by Karen Booth
He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “I know it seems like I’m leaving.”
“Well, you are, in fact, leaving.”
“Yes. But it won’t be long, and hopefully you understand that this is important.”
“Of course. You’re doing the right thing.” Rio jumped onto the bed and head-butted Donovan’s elbow, then flopped down onto the mattress. Donovan stroked the arch of Rio’s back while Lela scratched behind his ears. “Rio will miss you. I’ll miss you.”
Donovan’s heart felt like it was breaking, but he reminded himself this wasn’t a real goodbye. He and Lela would pick things back up as soon as he returned. He was ready for the next step and the one that came after that, too. “I’ll miss you, too.” I love you sat right on his lips, but he wanted the moment to be perfect, and with worries of his mom’s health weighing him down, it simply didn’t feel right.
He got up from the bed and Lela climbed out from under the covers. She padded to the bathroom door and grabbed her robe from the hook. He hated seeing her wrap herself up like that, but he’d keep the vision tucked away inside his head. They walked downstairs together and shared a parting kiss in the front hall. “Safe travels,” Lela said as she opened the door.
“Thanks. And don’t say anything to Echo. I’ll call her from the car once I’m on the road. Otherwise, she’s going to want to come with me. I need to do this on my own.”
“I won’t say a thing.”
Donovan hurried down the stairs, but those words that were stuck in his mouth told him to stop. When he turned, Lela was standing there in her robe, leaning against the doorframe, watching him. He blew her a kiss, she caught it, and pressed it against her lips. It would have to do for now.
He hopped in a cab back to his place, tossed some clothes in a suitcase, and was on his way in under an hour. Once he was out of the city, he called Echo and told her what little he knew.
“Dad. I should go with you.”
This was precisely what he’d feared she’d say. “No, no, honey. This is fairly routine surgery and your uncle Austin is coming down to help as well. Plus, you and Lela need to hold down the fort at work.”
She sighed. “Just call and let me know what’s going on, okay?”
“I will.”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Of course.”
“How was it hanging out with Lela and her parents last night?”
Despite his worries, Donovan found himself grinning. “It was wonderful. We had a great time.”
“Good. Glad to hear it. Drive safe. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Echo.”
Donovan turned off his ringer for the rest of the drive, and put on one of his favorite playlists so he could get lost in the music, and keep his mind off what was ahead. It didn’t work. Every song was a reminder of something—a time in his life, or a person or event. Thoughts of his three favorite women kept circling through his head. His mom was sick, his daughter married, and Lela… well, he could only do his absolute best by her this time and hope to hell that was good enough.
When he pulled into the driveway of the estate, Austin’s car was already there. The door to the house was unlocked, and Donovan stepped into the foyer, happily not greeted by a pack of ill-behaved dogs.
“Hello?” Donovan called.
“In here,” Austin yelled back.
“There are more than forty rooms in this house,” Donovan muttered to himself as he made his way down the hall. He was fairly certain that Austin had meant the formal living room. When he walked in, Austin and Stuart were seated on one of the sofas, drinking bourbon, or something amber and alcoholic, out of cut crystal glasses. “Cocktail hour already?”
Austin got up from the couch and embraced Donovan. “You want one?”
Stuart extended his arm to shake Donovan’s hand. “I’m glad you could come.”
“Where’s Mom? I feel like I should talk to her first.”
“She’s upstairs in her room,” Austin said. “Taking a nap.”
“She didn’t get much sleep last night,” Stuart said. “She was mad that I figured out what was going on and that I called you both.”
“I’ll sneak up there. I won’t wake her if she’s still sleeping.”
“You know where to find us,” Austin said.
Donovan jogged up the staircase and walked in the direction opposite from the route to his own bedroom. His mom’s wing of the second floor was tucked away from everything else, with a sitting room, large en suite bathroom, and a bedroom that in size, likely rivaled the queen’s private quarters at Buckingham Palace. He rapped on the door quietly, and was met by a low growl, but no other answer. Somewhere on the other side of the door was at least one dog. This required caution.
He turned the knob, only to discover that one of his mom’s chihuahuas was curled up next to the door in a tiny pink dog bed. It snarled at him again, and the bell on its collar tinkled, but Donovan remained undeterred. On the far side of the room was his mother’s bed, heavily populated with dogs who all turned and looked at him, then put their heads back down in near unison. Despite the circus that had taken place during the wedding weekend cocktail party, the black cat was curled up next to his mom, who was nothing but a tiny lump under the expanse of a deep red bedspread.
He crept to her side and reached down to push her hair from her face. “Mom?”
Her eyes popped open, and that alone was enough to rattle the dogs. They jumped off the bed en masse and started barking at Donovan. His mom sat up in bed and two-finger whistled, then threw back the covers, stormed across the room, flung open her door and yelled, “Everybody out!” They quieted down and scampered off. She turned to Donovan. “Not you, darling.”
It was nice to have the clarification. For a moment, he was unsure. “I’m sorry I woke you. Are you feeling that bad?”
“I was actually just dozing. A little tired, but some of that might be age.”
“How are you otherwise?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s all anyone has asked me today.”
“Mom. You have cancer. And you hid it from everyone. What were you thinking?”
She eased into one of two upholstered gold chairs near the window. She was wearing white satin pajamas that hung loosely on her. “I didn’t want anyone to worry.”
“Worry? You scheduled a mastectomy and then tried to send away the one person who would willingly take care of you.” Donovan sat in the other chair, but perched right on the edge of the seat, hoping his proximity would underscore how seriously he took this matter.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to get older.”
“Yes I do. I’m fifty-one years old.”
She grimaced and sighed. “I count my own birthdays, but for some reason, I forget to count everyone else’s.”
“That still doesn’t explain the situation.”
She looked off, out the window, the sun lighting up her face. If every line and wrinkle could tell a story, he had no doubt it would be quite a tale. “Saying it made it more real. I wasn’t ready to accept my own mortality. So I figured that if I kept it to myself, I’d get better, no one would be the wiser, and I’d manage to squeeze another twenty years out of this body of mine.”
Right then and there he had to face the truth of what he’d done when he’d dismissed his chest pains—he’d been a complete idiot. “You had to have known on some level that it was a terrible plan.”
She turned and shot him a pointed glance. “You and your brother are here, so yes, I can see now that I underestimated how you both would feel about it.”
“What did you expect us to do? Shrug it off and go on with our lives?”
“I certainly didn’t think my two workaholic sons would drop everything at a moment’s notice and come to the house.”
That was fair. More than fair. “Austin and I are here for you. For the surgery, and when you come home. We don’t want everything to rest on Stuart.” Donovan got up from his
seat and crouched down next to her chair. “Mom, no matter what, I want you to remember that we love you.”
“Good. I love you, too.” She reached out and brushed his hair from his face. She hadn’t done that in forty years. Maybe more. “Some days, I really see your dad in you.”
He’d been kept awake for countless night in his life with that worry, that there was some part of him that was inherently broken because his dad had been broken, too. Or that perhaps his mom was haunted by bad memories every time she looked at Donovan. “I hope you see you in me, too.”
“Oh, you’re mostly me. Your dad squeezed in a little, but you’re a lot like me. Pragmatic. Sardonic. Dour at times.”
“Sardonic and dour. Good use of the thesaurus.”
“Learned, too.”
There were footfalls coming from the door. “Am I interrupting a tender moment?” Austin asked, with just a hint of sarcasm.
“Oh, good. You’re both here.” She sat back in her chair. “I want to talk about my last wishes.”
“Mom. Is that really necessary?” Donovan asked. That seemed like quite a leap. “I think you’re going to do great. I researched your doctor online this morning. She has amazing credentials.”
“I’m not talking about now. I doubt I’ll die tomorrow. Or the next day. This is for later. If we talk about it now, I don’t have to bring it up at an awkward time, like at Christmas or on one of your birthdays.”
Donovan stood and took his seat again.
Austin poised himself next to Donovan, bracing his hand on the back of the chair. “Yeah, Mom. Go.”
“This is all in the will, but I’ll tell you now that I want to be cremated. I do not want a funeral. Funerals are for sadness. Plus, I know very few people I like well enough for them to be invited, and it’s an awful lot of trouble to book a caterer for a small event.”
Austin let out an astonished laugh. “Okay. What else?”
“I want to be cremated. I want half of my ashes spread on the grounds here. Except not in the patch of lawn where the dogs do their business.” She furrowed her brow, as if she was searching her memory for what came next. “After that, I’d like you to divvy me up, and leave a bit of me wherever you think I might like the view. Austin, if you can sneak onto the field at Fenway Park, I like it there. I like the pants the players wear. And Donovan, I have two requests for New York City. In front of Tiffany & Co. on 5th Avenue, and from the Bow Bridge in Central Park.”
“Mom, I can’t just leave you on a sidewalk in the middle of Manhattan. You’ll blow away,” Donovan said.
She dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “So a bus comes by and I go down the subway grate. I can spend eternity riding around the city.”
Austin and Donovan looked at each other, equally dumbfounded. This was one of the more remarkable conversations they’d had with their mom, which was saying a lot.
“Anything else we need to know?” Austin asked.
“The house will go to you both. Think of it as one last motherly endeavor on my part. It was always so hard to get you two to share. This will force you to figure it out.”
The brothers again looked at each other. That was going to be an interesting thing to compromise on. “Okay. Thank you,” Donovan said.
“I’m glad you’re both here. And I’m sorry I kept the cancer a secret. Sometimes we do stupid things to protect the people we love from things we think they can’t handle.”
“The key word there is think, Mom. Austin and I can handle all of this. Just fine.”
***
Their mother’s surgery went off without a hitch and after three days in the hospital, she was able to come home. That was when things got a little dicey for Donovan, Stuart, and Austin. She was in a great deal of pain, but had always been leery of prescription drugs, so she refused to take what the doctor had sent her home with. Stuart was of zero help. Their mom was able to talk him into anything. That left Donovan and Austin to trade off with the battle, each of them taking a different day. They both quickly learned it wasn’t easy to force medicine down your own mother’s throat. Even when it made her feel better, she still didn’t want to take the next dose. She could be so damn stubborn.
For a full week, Donovan and Austin were handling far more of a work load than either had anticipated. The house was in need of constant upkeep. The animals all required food and tending, and the emu in particular was a complete pain in the ass. And then there were their mother’s requests. She was essentially subsisting on smoothies, but they had to be made just right, and apparently Donovan was the only one who did it correctly. More than once, he’d gotten up at three in the morning to make her one because she was hungry. Donovan didn’t dare complain, but his mom did point out that she was merely getting even for the nights he hadn’t slept when he was a baby.
Donovan had very few spare moments, but when he did, his thoughts drifted to Lela. They’d talked almost every day since he’d left, their conversations light and short because Donovan was too exhausted for anything else. But every time he had to say goodbye, he found himself wanting to just finally come out with it and tell her that he loved her. Just wait, he told himself time and again. She deserved more than a stupid phone call. She deserved the world.
He also hesitated because he wasn’t sure what came next for them. He wanted more; he just had to find the right way to finesse it, because he wasn’t sure what she wanted. These things became far more complicated later in life—one person wanted marriage while another was thinking, “no more of that, thank you very much”. One person might want to maintain separate households because they’d learned to love living alone, while the other person might be missing that closeness because they hadn’t had it in so long. Nothing was cut and dry. Or easy. Case in point, Donovan’s mom and Stuart. He was still asking her to marry him nearly every single day, and every time, even when Donovan or Austin were around to witness it, she said no.
Nine days in, Donovan was officially worried and feeling incredibly guilty, too. Their mom was still struggling with her recovery, while Donovan had promised Lela that no matter what, he would be at Tammera and Delia’s wedding tomorrow. He’d asked his mom how she felt about it, but she’d simply told him to go, with every dramatic sigh of a well-practiced martyr. He needed a second opinion.
“Hey, Austin, are you up for a walk down to the pond?” Donovan asked.
Austin was consumed by a book in the library, where the shelves contained far more leather-bound volumes than anyone could ever read. When they were younger, the brothers took turns riding the ladder while the other pushed it as fast as humanly possible across the room. “Yeah. Sure.”
The pair took their usual route: out the French doors at the back of the house and across the flagstone patio surrounding the pool, then down the grassy slope to the water. “Do you feel like Stuart has everything under control?” Donovan asked.
Austin shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s doing a great job, but I worry about what she might be able to convince him of if we aren’t around. That dynamic hasn’t really changed.”
“She is doing better with pain, though. She not only needs less medication, she’s fighting it less often.”
“That’s true.”
Donovan cleared his throat. “Well, here’s my problem. Lela’s best friend is getting married tomorrow and I promised her I would be there for the wedding.”
Austin smiled. “That’s a problem? That sounds like a pretty great problem to me. I would love to be going to a wedding with Lela tomorrow.”
That irked Donovan, but he ignored it. “The whole reason I bring it up is because I want to know that you’d be okay with me leaving.”
“Yeah. Of course. Stuart and I can manage.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes. You should go.”
“Okay. Good. Thank you.” He wasn’t good at spilling his guts, especially with his brother, but he felt like this had to be said. “Also, you should know that Lela
and I are romantically involved.”
Austin clutched at his chest dramatically. “Oh, my God. My brother finally got a clue?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I hoped this would happen, but I was starting to wonder what your problem was. I’m just glad you actually told me and I didn’t have to hear it from Echo.” Austin looked Donovan square in the eye. “You keep things to yourself. You keep it all bottled up. You’re exactly like Mom and it makes me nuts.”
Donovan knew this about himself. He was trying to be better, but it was a bad old habit to break. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Wait. Hold on a second, what do you mean you hoped this would happen?”
Austin laughed quietly and shook his head. “You don’t know why I flirted with Lela, do you?”
“I assumed it was because I asked you not to. Also, she’s stunning, so I get it.”
“I did it to force you to spill your feelings for her. It was so obvious from the first few moments I saw you two together.”
“Obvious from who?”
“Obvious from whom. And you, Donovan. I’ve always been able to read you, but I also know that you’re not super in touch with your feelings. I thought that if you were jealous, you would step up.”
“Huh.” Donovan was still trying to wrap his head around this.
He playfully slapped Donovan’s chest with the back of his hand. “Have you told her that you love her?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t had the chance. There hasn’t been the right time.”
“Well? Do you? Love her?”
“Yes. I do.” It was liberating to finally just say it out loud, but he was mad at himself for not finding the opportunity to tell her. He now felt even more pressure to make an impression. A grand romantic gesture was in order.
“And she has no idea.”
“I’d like to think she knows on some level.”
Austin shook his head in dismay. “Dude. You need to get with the program. I don’t know what the hell you’re waiting for. God only knows how many chances at this any of us will ever get.”