by Del, Lissa
A LIFE MADE OF LAVA
LISSA DEL
Contents
DEDICATION
Acknowledgments
1. Evie
2. Nick
3. Evie
4. Nick
5. Evie
6. Julia
7. Evie
8. Nick
9. Julia
10. Evie
11. Nick
12. Evie
13. Nick
14. Julia
15. Evie
16. Julia
17. Nick
18. Evie
19. Julia
20. Nick
21. Evie
22. Julia
23. Evie
24. Julia
25. Nick
26. Evie
27. Julia
28. Nick
29. Evie
30. Julia
31. Nick
32. Evie
33. Nick
34. Evie
35. Julia
36. Evie
37. Nick
38. Julia
39. Evie
40. Julia
41. Evie
42. Julia
43. Nick
44. Evie
45. EPILOGUE
Also by LISSA DEL
About the Author
Copyright text © Lissa Del 2018
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover design by Apple Pie Graphics
Edited by Catherine Eberle of WordWeavers
DEDICATION
For my mom, because I haven’t dedicated a book to you yet and you’re probably the most deserving.
Acknowledgments
As always, there are a number of people to thank. No book is created in a vacuum and I am blessed to have an amazing team who travel this journey with me.
First and foremost, to Catherine Eberle, my editor, who has worked with me since The Legacy. Without you, I would be lost.
To Wendy Bow of Apple Pie Graphics, cover number 14! Your talent astounds me daily. Who would’ve thought we’d get this far without tearing each other’s hair out! Not me…
My crazy sister beta readers: Fiona McCarthy and Cara Pechey. I love you both.
To my husband, Murray, and my three gorgeous babies, this book was without a doubt the hardest I’ve ever had to write. You know why.
And finally, to my readers. This book is for you.
1
Evie
“Thank you for coming,” I say, bestowing a polite smile on the girl opposite me. The smile I use when I don’t want my true feelings made plain. It hurts my cheeks. “I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve made a decision.”
She nods, all doe-eyed, painful shyness. She’s not the one. I know it, she knows it, but we stick to the courteous formality that one expects in such situations. Until we reach the door. Screw it.
“Look, Darla, I’m going to level with you. You don’t have the job. I’m sorry, but you’re just not what I’m looking for.”
She pulls nervously at her too-short skirt but nods anyway. “I kind of figured. Thanks for not keeping me hanging.”
“I don’t want to waste your time. For what it’s worth, I hope you find something soon. Oh, and Darla?” She turns back. “I don’t think you’re cut out to be a nanny. I get the feeling you’re not particularly fond of children at all. You should find something you’re passionate about and do that instead.”
She opens her mouth. Shuts it again, nods her head, the ripple of ebony down her back sending a pang of envy through my frail frame, and walks away. I shut the door and lean back against it, exhaling in a rush of breath.
“Well that was a complete waste of time.” My best friend Kat raises her brow at me from the kitchen doorway. “I could’ve told you within seven seconds of her sitting down that she wasn’t the one.”
“I know. I figured I had to at least hear her out. She came all this way.”
Kat rolls her eyes. “She came from Rushmore. It’s not even five minutes away.”
“It would’ve been convenient.”
“Yeah. Plus, she had a cute ass.”
“She had a cute everything.” I follow her back into the kitchen. My fingers move of their own accord, slipping beneath the neon print of my scarf to scratch at my naked scalp.
“You’ve stopped wearing your wig,” Kat announces, pulling a bottle of chilled Dom Perignon out of the fridge.
“It gives me a rash,” I reply. “Besides, bald is the new black, haven’t you heard?”
“I must have missed that.” Her thumb skirts across the white-gold label, clearing the condensation in a smooth line. Over two thousand dollars’ worth of limited edition vintage champagne sloshes around in that bottle. Kat sighs longingly. “I guess we’ll just have to keep hoping,” she says eventually, setting the bottle back and pulling out a carton of orange juice instead.
“God, you’re a lousy cook,” I tell Kat half an hour later. I prod the congealed mass lurking in the bottom of the pot. “How do you screw up spaghetti?”
She peers over my shoulder. “It’s fine. Besides, they’re kids, they won’t even notice.”
“My children aren’t dogs, Kat. They have standards.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. As far as children go, yours are by far my favourites.”
“What about your niece?”
Kat shudders. “Utter little bitch.”
“She’s five now, right?” Kat nods solemnly, oblivious to the fact that I’m pointing out the obvious – that one should not call a five-year-old an utter bitch. I scan through the pile of resumés stacked on the kitchen table and then set them down. I’m too tired to think anymore. “You know,” I tell Kat, “if you actually liked children, it would make my job a lot easier.”
“Well I don’t,” she says. Kat likes money, apple martinis and younger men. She’s never been married and the only babies she’s interested in are the spawn of her media conglomerate, which sprouts new offices every other month. She snatches up the pile and withdraws three resumés randomly. “Here, call these in next. If you keep reading them over looking for some sort of sign you’re going to give yourself a brain tumour.”
“Too late!” we cry at the same time. Technically, my specialist hasn’t confirmed the presence of a brain tumour, but only because I won’t let him look.
“Or you could ask Steph to help you out,” Kat taunts.
“Ugh!” I give the spaghetti a sharp jab. “She’s already been over this morning, all porcelain veneer smiles and telling me to stay strong and keep my chin up when we both know she can’t wait for me to kick it.”
Stephanie, or Steph, as she likes to be called, is Nick’s new employee, a perky, twenty-something millennial with a crocodile smile and skin as thick as elephant hide. She’s as gleaming as she is efficient. I quit working shortly after my diagnosis five months ago, and Steph is the shiny new me at Danvers Inc., the interior design company that Nick and I started twelve years ago.
“What excuse did she have this time, or did she come out and admit that she has grand designs for a new spa bath in the main bathroom?” Kat asks, venturing closer to the wine rack and trying to read the labels over her shoulder.
“Oh, you’re going to love this!” I say, yanking the cork-screw from the top drawer and sliding it over to her. “She wanted to give me the name of her plastic surgeon.”
Kat’s jaw drops. “She what?”
“Yeah,” I wave my hand in a perfect imitation of Steph’s extravagant hand signalling. “You know, Evelyn, you really should consider cosmetic surgery. A healthy body image goes a long way to creating a positive mind-set, and you know how
important that is when it comes to a disease like,” I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “cancer.”
Kat’s hands are trembling with ill-concealed rage. “She didn’t.”
“She did.” It’s easy to shrug off because I’m used to it by now. When you’re dying, people feel the need to help, to offer all sorts of sage advice, as if I hadn’t tried everything. Twice. Cannabis on multiple occasions and in multiple forms, if we’re keeping score.
“Nick needs to fire her, Evie. No, don’t look at me like that, I’m serious. That little bitch needs to go.”
“It’s too late to train anyone else and you know Nick can’t afford to lose her now. The business is already struggling with all my medical bills…” I trail off, melancholy tugging at my resolve. “Anyway, Nick’s not going to fall for someone like that, he’s not an idiot. Okay, well, he’s a bit of an idiot,” I concede, “but he’s my idiot and I know he would never be attracted to someone like Steph. Besides, she couldn’t handle my kids. I’d give it twenty-four hours and she’d be running from the house screaming.”
“With all your jewellery shoved in her pockets, I bet,” Kat points out, but my sense of humour died the second I mentioned the children. “Oh, screw it,” Kat adds, pulling a bottle of red from the rack. “We’re having a drink.”
“You say that like you didn’t already make that decision on the drive over.”
Kat is gone by the time Nick gets home. He puts on his post-diagnosis smile as soon as he sees me, the one that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s trailing kids, like the pied piper of parenthood because he picked them up from school this afternoon and went to watch Jesse’s cricket match. Jesse, a ten-going-on-thirty preteen with a full-potato-sized chip on his shoulder, gives me a scowl as he passes. He heads straight to his room, no doubt to plug in the electric guitar I bought him as a consolation prize when I missed his football game last month. Radiation’s a bitch.
“I guess that answers the ‘am I forgiven’ question,” I say. “I sure hope he gets around to it before I keel over.”
Nick winces. He hates my gallows humour. He preferred the Wonder-Woman, warrior-style smugness I adopted the first time around. The one that got me through chemo and defied my illness, sending it scuttling back to hell with its tail between its legs.
Dylan is almost six and still looks at me like I’m the only woman in the world who makes life worth living. As introverted as his brother is outgoing, Dylan is my secret joy.
Baby Casey is four years old and fearless, her cherubic face combining only the very best bits of Nick’s and my own, as if God held himself up to a higher standard the day she was conceived. Nick’s bold chin: check. Evie’s single dimple: check. Evie’s non-existent eyebrows, ah hell no. Eyes: let’s throw in a shade of blue that we’ve never used before, shall we? Okay, now you’re just showing off.
“Did you see Dr Moxley today?” Nick asks, arranging his features into an expression of polite interest.
“Oh, um…” I rack my brain trying to think of an excuse I haven’t used yet. “I couldn’t. I had to replace the batteries in my vibrator. Third time this week, would you believe it?”
Sex jokes are Nick’s second worst kind, after death jokes. “Evie…”
“Oh, and Nick,” I interrupt before he can build up momentum, “the floor’s lava.”
For the infinitesimal space between heartbeats, I think he’s not going to react. It would be the first time in eighteen years and the flash of fear the thought induces almost brings me to my knees. Then, without another word, Nick leaps onto the kitchen counter, upending the cold pot of overboiled spaghetti and almost decapitating himself on the overhead pot rail.
And I smile. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with shitty diapers, or a failing business, or even stage four bone cancer, when the floor’s lava, you get off it.
2
Nick
Evie’s smile is a sunrise. Her eyes light up when she laughs, they always have, and the green gives way to blue. Her smile was one of the first things I ever noticed about her back in college. It was naughty enough to invoke wicked thoughts, nice enough to make me want to take her home to meet my mother. Back then she didn’t have the crow’s feet, but somehow they make her more, rather than less beautiful.
As I climb down from the kitchen counter she dazzles me with that smile. She still has the tiny chip in her front tooth, the one she claims gives her character, but which is really just proof of how shit-scared she is of the dentist. The kids haven’t been for a check-up yet despite my mother’s growing horror because Evie can’t even walk into the dentist’s room without hyperventilating.
“What is this?” I ask, scraping congealed pasta off my pants.
“Kat tried to cook,” she says. She’s still smiling. She’s still so beautiful and I feel my heart twist, the way it does every time the possibility of a life without her sneaks up on me.
“You really didn’t see Dr Moxley?” I ask, hoping that she’ll deny it. She’s been impossible since the diagnosis.
“I really didn’t see Dr Moxley. I’ve been busy.”
“What could possibly be more important than seeing your specialist?” I ask. “And don’t even think about mentioning the vibrator you don’t actually own again.” I know Evie doesn’t have a vibrator. I know, because I’ve always been enough. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were sex-crazed, but… no, actually, I would go that far. And then some.
Evie holds up a stack of papers. “I’ve been interviewing nannies.”
“Can’t you just go through an agency?” She’s been at this for weeks. How hard can it be to find someone who can cook, clean and drive the kids around?
Evie shakes her head, the soft, smooth skin catching the overhead light. “No. This person is going to be living with us, Nick. I need to make sure I find someone I can get along with, someone who’s the right fit.”
“She’s not a shoe, babe.”
“Thank God. Can you imagine how much longer it would take if she was?” She mock gasps and I feel my stomach tighten again at the thought of having an Evie-sized hole in my life.
“How was your day?” she asks, as she sets about wiping down the counter with an ancient cloth that must have been blue once but is now the grey of dirty dishwater.
“It was okay.” I avert my eyes as I add, “I um… I fired Steph.”
Her hand freezes, cloth-deep in white pasta water. “What did you say?”
I make my way to the fridge to read the take-away menus. It helps, not having to look at her. “I laid her off.”
“Why? Nick, you need her help at the office. You can’t do it all on your own!”
“I caught her stealing.” The words are acid on my tongue. I never lie to Evie. She falls silent and I resist the urge to look back at her. “I think I’ll get pizza,” I say. “Unless you feel like something else?”
“No,” she says in a voice as small as I feel. “I’m not that hungry.”
I draw in a deep breath and turn around. “I’ll finish this up. Why don’t you go and lie down? I’ll wake you when the food gets here.”
I watch her walk away with a heavy heart. I didn’t catch Steph stealing. Instead, I caught something far worse. I caught the end of her conversation with Evie this morning. I popped home to fetch Jesse’s boots which he’d forgotten and which I’d promised to bring to the match. I’d driven straight back to the office to draft her notice, my hands gripping the steering-wheel so tightly my knuckles had turned white.
“What is this?” Steph asked when I handed her the envelope. She’d smiled at me - she was always smiling at me. It made me uncomfortable, but I’d learned to ignore it.
“It’s your severance.”
Her perfect teeth disappeared and I tried not to enjoy the feeling of satisfaction.
Inside the envelope was a check. It was generous – too generous for someone like her – but I didn’t need a labour dispute now, not with everything else going on. “I�
�m letting you go.”
“Letting me go?” her eyes narrowed and she cast a furtive glance around the office as if looking for a hidden camera. “Is this some sort of joke?”
“No. I’ve paid you notice, but there’s no need for you to work out the month. You can pack up your things.”
“You’re firing me? On what grounds?”
I could’ve given her any number of excuses – the expense of Evie’s medical bills, the way she always found a reason to touch my shoulder when I was showing her something on my computer screen; the way she’d upset one of our biggest clients, not because she’d mistaken him for a delivery man, but because of the way she’d treated him when she’d thought that’s what he was - but I didn’t use any of those excuses. I wanted her to know the truth. Nobody spoke to Evie like that. Nobody disrespected my wife.
“On the grounds of marriage,” I replied seriously, and then I got up and left, without another word. Jesse had played in a brand-new pair of boots because I’d been too afraid to go home in such a state. I had needed time to calm down, or Evie would’ve seen right through me.