Well, at least her father got on with his life. He found a new joy in all the little motions of day-to-day living that he’d once rushed through without taking the time needed to fully appreciate them—cooking, exercise, work, even just driving around the neighborhood. She loved how happy he was, now that he’d grabbed onto his second chance with both hands....
But Nichole just didn’t feel the same way.
She couldn’t focus on the miracle of his recovery, because that meant accepting and moving past the devastation of his diagnosis—and that, she just could not do. Because now she’d learned the truth, that her world could all be taken away at any moment with hardly any notice.
Jotting it all down in her notebook, though, gave a bit of permanence to the capriciousness of life. If she could capture a thought, a need, a plan, she could control it—and if she could control it, then she didn’t feel lost. At least not quite as much.
Even so, she constantly worried that the cancer would return and take her father from her once and for all. Each day was a gift, but it was also one day closer to the time he would eventually leave her. Whether it was cancer or something else, eventually he’d go.
Knowing that terrified her.
Especially since the very same thing had happened to her friend Bridget. Her mother had no sooner celebrated five years in remission than the family got the news that it was time to restart the clock, that the cancer had come back, ready to succeed where it had failed the last time around.
Less than six months later, Bridget’s mom was dead.
Dutifully, Nichole went to the funeral and the bizarre after-party her friend had insisted on throwing afterward. She’d also gone to the funeral for Hazel’s father and Amy’s mother.
As much as cancer had taken from all of them, it had also given them something undeniably important. One another.
Nichole still remembered kind, motherly Amy introducing herself in the hospital cafeteria. She’d brought homemade cookies and offered to share. After that, they timed their coffee breaks together and eventually their parents’ appointments, too.
A couple months later, they met Bridget, the youngest one in their group. When Hazel joined them, they decided to move their meetings offsite—not just because Hazel’s father decided to refuse treatment, thus cutting her off from the hospital and the rest of the group, but also because they all needed an escape from the sterile landscape of their lives.
And so the Sunday Potluck Club was born. Every Sunday, they each brought a dish to pass and problems to share. Although the others considered Nichole the hard, cynical one, she found them to be her lifeline when navigating her fears and exploring her grief.
That was, until each of her friends lost a parent while Nichole’s dad got better. Now the thing that held them together no longer included Nichole. If her friends were jealous, they did a good job hiding it. And she doubted they were, really.
No, Nichole was the problem. Not them.
Every time she looked at any of them, she was reminded of just how unfair—just how uneven—life could be. Why had her parent been saved? And how much longer would he be safe from the vile disease that had already taken so much?
She couldn’t confide these troubles to her friends, so she sometimes wrote them in her notebook instead. Nobody would feel sorry for her, and she didn’t want them to. But she also didn’t expect them to understand her special form of suffering, of uncertainty.
The greatest irony of all, though, was that Nichole helped others heal every single day of the week in her work as a counselor. She specialized in helping military families and veterans as a social worker, which meant she dealt with a lot of post-traumatic stress.
And here she was battling the same symptoms because of the stress of a trauma that had never actually happened. Her father had lived. She needed to snap out of it, even though she’d never say such a thing to one of her charges.
When she was in college, everyone liked to say that people chose to pursue careers in psychology, social work, or other forms of counseling because they themselves were damaged. Nichole chose that work out of a fascination with both the human mind and how various socioeconomic factors could shape the outcome of a person’s life. Her education had been an intellectual pursuit, not a journey of self-discovery. She’d never considered herself “messed up” or damaged.
Until her father’s cancer had changed everything.
Now she had a wealth of knowledge on how to guide others to recovery, but still she couldn’t find a way to help herself. And she was beginning to think nobody could help her, though she was willing to give it one last try.
She took a deep breath and pushed open the door to Dr. Anderson’s office. Maybe she would have the answers Nichole had failed to find. If nothing else, she could cross one more thing off her list.
MELISSA STORM is a USA Today bestselling author of various romance and inspirational series. She loves books so much, she married fellow author Falcon Storm. Between the two of them, there are always plenty of imaginative, awe-inspiring stories to share. Melissa and Falcon also run a number of book-related businesses together, including LitRing, Sweet Promise Press, Novel Publicity, Your Author Engine, and the Author Site. When she’s not reading, writing, or child rearing, Melissa spends time relaxing at home in the company of a seemingly unending quantity of dogs and a rescue cat named Schrödinger. Melissa maintains active memberships in Romance Writers of America (RWA), American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), Novelists, Inc. (NINC), and the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). Visit her online at www.melstorm.com.
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