“What isn’t?” Justin quipped, then a moment later, shrugged and said, “Cancer.”
“I guessed that,” Lucas said. He’d done enough research in and around hospitals to know the signs of a body eating away at itself. “What kind?”
“Does it matter?”
“Humor me.”
Justin shrugged again and his jacket slid around on his body as if it had been made for a much bigger man. “Pancreatic.”
“Jesus.”
“Hey, don’t be blaspheming when I’m this close to being able to tell you if it pisses the Big Guy off or not.”
“Is everything a damn joke to you?”
“Hell yes,” Justin said and pushed himself to the edge of the sofa, leaning forward and bracing both hands on the gleaming apothecary-bench table in front of him. “Don’t you think it’s funny? All the shit I’ve gotten into and out of in my life and my own fricking pancreas kills me?” He shook his head. “What the hell is a pancreas anyway?” He held up one hand again. “Never mind. I know you can tell me and I really don’t give a rat’s ass. All I know for sure is, mine stinks.”
Scraping one hand across his face again, Lucas fought for air. He hadn’t wanted to see Justin. Hadn’t wanted to ever speak to him again.
But he also hadn’t wanted him dead.
Apparently, he just wasn’t going to get what he wanted.
“How long?” Lucas leaned forward, too, bracing his hands on his side of the coffee table. He couldn’t help glancing down and noting the difference in their hands. His own were callused and brown from the hours he’d spent outside this summer, doing some work on his house—and yes, trying to keep Mike out of it.
Justin’s hands were fine boned and fragile. The skin was stretched so tightly that Lucas was sure he could count every tendon and muscle. Then Justin’s hands trembled and Lucas had to look away, choking back the annoying—and unexpected—lump in his throat.
“How long have I got?” he asked. “Or how long have I known?”
“Either. Both.”
Justin sighed and cocked an ear toward the kitchen, where the sounds of cupboards opening and closing and water running assured him that Bridget was still busy. “I found out about eight months ago.”
“Eight months?” His twin brother received a death sentence nearly a year ago and he hadn’t known. Hadn’t felt it. Weren’t twins supposed to be linked? Psychically or spiritually? Shouldn’t he have felt Justin’s pain whether he wanted to or not?
But if he had, would he have paid attention? Wasn’t the truth that whenever he thought of Justin, he automatically shut his brain down and turned everything off? He hadn’t wanted to know about Justin. Had pretended, for four long years, that his brother didn’t even exist.
Lucas had written his twin off a long time ago. Was the fact that the man actually was preparing to disappear really that important?
Yes.
“You should have told me.”
“Right.” Justin flopped back against the couch, as if the strain of sitting upright had just been too much. He gave a bone-rattling sigh as he settled in, then added, “Because we’re so close. I should’ve called you right away and you would’ve come running.”
Lucas’s jaw tightened. “What happened between us wasn’t my doing.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” He sounded tired. So damn tired.
The rising sun filled the main room with warm golden light and Justin turned his face into it greedily. He smiled and closed his eyes, letting the warmth pouring through the window soak into his skin.
“Did you ever really watch a sunrise?” he asked idly, shifting the subject so quickly that Lucas just stared at him for a long second or two.
“What?”
He opened his eyes and turned to look at Lucas. “I have. A lot in the last few months. Sunrises and sunsets, and did you know, none of them are ever the same? Kind of like snowflakes, I guess, though we’ve only got the word of scientists for that one. No offense.”
A tea kettle whistled into the sudden stillness between them and they both knew that Bridget would be back in a moment or two. Lucas shot a look toward the kitchen, then turned his gaze back on his brother.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. To say.”
“Maybe you don’t have to say anything.”
“What do you want from me?”
He sighed. “I don’t want anything, Luke. Just a place to stay for a while, then Bree and I will go. We’ll head into the city and stay at the family apartment.”
The apartment that had stood empty for years. Ever since their parents had died. And they’d died because . . . Nope. He wasn’t going there. Not now anyway.
“What do your doctors say?”
“Who listens?”
“Damn it, Justin, you should.”
“Why? So they can stick me in a hospital room and jab me with needles?” he countered. “No, thanks.”
His words rattled around in Lucas’s brain like marbles at the bottom of an empty can. “Are you telling me you’re not being treated?”
“Yep.”
“Are you insane?”
Justin grinned halfheartedly. “Probably.”
“It’s still a bit chill in here,” Bridget said as she walked back into the room carrying a tray loaded with three steaming cups of tea and a plate of cookies. She set the tray down onto the table and then shot Lucas a look. “Will you start a fire in the hearth or will I?”
Justin grinned.
Lucas, still not sure what the hell was going to happen next, got up to build a fire.
“How long does it take to run some tests?” Mike shot a glare at the closed double doors and then looked back at her sisters.
“Too damn long,” Jo muttered and jumped up out of the uncomfortable green plastic chair. “And what’s Grace doing back there?”
“Sitting with Papa,” Sam answered and stood up to join her sisters. “She didn’t want to leave him and—” She shrugged.
“Right.” Mike took a deep breath and blew it out. She’d been at the hospital for a half hour already and she still didn’t know a damn thing.
Head pounding from that last furious conversation with Lucas, all she really wanted to do was go home and lie down in the dark. But if she went home, the house would be empty.
Papa wouldn’t be in the living room, falling asleep in his battered recliner.
Instead, he was here, hooked up to machines that blinked and hummed and ticked off the seconds of his life in some sort of macabre countdown.
“Can’t we do something?” she muttered.
“We can wait,” Sam said and held out one hand, looking from one of her sisters to the other. “Together.”
“Together,” Jo repeated with a nod and laid her hand on top of Sam’s. “But if we don’t get some answers soon, I say we find a doctor and let Mike kick his ass until he talks.”
“Finally,” Mike said, “a plan.” She dropped her hand on top of Jo’s.
With fear hovering in every corner, the smell of antiseptic stinging the air, the three of them stood, linked. As they always had.
The Marconi sisters.
Never alone.
“Good. You’re all here.” Grace pushed through the double doors behind them all of a sudden, and the heavy doors slapped angrily at the air before thudding to a stop.
“Of course we’re here,” Sam said.
“What’s wrong?” Jo demanded.
“Papa?” Mike almost squeaked the one word out.
“No, no,” Grace said quickly, reassuring them all with a faint smile. “Your father’s stable—for the moment. The doctors are still reading the tests and they’ve hooked him up to an electrosomething or other.”
“Okay, that’s good. I guess,” Jo said, shooting a glance at the door separating her from her father.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” Grace said and her calm blue eyes shifted from one of them to the other, each in turn.
“Just say it, Grace,” Jo urged.
“Fine, then.” The older woman took a deep, steadying breath and folded her hands together at her waist. “I think it’s time we called Jack and his mother.”
Mike glanced at her sisters, then shifted her gaze back to Grace. Blinking like a deer frozen by headlights, she heard herself ask, “Who’s Jack?”
Grace swallowed and winced a little, as if she were trying to choke down razor blades.
This couldn’t be good.
“Jack,” the older woman said calmly, “is your father’s son.”
12
“He’s Papa’s what?” Jo’s voice spiked and echoed off the mint-green walls of the waiting room.
Mike rocked back on her heels, stunned right down to her bones.
Papa had a son?
Stupidly, all she could think about was how many times she’d heard her father teasingly say, “I should have had boys.” Always, they’d laughed at it. Always, because Papa had never, ever, been less than proud of his daughters. Their whole lives, Papa had been there, teaching them what he would have taught sons—and taking special pleasure in the fact that his daughters were better at their jobs than most men would have been.
There’d never been one moment in Mike’s whole life when she’d thought that Papa felt regret about not having a son.
And why should he? a small voice inside whispered, he has a son.
A son none of them knew about.
“You’re telling us that Papa’s lied to us our whole lives?”
“No,” Grace said, “it wasn’t like that.”
“Yeah? Well, why is it that you know, and his children don’t?”
“He only told me a year ago,” the older woman countered as worry etched itself into her features. “And he—”
“A year ago?” Jo interrupted. “You’ve known for a year when we didn’t?”
Mike’s head pounded. She lifted one hand to rub at a spot between her eyebrows. No way was it going to help.
“Slow down, Grace,” Sam said quickly, then added, “And shut up, Jo.”
Jo’s mouth snapped closed, but Mike could have sworn she saw steam coming out of her sister’s ears.
Oh God.
“Henry didn’t want you to find out like this, but all in all,” Grace said, still keeping her fingers tightly locked together, “I think it’s only fair that Jack be here. That he have the chance to see his father just in case—”
Okay, that was harder to take than the notion of Papa having a son that no one knew about. The idea that Papa was going to die? No.
Unacceptable.
Mike shook her head. She couldn’t believe this. Had to be a mistake. Maybe Grace had misunderstood. Maybe Papa had told her something and she just made a mistake. Maybe . . . She spoke up fast, before Sam could say anything else. “This Jack. He’s Papa’s son? Really?”
“No, it’s impossible,” Jo snapped, “he wouldn’t have done something like that and never told us about it. Grace just has a wicked sense of humor.” She narrowed her gaze on the older woman. “Not to mention timing.”
Grace flushed right to the roots of her snow-white hair. But she didn’t back down under Jo’s withering stare. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “I know this is hard.”
Hard didn’t even come close to covering this situation. Mike’s ears were ringing and her heartbeat was suddenly so fast, she thought for sure her heart was going to jump out of her chest, race across the greenflecked linoleum, and head out into the sun-splashed parking lot.
Just as she wanted to.
Oh God.
She hadn’t changed so very much after all, had she? The first thing she thought of in a pinch was running away.
The difference being that now, she wanted to run—and wouldn’t.
“Girls,” Grace said, and any other time, Mike might have mentioned that they were all way too old for anyone but Papa to think of them as “girls.” But today, that seemed insignificant.
“I know you’re all upset right now, but calling Jack and his mother is the right thing to do.”
“The right thing to do?” Jo gaped at her, sucking in air and blowing it out again in a rush of tangled breaths that sounded as though she were hyperventilating. “Our father’s lying in there with a heart attack and no one will tell us how he’s doing and now you come out to calmly break the news that we should call his son? A son none of us ever heard of before now?”
“Why?” Mike stepped in front of Jo, like a human shield, and stared down at Grace. “Why do we not know about what’s-his-name? Jack. Where is he? How old is he?”
Grace’s mouth tightened and Mike braced for the next blow. She had a feeling it was going to be a beaut.
She wasn’t disappointed.
Grace sighed. “Jack is almost ten.”
“Ten.” Jo’s whispered voice sounded broken. She pushed Mike out of her way. “Almost ten. So that means—”
It meant that while Mama was sick . . . dying . . . Papa was off . . .
“Uh-uh. I don’t believe it,” Mike said flatly, lifting her chin and facing them all, one at a time. “No way do I believe that while Mama was dying, Papa was off screwing some other woman.”
“Why not?” Jo snarled. “He’s doing it now.”
Grace stiffened as if she’d been shot. “Your father’s not a monk, Jo,” she said after a minute or two.
The uncomfortable silence that followed stung them all. Jo had the decency to look ashamed of herself. But not by much. “Sorry, Grace. Not your fault. I know that. It’s just—”
“Hard,” Sam said, lifting one hand to clap over her mouth as if she were sick.
Jo held up both hands, backed away a little, and shook her head as if she could shake loose everything she’d heard.
Mike knew how she felt. Her own stomach was boiling, rumbling and rolling as it had the one time she’d gone on a spinning Ferris-wheel ride at a carnival. She’d been eight years old, stuffed with cotton candy and hot dogs, and that damn ride had insured that she’d spent the next hour revisiting every snack she’d shoved down her throat.
And Papa had been there, holding her head and soothing her tears.
“Oh God.” She whispered the plea and felt chills crawl up and down her spine, along her arms. This couldn’t be happening.
Not Papa.
Not the one man in the world she’d always believed to be perfect. He was her hero. He’d been the one stable point in her universe, her whole damn life.
All those times she’d run away, when Mama was so sick. All those nights Papa had sat with her, holding her hand, telling her not to worry. That the family would survive. That Mama would want them all to survive.
He was bigger than life.
Stronger than Superman.
Now? Now, she finds out that Papa was just a man? How was she supposed to live with that? How would any of them get past this to reclaim their lives?
“We have to call now,” Grace said, an eerie calm to her voice, a soft shine of understanding in her dark eyes. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I know you’re still in shock. So I’ll do it if you want, but it’s the right thing to do.”
“How can it be right? How can any of this be right?”
“Jo, will you lower your voice?” Sam looked worried as she flicked a glance past Jo and Grace toward the double doors and the crowded hallways beyond.
“Oh yeah,” Jo said tightly. “Wouldn’t want anyone to hear us talking about this. That would be the real tragedy.”
“You’re not helping,” Mike told her.
“There is no help for this, Mike. Weren’t you listening? And when the hell did you get so accepting? Why aren’t you as pissed as I am?” Jo blew out a breath an
d shook her head, her dark brown ponytail whipping from side to side at the back of her head. She lifted both hands again, palms out toward them, and backed up with long, uneven strides. “You do what you have to do,” she said. “I need some air. I’m—”
She turned fast and stomped toward the door leading out into the parking lot. She hit the door with both fists and kept right on moving.
In the sudden silence, the three women looked at each other like strangers.
Which is just how Mike felt. As if she’d been dropped into a world where she didn’t know anyone. Didn’t know the rules. Didn’t know what she was supposed to say and feel. And damn it, she didn’t like it.
Jo was wrong. She wasn’t accepting anything. She was just too lost to know what to do.
Last night, she’d been in Lucas’s arms and found more excitement, more tenderness, more . . . everything than she’d ever expected to find. Just remembering those few hours had Mike wishing she could turn back time, relive it all again and somehow . . . postpone what she was now dealing with.
But then, the night with Lucas hadn’t ended all that well this morning, and if she turned back time, she’d just have to relive that part of the festivities over again, as well. No, thanks.
She pulled in a breath and winced at the taste of antiseptic in the recycled air. Man, this weekend had gone to hell in a hurry.
“What now?” Sam ground the words out, biting each one off as if they tasted bitter.
“I’ll call Carol.”
“That’s her name?” Mike asked. “The bitch?”
“Mike . . .”
She shook her head as she felt her old standby, fury, rising up within her to drown all of her doubts and fears in a sea of righteous indignation. And she was grateful for it. A raging temper was so much easier to deal with than confusion.
“Sorry, Grace,” she said tightly, “but you’re telling me that this woman and our father were bouncing on sheets while Mama was dying. That doesn’t put her up for sainthood in my book.”
“People make mistakes.”
“They don’t generally hide them for ten years,” Mike countered and felt a twinge when she saw she’d scored a point. Damn it, she didn’t want to make points off Grace. The older woman hadn’t done anything to deserve it. It was Papa’s fault this was all coming down now, and they couldn’t even yell at him because he was hooked up to so many damn machines . . .
A Crazy Kind of Love Page 15