Briar Hill Road

by Holly Jacobs

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “Are you mad that I said we’d move in there? Her house has always felt like our real home.”

  “No, I’m not mad.” And that was the biggest lie he’d ever told Hayden.

  He was furious. Not about the move. She was right, that house had been home since he and his mom moved there. It’s still where they all went to share holidays. And Livie probably spent as much time there as she did here.

  No, moving to his mom’s wasn’t it. He was furious that his mom was sick, that there was nothing that could be done, that she was going to die.

  “I just need some time, Hayden,” he said again. “You go do what you need to. We’ll both take tonight, then tomorrow we’ll tell Livie and do everything else we need to do.”

  She looked unsure, but leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Okay. I’ll take my cell. Call if you need me.”

  “I won’t need you.” She flinched and looked hurt by the words, so he tried to soften them. “That’s not what I meant. I love you. We’ll get through this.”

  He watched her turn and leave, concern for him still evident in her last glance.

  “I love you,” she said softly, leaving the room before he could respond.

  Hayden remembered that day. They’d been so happy, so united. Then Kathleen broke her news.

  Before she’d left for the nursing home, Hayden willed Brian to call her back, to tell her he loved her. But he didn’t call her, so she kept on walking. There had been a distance between them that had never been there before. Not even during the years he’d lived in California.

  She’d thought they’d bridge that distance once Brian had taken some time to adjust. But they hadn’t.

  She realized that was when they’d taken a first step away from each other, and it felt as if they’d been taking more steps since.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brian sat in the too-quiet room with nothing to do but think and listen to the occasional hiss of the air mattress as his mother slept. It covered the regular mattress and blew air in and out, inflating, deflating in such a way that it helped prevent bed sores. The noise used to bother him, but he’d grown accustomed to it and found it comforting now.

  He couldn’t help but marvel over how things that at first seemed so shocking, gradually became everyday. Normal. Acceptable even.

  But he couldn’t get used to the distance between himself and Hayden. It grew wider daily, but he didn’t know how to make things right.

  He missed her.

  He thought of the anniversary trip they’d been planning. And thought that when this was over, he’d take her somewhere special.

  And that thought led to a wash of guilt. He felt as if he’d just wished his mother dead, and he didn’t.

  His mom awoke with a start. She looked up and smiled. “Brian?”

  “I’m here, Mom.”

  She started to move her hand, and he instinctually reached for it, holding it. “I’m here,” he repeated.

  She shut her eyes, and he didn’t think she was going to answer him, but finally, eyes still shut, she murmured, “It won’t be long now”

  Her saying that, coming on the heels of his just thinking that, made him almost queasy. “Don’t talk like that.”

  His mother, once so vibrant, had faded, much like her bright red hair had softened to a dull gray. She was muted. She was still her, still his mother, still Kathleen Conway, but not the same. Each day she grew more quiet, pulled back from them a little. Even now, she laughed, but it was a shallow, wheezy sound, not the rich, deep filled gusto laugh she used to have.

  She opened her eyes, and their once vivid blue seemed almost gray, as well. “Bri, I’ve always told you the truth, and the truth is, I’m ready. We had a lovely fall. That trip to the lake, Thanksgiving. We took what time I had left and we enjoyed it. But now I’m tired of fighting this. I’m tired of hurting—”

  “We can get you more medicine. I’ll call Hayden and she can give you something, then we’ll call Marti and she can get you something even stronger.”

  “Shh, Bri. There’s no amount of medicine to fix this. I’m just so tired. I’m ready to go. And I’m lucky I can still say what needs to be said before I leave.”

  “Mom.” His throat constricted, cutting off any further words.

  “Brian, you’ve been my joy. I’m so proud of you, of the man you’ve become.”

  She reached up, her face grimacing with the concentration it took to make just that one, slight move. But she did it, and caressed his face with a cold hand. So cold.

  As her hand slid back to her chest, he pulled another cover up, hoping to warm her.

  “Brian, you, Hayden and Olivia, you’ve meant the world to me. The only regret I have is leaving all of you. But I know you’ll be fine, as long as you have each other. That’s my comfort.”

  “Mom …”

  “You’ll be fine, Bri. I just wanted to tell you I love you. Look at the work you’ve done, all the children whose lives are better because of you. No mother could have asked for a better son.”

  Brian, who kept everything inside—his pain, his regrets—and just got on with life, felt feelings he couldn’t sort out. The emotions threatened to break through his tightly held control. He waited a moment, until he’d push it all back, then said, “I love you, too, Mom. No one …”

  He paused, feeling strangled and wondering how he could say the words he needed to say, knowing her time would end too soon.

  “Mom, no son could have had a better mother.”

  She blinked as if she might cry, but she’d become so dehydrated as she stopped eating and hadn’t drunk more than a sip of water at a time for days, there was no moisture to spare for tears.

  “Aren’t we a pair?” She laughed again, this time even softer than before.

  He couldn’t find anything to say to that, but he didn’t need to. His mother had closed her eyes.

  He began to think she’d dozed off, but then she spoke, her voice a mere whisper. “Do you remember the time you were lost in the store, and I couldn’t find you? But then you called my name, Mama, over and over. Sure that I would come. Sure that I would find you.”

  “That security guard was trying to take me back to his office. But you’d told me to never go with a stranger.”

  “You’re right, I did. And that’s why it’s okay for me to go. You won’t be with strangers. You have Hayden and Livie. Family. You’ll be okay.” She opened her eyes then, and looked at him. “You’ll be fine.”

  She shut her eyes again. This time her shallow breathing evened out as she fell back to sleep. This was the most she’d talked in days, and Brian knew she’d exhausted herself.

  He took her cold hand in his and she smiled in her sleep.

  He sat like that for a long time, just holding her hand and thinking. Wondering just what was going to happen between him and Hayden when his mother was gone.

  Hayden, who’d always seemed to have the answers, didn’t seem to have any this time.

  Would they be able to piece themselves back together?

  Hayden stood in the doorway, looking into Kathleen’s room. Brian sat by the side of her bed, just holding her hand as she slept.

  She turned and walked down the hall, leaving him to his goodbye.

  Livie came out of her room and followed Hayden into the kitchen. “It won’t be long now, will it, Mom?”

  Hayden turned and saw her daughter waiting for an answer. The fact that Livie trusted her to tell the truth was evident on her face. Hayden had always tried to be honest. Sex talks, Santa-confessions … she always answered as truthfully as she could. She’d never held anything back, and couldn’t do anything less this time.

  So she nodded. “Not long at all. Later, when your dad is done, you can go in and say goodbye, if you want.” But worrying that this was too much, she hugged her daughter. “You don’t have to. You really don’t need to say the words. Your grandmother knows—”

  Livie hugge
d her. “I know, Mom. Nana knows I love her, and if I never had a chance to say it again, she’d still know. But I do have a chance, and it might hurt to say the words, but I know someday I’ll be glad I did. I want her to know how much she’s meant to me, how much she’ll still continue to mean to me.”

  Hayden stroked Livie’s hair, the wild red curls so like Kathleen’s once were. “She’s so proud of you, you know. So are your father and I. This has been so hard, and you’ve been so understanding. I know I haven’t been there for you as much as I should have. I’ll try and make it up to you when this …” Hayden hesitated, then forced herself to finish. “When this is all over.”

  Livie wrapped herself around Hayden as she’d done as a child. “There’s nothing to make up. You’re doing fine. I’m doing fine.”

  Marti knocked on the kitchen’s screen door once, then let herself in. “Sorry to interrupt.”

  Livie unwound herself from Hayden, then hugged the hospice worker. Over the last few weeks, Marti’s no-nonsense ways had become a balm, soothing all of them.

  “No problem, Marti. I’m going to the library for a while, but I’ll have my cell. Later, when Nana’s rested, I’ll go talk to her. But you call if …” Livie left the sentence hanging, but Hayden knew she meant if the time arrives.

  She nodded her agreement and Livie kissed her cheek then left them.

  “She’ll be fine,” Marti said, answering Hayden’s unasked question.

  “I hope so.”

  Marti gave her an assessing look. “To be honest, it’s you I’m worried about.”

  “I’m fine.” The answer had become so standard, that she didn’t even think about it before she uttered the two words.

  I’m fine.

  She said it to Marti, to Livie, to Brian. She said it to Kathleen, to friends and coworkers who called.

  She kept thinking that if she said it often enough, maybe she’d believe it.

  Maybe she’d believe that the hole that was growing in her heart would someday heal over.

  “You haven’t slept for days.” That was Marti, concentrating on the practical again. She knew she couldn’t fix a broken heart, but sleep she could advocate.

  Hayden shook her head. “I catnap.”

  “It’s not the same. Let me stay tonight, you and Brian could both use a night off.”

  “We’ll have plenty of nights off—too many nights off, a lifetime of them—soon enough.”

  “Hayden, I’m your friend.”

  “Then be a friend, Marti, and let me handle this in my own way. Did I ever tell you about the time Bri and I both caught the mumps?”

  Marti just shook her head no.

  “It was before I lived here, but Kathleen had known there would be no comfort from my mom, so she called and got permission for me to stay here. She spent days running from one of us to the other. As we felt better, she played countless games of Monopoly and Yahtzee. She made all our favorite foods. Don’t you see, I wasn’t her daughter, wasn’t her responsibility, and she set her whole life aside to take care of me. Since that first day I came here, she’s taken care of me. How can I do any less?”

  “Just one night off,” Marti protested. “She’d want you to.”

  “I can’t. Like I said, there will be too many nights off soon enough.” Hayden smiled at Marti. “I could use all the friendly support I have, though.”

  “You know you’ve got that.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hayden forced herself into business mode. Falling back on her nursing training had been her salvation. She knew the drill, the questions to ask, the answers to have ready. It was a balm.

  “I’ve got all her stats from overnight.” She reached into her pocket and retrieved the notebook she’d been writing everything down on. “The new Fentanyl dosage seems to be working. I only gave her three doses of morphine for breakthrough pain in the last twenty-four hours. But her urine output has gone down even more. I could use some more sponges to moisten her mouth. It’s so dry it’s sore. And we’ll definitely need more pads. And …”

  She fell into the rhythm of her report, strangely comforted. Medicine was cold hard facts. Coping with those facts was so much easier than acknowledging what they meant—it wouldn’t be long now.

  Like she said to Marti, she’d sleep after. But for now, she was going to continue to do all she could to be sure that Kathleen’s passing was as easy as possible. And she was going to be sure that she kept her promise … Kathleen wouldn’t die alone. She’d die at home, surrounded by her family.

  That was the last gift Hayden could give her.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hayden was dreaming. She was sleeping so lightly, that she knew it was a dream. Actually, it was more of a memory, tied lightly around a dream.

  She was ten and there was a buddy lunch at school. Everyone in her class buzzed about it for a week, about what their parents, or their grandparents, their friends or relatives, were bringing for them for lunch.

  Hayden hadn’t bothered asking. She’d packed her own lunch just as she did every morning. She took her same seat in the cafeteria, trying not to notice how her normal tablemates had spread out over the cafeteria, their buddies next to them. But trying didn’t guarantee success, and this was an instance where she didn’t even come close. She not only noticed, but felt this queasiness in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to eat her sandwich, but she unwrapped it and took a defiant bite anyway. She ate that sandwich because as much as she didn’t want to eat it, she didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her even more.

  Swallowing the bite proved difficult, and it had nothing to do with the fact that it was dry peanut butter. She took a sip from her Thermos of water. Her mother hadn’t shopped in a while and the only other thing to drink in the house was beer.

  “Hayden?”

  She’d looked up and there had been Brian, a huge pizza box in hand. “Mom had to work, but she wrote Ms. Murray and they said I could get out of class and be your buddy. So here I am.”

  When she didn’t say anything, Brian had continued, “Mom ordered the pizza. Lots of cheese, just the way you like it.”

  He’d reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out two cans of soda. “They’re not cold.”

  Lunch unloaded, he’d taken the seat next to her. “Come on, have a slice.”

  She took one from him, but didn’t eat it, instead just held it. “How’d you know?”

  “I ride the same bus as you. I may be up in the high school now, but I still hear things.” He’d looked embarrassed, but he would never admit it. “Come on, kid. It’s no big deal. I got out of class to come here. And Miss Jennings said I was sweet, which means she’ll give me a good grade for class participation today, even though I skipped out on most of the class.”

  Hayden remembered laughing then as she pushed her meager sandwich back and took a bite of her pizza. It was the best lunch she’d ever had.

  Hayden snapped so quickly from dreaming to waking that she could almost taste the pizza. She’d never had a pizza that had come close to tasting that good. She lay there, lost in the past, but was pulled back to reality when she heard a rustling from the bed next to her.

  Kathleen had awoken.

  Kathleen had been still for so long, that the slightest movement was enough to wake Hayden up.

  Hayden got out of the recliner and hurried to the side of the bed. “Hey.”

  Almost every day, Kathleen seemed to shrink further in on herself. Sometimes when Hayden looked down at her, it almost hurt. Waking from the sweet dream to this harsh sight was one of those times, but she wouldn’t want Kathleen to know it, so she forced a smile.

  Kathleen looked up and offered a weak smile, then sighed. “You’re here.”

  “Of course I’m here. You’re never alone. One of us is always with you.”

  Nighttime had always been her favorite hospital shift, but here, with Kathleen, the silence could hang heavily over the room. Needing to fill the quiet with something, s
he said, “I was dreaming about when I was little. There was a buddy lunch at school and you had to work. I knew my mom wouldn’t come, but Bri did. You had a pizza delivered, and he showed up at the cafeteria with it. I loved him so much for that. You, too.”

  Kathleen nodded. “I’ve loved you since you walked into the house that first time. And I want to thank you.”

  Hayden hushed her. “There’s nothing to thank me for. As you’ve pointed out so many times, we’re family. This is what family does. Supports each other. You taught me that.”

  “I did a good job.” She laughed, but it was shallow and soft, as if the effort of it hurt.

  “A damned good job.” Without being asked, Hayden took one of the damp sponges and moistened Kathleen’s lips. “Do you think you could drink something?”

  Kathleen shook her head. It was a minute movement, but it was enough. “I’m not thirsty, or hungry. Just tired. So tired.”

  “Then you rest, Kathleen.”

  Marti had talked to all of them, telling them that sometimes patients need permission from those they love to let go. Hayden had been loath to say the words, but seeing Kathleen now, so small and wasted, she found the strength for them. “It’s okay to just rest, Kathleen. We’re all here. We’ll be with you.”

  Kathleen gave her hand a small squeeze. “I love you. Have always loved you like a daughter.”

  “I am your daughter, in every way that counts.” Hayden held on to the icy hand, wishing more than anything that she could change what would be the inevitable outcome. She wished her love for Kathleen could be enough to make her better.

  “You were always such a good girl. Life goes on, you know. It’s a circle. Right now there’s pain, but soon you’ll find joy again. I want you to remember me as I was, laughing and loving all of you.”

  “Kathleen, we couldn’t forget.” She stopped, unshed tears burning in her eyes.

  “Live life out loud. Make it big, make it noisy, and realize that what counts is love.”

  Hayden couldn’t think of a reply.

  Kathleen asked, “Will you hold my hand?”

  She’d been holding Kathleen’s hand, all along, but she reached down with her other hand, sandwiching Kathleen’s between hers. “I’ve got it.”