Page 101 of Center Ice
He updates me on the course of his mom’s treatment, a bit of which he’d already told me when we talked about the need to remodel the first floor of her house. “All the doctor’s visits and treatments are expensive, and I manage it all.” I try not to shudder at the thought of all those visits to hospitals, because this is his future, and that means it’s mine too. But watching another terrible disease take another mother away from her kids, like cancer did for mine, has my eyes filling with tears. “Hey…” he says, cupping my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m so sorry. This isn’t about me. I don’t know why I’m crying.”
He gently strokes the tears off my cheeks with his fingers. “I didn’t even think about what you’d told me about your mom and all those doctor visits and hospital stays. Is that what this is about? I’m so sorry.”
“No, I just…I know what the journey through a terrible disease is like. And I hate that you’re going to have to go through that with your mom.”
He kisses the top of my head and runs a hand up and down my back. “Parkinson’s isn’t deadly, but I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy. There will be more doctor’s appointments, and more hospital visits. In the long run, there will be live-in nurses and home health aides. I’m committed to giving her the best possible care that’s available, no matter the cost. But the end isn’t going to be pretty.”
“I hate this for you.”
“I hate this forus.Because we’re going to have to be there for her together. The good news is, she still has a lot of good days ahead of her.”
“I’m sorry about the crying,” I tell him as I use my fingertips to wipe away any leftover tears. “It’s just that, knowing what this disease is like in general, and then imaging how it’s going to impact your mom specifically, felt like very different things. I know I’ve only met her once, but I adored her and so did Graham. I hate to think he’s finally going to have a grandparent in his life, and she’s so wonderful, and then he’s going to lose her.”
“We all lose our grandparents eventually,” Drew reminds me. “I think the best we can do is to make sure he gets many happy years with her.” I nod up at him, knowing he’s right. “Which is why, after you go get Graham at Jameson’s, and I sit here and pay all these medical bills, we’re going to go to my mom’s for Sunday dinner.”
“My family usually does Sunday dinner together,” I tell him, though lately it seems like it’s been less frequent. Tonight, for example, we aren’t all getting together because Jameson and Lauren are meeting up with one of her brothers and his wife who are in town for the weekend. “But, we can probably switch off—go to my family some weekends and yours others?”
“I’d like that,” he says. “Normally, Missy does it at her house now, but she’s going to cook at my mom’s tonight. Given that Graham’s been there before, and knowing that this whole experience of meeting aunts and uncles and cousins he didn’t know he had is probably going to be overwhelming, it seemed best to have it at my mom’s, where it’s familiar for him.”
“You sure made a lot of plansbeforeasking me.” I raise an eyebrow.
He squeezes the back of my neck as he brushes a kiss across my forehead, and his touch—both supportive and loving—instantly relaxes me. “No, I made sure these plans werepossiblebefore asking you. Now I can tell Missy it’s a yes. Right?”
“Yeah. Is it crazy that I’m nervous about meeting your whole family?”
“No, but you better let me help with those nerves, anyway. I know exactly how relaxed you get after you’re done screaming my name …”
“Can I go up?” Graham asks when Drew shows him the treehouse in the backyard at his mom’s house. The exterior walls are freshly painted a deep blue-gray that matches the house, but I don’t know how old the structure actually is. The wood at the base of it isn’t fresh, except for a few added supports.
“Of course,” Drew says. “That’s what it’s here for.”
“Are you sure it’s safe?” I ask him.
“I had a structural engineer check it out, just to make sure,” he tells me.
“You know a structural engineer?”
“I know your sister,” he says, “and she stopped by the other day on her way out to that house in Wellesley that you guys are working on. She gave it her seal of approval.”
“How did you coordinate all this—the notes and the treehouse—with Jules?”
He gives me a wink. “I have my ways.” Then he turns to Graham. “Are we going in?”
“Yes!” Graham yells as he runs toward the tree. He grabs hold of the rope ladder and climbs up, and Drew follows behind him.
“You know,” Drew’s mom says from behind me, and I turn in surprise. She’d been up on the deck a moment ago, and I didn’t even hear her come down the steps. “He’s been workingon that thing every single time he’s been over here for the past few weeks.”
My heart feels like it expands in my chest. There are so many reasons I adore Drew, but watching him grow into being a dad makes me love him even more.
Love? The realization that I just used that word, even though it was only in my own thoughts, rips through me. I love Drew. I love the way he shows up for me and the way he takes care of my body. I love the way he tells me how he’s feeling, and makes me feel things I didn’t know were possible. And maybe, most of all, I love watching him with our kid—how patient and kind he is, how he wants Graham to feel loved.
“He built it?” I croak out the words through the lump in my throat. Based on the gray color of the wood at the base, I assumed the treehouse had been here for many years.
“No, it’s the one his dad built for him when he was little. Watching him fix it up and make it like new again for his own son—” Her voice breaks, and she stops speaking, instead swallowing hard as her eyes fill with tears. I wrap an arm around her shoulder, and we stand there for a moment, listening to the sound of Drew and Graham’s conversation, which we can barely hear, flowing from the treehouse while we both try not to cry.
“I got so lucky with him,” I tell her. “Graham is the best thing that ever happened to me, but having Drew in our lives and watching him get to experience fatherhood…it’s more than I ever hoped for.”
