out was a sob followed by a hiccup of pure agony caused by the sob.
“Holden called me because he got worried. You haven’t answered any of his calls. Now I can see why he was concerned. You’re burning up, Janelle. We need to get you to a doctor.”
Even the thought of getting out of bed was painful. I’d reached the point of desperation where I began to imagine taking an ice cream scooper to my tonsils and digging them out. I also imagined setting my bed on fire, because it was the only thing I could come up with that would keep me warm. As far as curing the headache, my only option at that point was to crack my skull open to allow room for the swelling.
Christine was right—I needed a doctor. A real one.
It wasn’t normal to contemplate self-induced brain surgery to relieve a headache.
With her help, I managed to get up, dressed, and in
her car. Although, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out I was unconscious most of that time. I certainly couldn’t recall the drive to the clinic or somehow making it inside. I was shivering under my covers one minute, and sitting in the waiting room of a very noisy clinic the next—still shivering, except without a blanket, and even more miserable than I’d been at home.
Christine sat in a chair next to me, her foot bouncing and her fingers twisting in her lap. She seemed jittery and anxious, and I wasn’t sure why. The only thing I knew was when I focused on her, I felt a little bit better. Just enough to hold a conversation without crying.
“What’s wrong?” My voice cracked and the words scratched their way out.
She turned to me with a knitted brow and darkened eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t sit still, like this is the last place on Earth you want to be. Which I totally get, by the way. I don’t particularly care to be here, either. It’s like an open invitation to get sick with all the germs just hanging out, waiting for a host to grab onto.” As if my head and throat weren’t bad enough, I was about to tack on a weak stomach. “If you have other things to do, you’re more than welcome to leave and take care of them. I can just wait when I’m done for you to pick me up, or I’ll call my mom to come get me. Or I could just curl up in the morgue and take a nap there…and hope the Grim Reaper takes pity on me and claims my spirit.”
The worry lining her face began to lessen and morph into more of a sympathetic concern. “Hush. It’s a clinic, not a hospital. There’s no morgue here for you to go die in. You’ll live, I promise.” She paused and inhaled deeply. “And I don’t have anything else to do. It’s not that at all. I just don’t like doctors’ offices. They make me nervous…remind me of horribly sad moments in my life. It’s rather depressing.”
I reached over the armrest and took her hand in mine. “You’re right. This place is horrible. You can totally take me back home now and let me sleep this plague off. I feel very confident that it’ll kill me shortly, so there won’t be much suffering.”
“We’re not going anywhere. Hopefully, they’ll call you back soon.”
The more I sat there with my hand in hers, watching her fidget, I couldn’t help but think about her reason for disliking clinics. And not believing it for one second. There was something she wasn’t telling me, something she kept to herself, and I felt compelled to get her to open up to me.
“No one likes to see the doctor, Christine. But unless it’s a child afraid to get a shot, no one freaks out—especially if they aren’t the one waiting to be seen. So really, what’s going on?” I couldn’t talk too loudly, but I knew she heard me.
She squeezed my hand and turned to offer me the saddest smile I’d ever seen her give. “It’s nothing you need to worry about. You’re sick, which is why we’re here, so let’s focus on that.”
“You wanna focus on me being sick?” Had I not felt like I was teetering on the edge of hell, I would’ve scoffed. “Okay, let’s do that. I have a fever, and I’m freezing cold. It’s probably hot outside, it’s summer, and I’m wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, yet I’m shivering and can’t get warm. My throat is on fire, and at some point in my sleep last night, I snacked on broken glass because even swallowing my spit hurts. And I’m pretty sure my brain is turning into mush because it’s swollen and has nowhere to go.”
She pressed the back of her hand to my forehead and apologized with a sympathetic glance.
“There…we’ve focused on me. Now it’s time for you to talk.”
“It’s nothing, Janelle. Really. I’ll be okay. This isn’t the first time I’ve been here and it won’t be the last, so there’s no point in obsessing over it. Let’s just worry about getting you well so we can get you home and in bed.”
I curled into the uncomfortable seat and closed my eyes, but not before uttering, “That’s okay. I’ll just ask Matthew. I’m sure he’ll tell me what’s going on.”
My eyes may have been closed, but I could still hear her strangled breathing, as if I’d pushed her to the verge of breaking, and as much as I hated it, I knew she needed to talk. Christine and I had always been close ever since she first started dating my brother. We may not have been best friends or even spoken all the time, but we always seemed to have the kind of relationship that time couldn’t affect. No matter how long we went without talking, as soon as we picked up the phone, it was like it’d been no time at all. So to know she suffered from something and I didn’t know about it, even though I’d been in town for over a month and had seen her on many occasions, I couldn’t help but feel crushed that she didn’t feel like she could confide in me.
Unless…it had to do with Matthew.
My eyes snapped open in fear. I couldn’t help but think about Holden saying my family needed me. I thought it had to do with Stacey, but as I sat here with Christine, my gut twisted, and I couldn’t ignore the panic settling into my chest. “Is…is my brother okay?”
She turned to face me, sorrow deep in her eyes. “Yeah, he’s okay.”
“But whatever your issue is has to do with him, doesn’t it?”
With a deep breath, she shifted in her seat like I had and curled into it while facing me, making our conversation as private as possible while being in the middle of a waiting room. “Do you really want to know? You want me to tell you here, at the doctor’s office instead of at home?”
Home—or hell, even in the car when we leave here—would’ve probably made more sense. The most sense. But I couldn’t wait, not now that I knew there was an issue, and whatever it was, I realized it had to have been serious with the way she looked at me.
“If you don’t want to tell me, don’t. If you want to, but not here, then wait. You have me really worried, I can’t lie about that. But I understand if you don’t want to tell me now. Just know that I’m always here for you. Always, Christine. For you and Matt. Just because I’m younger, not in the same place in life that you two are, and haven’t been around much over the years, doesn’t mean I don’t care or want to know what’s going on with my family. At the end of the day, you’re my sister-in-law. He’s my brother. And whatever you’re going through affects me, too.”
Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, but they didn’t fall. Instead, she took a moment to gather herself before taking my hand again in hers. “We got pregnant a couple of years ago. After a few months of trying, the test had a plus sign, and we were beyond excited. So we told my parents, your parents, and our close friends, because even though they say to not tell anyone, we couldn’t keep it a secret.”
My stomach flipped and knotted, knowing her next words even though I’d never heard them.
“We made it to nine weeks.”
“Oh my God, Christine. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t fight back the tears filling my eyes, which in turn made my head pound harder. But I pushed it away because Christine was more important.
“This is why I didn’t want to say it here. There’s no need to cry, honey. We’re okay. We’ve made it through each and every time.”
The world stopped spinning. “What do you mean…each and every time? How many times?”
“Enough to know there’s something wrong.”
“Which is…?”
She wiped away the errant tear from my face. “Doctors have no idea. All the tests have come back inconclusive. No one knows why my body rejects pregnancies. But don’t say anything to anyone, please. We’ve never told your sisters about any of it, even though I wouldn’t be surprised if they knew something. Your parents know about the first two, and I’m pretty sure Holden knows about the third. But since then, Matt and I haven’t said anything to anyone—not when we’ve found out about being pregnant, and not after we’ve lost it. We’ve dealt with this together. We’ve made it this far, and I know we’ll make it all the way.”
Had I not been sick and practically knocking on death’s door, I would’ve probably come up with something better to say. But unfortunately for me, I didn’t have
that luxury. So I squeezed her hand and gave her all I had. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you guys. And I hate that there’s nothing I can do. I just hope you and my brother know I’m here for you any way you need me, anytime you need me, no matter where I am.”
“We know.” A single tear tracked down her cheek before falling from her chin. “We’ll be okay, though. There’s no reason to worry. But right now, we need to focus on getting you well. And I’d like to point out something huge—Holden called me to go check on you. You may not see the importance of that, but I do. And I’m going to tell you.”
I loved how she effortlessly switched gears, as if she hadn’t just dropped a bomb the size of the Atlantic into my lap.
“You may or may not know, but he couldn’t leave the office today because of meetings. I guess he tried to call you several times to see how you were feeling because you went to bed early last night, and he didn’t hear a peep from you. Then when you weren’t answering the phone today, he got concerned.” She lifted one eyebrow and tilted her head, giving me feigned attitude. “I doubt basic friends would do that, but I’m sure you already know that by now. And who does he call to check on you? Me…knowing full well if it was as bad as he thought, I’d have to take you to the doctor. And he knows I avoid this place like the plague. And that means something. Something you can’t deny.”
“Yeah, it means he needs me to get better so I can continue making his dinners and doing his grocery shopping.” Even as those words came out of my mouth, I knew they weren’t true. They didn’t even taste right on my tongue. But I wasn’t about to tell her that. Even if Holden fell at my feet right now and confessed his undying love, I still wouldn’t tell her.
Probably because if that did happen, it would be a sure sign of my untimely death. And if I were no longer walking the earth, I couldn’t tell her, even if I wanted to…for obvious reasons. Just knowing I even entertained these thoughts troubled me and made me even more concerned over whatever horrible disease I’d contracted. Thinking of Holden falling in love with me and all the reasons I couldn’t tell Christine had me worried this wasn’t some normal illness, and there was a real chance I wouldn’t make it to see the next day.