by Susan Wiggs
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Away. It’s easier for me to talk when my hands have something to do.”
“Talk. You want to talk.” She felt a nudge of resentment. He’d been silent for months after that night, and now he wanted to talk.
“It’s not what you think. I came to talk about your mom.”
This was the last thing she had expected to hear from him. “What about my mom?”
“She’s the reason you came back.”
“Of course she is. In fact, I was planning on meeting her for lunch after her doctor’s appointment, so I hope this won’t take long.”
“You’re planning on staying through the weekend.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”
“Your mom told me you were selected for some big fellowship, and you’re moving overseas.”
“That’s none of your business, either, but you’re correct.” Thanks, Mom, she thought. “What are you getting at, Zach?”
“There’s something your mom’s not telling you. Something I think you need to know.”
“And you’re going to be the one to tell me.”
“I sure as hell don’t want to be, but if the situation were reversed, I would want you to level with me. The truth is the truth. She’s sick, Sonnet.”
“She’s pregnant, Zach. Last time I checked, that didn’t qualify as an illness.”
“No, I mean it.” He stopped rowing and let the oars go slack. His gaze didn’t waver as he said, “Nina’s got cancer. She told me this morning.”
As Sonnet studied his expression, she felt a chill slither through her, tightening around her stomach. Despite the fact that she no longer had a friendship with Zach, she had never known him to lie to her, or to make such a tasteless joke.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
The water lapped quietly and rhythmically against the hull of the boat.
“Zach?”
“Shit. I’d give anything to not be having this conversation. I told Nina she should tell you but she refused to listen.”
“Cancer? Oh, my God, Zach. My mom has cancer?” It was right up there with her worst nightmares.
“It sucks to have to break a confidence, but I know some things. I know because of my own mom. They kept her illness from me when I was little, and it was wrong. I know she thought she was protecting me, but all it did was make it a lousy shock when I finally found out. You’re her daughter. Despite what she’s thinking, you need to know. And you need to know now, not after you’ve moved away.”
“What is she thinking?” Sonnet asked desperately. “What in the world is she thinking?”
“She didn’t want to tell you because she doesn’t want you changing your plans for her sake.”
A trembling began inside Sonnet. Everything felt heightened, more intense. She could hear the water trickling past the hull, the sharp call of killdeer in the trees along the shore, the sunlight dancing along her bare arms. “My mom has cancer,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Zach said quietly, still watching her. “I’m sorry as hell. She said she didn’t want to worry you—”
“My mom’s pregnant, and she has cancer, and I’m not supposed to worry?” Sonnet nearly reared up out of the boat. “And how does anybody know she’s going to be all right?”
He didn’t answer. She saw his gaze shift and darken, as though a shadow passed over him. Then a memory struck her, an echo of a time long past, a time she’d nearly forgotten. Zach, still just a boy, standing alone in the brick-paved driveway of his father’s house, bouncing a pink rubber ball against the garage door, again and again in a rhythm as regular as a heartbeat.
Sonnet had gone to visit him on her bike. It was an afternoon in early fall, the leaves of the maple trees in town edged with the colors of fire. They made a peculiar dry sound as the wind rustled through them, punctuated by the rhythm of Zach’s thrown ball.
“Want to go climb up to Meerskill Falls?” she had asked him. It was one of their favorite things to do, riding their bikes to the trail at the edge of town and then hiking up the steep gorge to the top of the falls, spanned by a hanging bridge where, according to local legend, two lovers had once jumped to their death nearly a century before.
“Nah,” he said. Sunlight glinted off his hair.
“Come on. It’s not a school night. We don’t have any homework.” She knew this because they were in the same class, Mr. Borden’s sixth grade.
“Can’t,” he’d said.
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I have to go to Seattle.”
“Seattle? That’s where your mom lives, right?”
“That’s where my mom died.” The rhythm of the ball never faltered.
Sonnet dropped her bike with a crash, letting her library books spill across the driveway bricks, ignored. “Oh my gosh, Zach. That’s so sad. That’s the saddest thing in the world.” Mothers weren’t supposed to die. Grandparents, sometimes. And great-grandparents definitely, like Nonna Romano, who had been so old there was actually a celebration with people dressed in costumes from the various eras of her life. Sonnet and her mom had worn flapper dresses.
That was what a mom did—she went to parties with you, or dressed you to go on your own. Every once in a while, a mom got a divorce and moved away, like Zach’s had. But she wasn’t supposed to die.
Zach still hadn’t said anything. He kept bouncing the ball.
“It’s just wrong.” She barely remembered Zach’s mother. Pale blonde like Zach, quiet, hard to know. Zach had adored her, and he’d been shattered when she moved away. And now…
“What can I do, Zach?” she asked in desperation.
He hadn’t answered. The shattering showed in his eyes, like a million pieces of ice breaking on a blue blue pond.
“I wish I was magic,” she said. “I wish I could make this not be happening.”
But no one had been able to stop it. That was the thing about a disease once it took hold. Sometimes there was no stopping it.
Memories of that day haunted Sonnet now, morphing into a new nightmare, one in which her mother was the victim. “Zach, what am I going to do?”
“Nothing but the docs and meds can make it go away, or make it stop hurting, or make you stop waking up at night scared out of your mind,” he said, his words as blunt and harsh as a sudden hailstorm. “You can’t do anything. You can just be there for her.”
“I’m not sure I know how to do that. How will I just…be?”
“You’ll figure it out,” he said. “You always do.”
“I’ve never had to figure out what to do when my pregnant mom has cancer,” she said. Her own words killed her. “God,” she whispered. “Oh, my God. If I lose her…Zach, I just don’t know if I can handle being that sad. I don’t know if I can survive it.” She caught her breath, then burst into tears.
“Hey.” Zach set aside the oars and stepped over the bench seat. His long arms enveloped her, and she melted, swept up in a wave of hurt and fear. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry as hell.” He murmured other things but she didn’t hear him. She just knew that for this moment, his chest felt like a wall of strength, and he smelled amazing, like the lake-freshened air, and his voice, speaking words that held no comfort, sounded as sad as a tragic song on the radio.
* * *
“Zach told you?” Nina dropped the wooden spoon she’d been using to stir the red gravy. It wasn’t actually gravy, but
a delicious, rich tomato sauce that had been made by the Romanos since the beginning of time. The deep aroma of slow-simmered tomatoes and herbs took Sonnet back to the days of her childhood, when they went to Nonna’s for Sunday dinner, to a house filled with aunts and uncles and cousins, noisy and chaotic with laughter and chatter. She hadn’t thought of those days in years. She’d been so eager to leave Avalon, to find her life in the world beyond this little town.
Now she stood in the kitchen with her mother, and wished she had cherished those times more. She wished she’d listened to her grandfather’s stories more attentively, or watched more closely when Nonna and Zia Antonia made the red gravy. She wished she’d tucked the memories away in a special part of her heart, rather than letting them flow past, unheeded.
“Yes,” she said, her throat tightening with fear and grief. “He told me you have cancer.”
Nina gripped the edge of the counter. “He shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not his story to tell.”
Sonnet had been dreading a chance meeting with Zach, but her feelings about their oh-so-sweet mistake at Daisy’s wedding melted away in the face of the horrible news. She was grateful to him now. “I’m sure he would agree with you,” she said to Nina. “Why would you burden him with this?”
“I didn’t think it was a burden—”
“It should be my burden,” Sonnet said. “He didn’t want to be the one to tell me, but he knew it was the right thing to do. My God, Mom. How could you keep something like this from me?”
“I didn’t want you to worry about me.”
“Worry about you? Worry about you? You’re making me crazy. Did you think you were going to hide a cancer diagnosis?”
“It’s not a question of hiding anything. I’m just…controlling the flow of information.”
“What gives you the right to do that?” Sonnet felt like a teenager again, yelling at her mom. “You’re my mother, and when something like this is going on, I get to be informed.”
“All right, fine. You want the gory details? I’m a walking encyclopedia now. I found a lump. So when I went to my twelve-week prenatal visit, I had the doctor check it out.” Nina paused. “Ah, her face, Sonnet. I think I knew the second she palpated it. I had an ultrasound and my lump had a name—a three-centimeter lobulated mass. So I had to have a core biopsy, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. You’re clamped into a mammogram machine, lying down in an awkward position on a bench. You get a local anesthetic with a hideous needle. That was the worst part of it. After the numbing, they stick you with an even more hideous biopsy needle. I’ll never forget the sound it made—a loud click.”
Sonnet cringed. “Mom, that’s awful. Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
“It all happened really fast. Greg was my rock. He still is.”
“I know, but I’m your daughter. Okay, so the biopsy…”
“Then there was a sentinel node biopsy, CT scans, MRI. Consider yourself informed. And stop worrying. I’m going to get through this.”
“Not without me, you aren’t.”
Nina bent and picked up the dropped spoon, rinsing it at the sink. “Sonnet, you have amazing things happening in your life. I don’t want you to miss a moment of it.”
“How about this?” Anger surged through her, cutting cleanly through her terror. “How about you let me be your daughter and tell me what’s going on with you?”
“Because I know you. I know you’re going to freak out—”
“You think?” She felt the acid burn of tears in her eyes. “You really think I’d freak out about my mom having cancer? Gosh, whatever gave you that idea?”
“I don’t want you to put your life on hold and try to good-daughter me to death.”
“In case you’re wondering, the decision is already made.” Sonnet felt a horrible tearing sensation in her gut, knowing her plans for the future were about to crumble. The fellowship was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. No one was given a second chance. It simply didn’t work that way. “There’s not going to be any fellowship, no moving overseas. I’m staying with you until you get through this. I’m not leaving your side, Mom.”
“And I love you for that, but it’s not what I need from you. I need you to go for your dreams, not stand around wringing your hands with worry about me.”
“Do you think for one second my dreams matter more than your life, Mom?”
“Ah, baby.” Nina wiped her hands on a tea towel. “No, I don’t think that. But I also don’t think it’s going to help either of us for you to change your plans because of this.”
“It’s my life. My decision.”
“You gave everything you have to getting this fellowship,” Nina pointed out. “I’m not letting you give it up for me.”
“Fine. Then I’ll give it up for me. I’m not going to do the world one bit of good if I’m sitting in some foreign country worried sick about my mom.”
“You won’t be worried. I have a fantastic team of doctors, and there’s a treatment plan.…”
Sonnet swallowed. Treatment plan. “Will the chemo…” Sonnet couldn’t figure out how to say it. “Will it affect the baby?” Are you going to lose the baby?
“No.” Nina’s reaction was swift and vehement. “That’s the first question I asked. This baby is mine and Greg’s. It’s your sibling. I can’t think of anything but protecting and loving him. The cancer can be treated without harming the baby. There’s a type of chemo that will be filtered by the placental wall. I just can’t have radiation until after he is born.”
“But would radiation be more effective against the cancer?”
“It’s not an option,” Nina said firmly.
For a split second, Sonnet resented the baby, the little stranger that was keeping her mother from getting the most aggressive treatment available. Easy, she told herself. Calm down. Parents risked their lives for their kids all the time; it was part of being a parent. “So what’s the plan?”
Nina’s gaze shifted to the floor, then out the window over the sink, which framed a sparkling view of Willow Lake. “I’m starting chemo before the surgery.”
“The surgery.” Sonnet swallowed hard. “You mean…”
“A mastectomy, yes. I couldn’t say it out loud at first, either, but I’m getting used to it. Then…we’ll see.”
Nina picked up a tea towel and scrubbed at an invisible spot on the counter. “Well, I could have a lumpectomy—to start. But the doctors say a mastectomy is probably the best option.”
“Oh, Mom.” A mastectomy. To fundamentally change her body—forever. The very idea shook Sonnet to her core, leaving her nauseous with disbelief. She took the towel from Nina’s hand and hugged her. “I’m so sorry. Tell me what I can do.”
“You can carry on with your life and let me and Greg and the docs handle this so I can get better.”
“I already told you, my life is on hold until you get through this.”
“What’s your father going to say?” Nina demanded. “He knows what it took to get you where you are. What will he think when you throw it away?”
“He’ll understand.”
“Will he?” Nina drilled her with a stare. “Will he?”
Sonnet’s stomach twisted into knots. No, she thought. No. Her dad believed in duty over personal concerns, all the time. He’d built his life around serving his country and the world at large, and sometimes the family had to take a backseat to that. She cringed inwardly, imagining his reaction when she t
old him she was going to forfeit her fellowship because her mom was sick.
“I can’t worry about what Dad will think or say,” Sonnet stated firmly. “I’m staying with you, Mom. I’ll think about everything else after you’re better.”
“Ah, sweetheart. You’re already good-daughtering me. Do me a favor and don’t make up your mind right away.”
“Too late. Mom—”
“No, listen. A cancer diagnosis doesn’t mean the same thing these days as it once did.”
Sonnet wanted to believe it. But she kept thinking about Zia Antonia, the favorite aunt in Albany. One thought kept drumming through her head, and had been ever since Zach broke the news to her: My mom has cancer. My mom has cancer. She walked over to the sink where Nina was standing. “So then,” she said in a soft, broken voice she scarcely recognized, “what does it mean?”
Nina took a deep breath. Sonnet studied her, not wanting to believe her cheekbones stood out more, or that her eyes were circled by fatigue, or that, when she turned to lower the flame under the pot on the stove, she winced a little.
“That needs to simmer for an hour or so,” Nina said. “Come on out to the sunroom. I’ve got a little project started there.”
“But Mom, we’ve barely begun to discuss what’s going on. I have a lot of questions—”
“And you can ask them. Of course you can. But when I was diagnosed, I made a promise to myself. I don’t have to be a cancer patient every minute of every day. I get to be me, and to forget about it and just be normal some of the time. Got it?”
Sonnet nodded, trying to keep it together. “Sure. Let’s have a look at your project.”
True to its name, the sunroom was flooded with daylight. It was one of those bonus rooms in the house that had been turned into a staging place for boxes, parcels and odds and ends of furniture that didn’t have any other place to go.
“Let me guess,” said Sonnet. “The nursery.”