Page 65 of His to Love
By the time I arrived back at work and dived into a socialite’s wedding plans that Simone had dropped on my desk while I was gone, I realized that while I felt better after talking to Eleanor…I was not sure if any of my uncertainties had been alleviated, or my questions answered.
—
“How is she today?” I asked Claude as I stepped into the entryway of my parents’ home.
His soft smile tilted down at the edges. “Awake now, I believe. But…” He drifted off, looking away from me, and I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him as he fought for composure. My own emotions threatened to overwhelm me when I saw him looking so heartbroken.
“I know.” I rested my hand on his forearm and squeezed gently. “You don’t have to tell me.”
His fragile, aging hand rested on top of mine. “She’ll be filled with joy to see you, bella.”
With a quick nod, I let go of him and placed my hand on the banister, heading up the stairs. My journey was long and slower than normal, most likely because I knew the end was coming closer. After my talk with Eleanor today, my emotions were still raw. I knew I didn’t have much time with my mom. Every time I saw her, her skin was paler, her voice weaker. She slept longer due to meds the home nurse continued to pump into her at an increasing rate.
Sometime soon, my mom was going to drift off into a drug-induced sleep and never return. I blinked the tears out of my eyes at the thought and forced my way up the stairs and into her room.
Brianna, my mom’s nurse, turned her head toward me and smiled as I entered. She stood with a washcloth in her hands and placed it in a bucket of water.
“She’s cool.” She whispered, not because my mom was sleeping, but because, as I was learning, that’s just how people talked around people who were dying. “I was just washing her face with some warm water. Would you like to help?”
No. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do.
“Sure,” I said anyway and walked to my mom’s side of the bed, slipping into the chair next to her.
“I’ll leave you alone.” Brianna gestured to the alert necklace my mom wore. With a simple push of a button, an alarm sounded on Brianna’s cellphone. “Call me if you need me.”
“Hey, sweetie.” My mom’s voice was gravelly and barely audible. I hated it. Hated that her breast cancer had metastasized to her brain where it was slowly killing her.
I leaned forward and brushed my lips against her cool cheek. She shivered and I leaned back, tucking in the blankets around her more firmly. Then I took the warm cloth out of the water, wringing the excess water out. With slow and tender movements, I gently brushed it along my mom’s forehead and over her exposed hands. They were bone thin.
“Having a good day?”
“Every day I open my eyes and see someone I love is a good day.” She struggled through the sentence, pausing to cough.
I couldn’t stop the tears from falling, tiny streams running down my cheeks.
She pressed her cool hand against my right cheek, running her thumb down and wiping away the wetness. “Don’t cry for me.”
“I need to tell you something.” My chin wobbled. She waited patiently for me to compose myself, only dropping her hand from my cheek to cover my hand on top of her blankets. “I can’t marry Malik.”
Her eyelids fluttered closed and a strangled breath left her lips. “I thought you’d say that.”
I turned my hand underneath hers so our palms touched and I could wrap my fingers around hers. “I don’t love him.”
She laughed softly. I hated the hoarseness in her throat. The end was coming. I could feel it taking her breath by breath, smile by smile. I wanted to run screaming from the room and demand justice for her.
“You are stubborn. Like Eleanor.”
She winked, teasing me. I choked out a laugh through the lump in my throat. “You raised me,” I accused.
“So I did.” She leaned forward and coughed so hard I reached for the wet rag and held it over her mouth. With one hand on her back, I tried to soothe her through the coughing fit that made her flinch in pain. When she settled again, both of us had eyes filled with more tears. She pulled me to her, her palms on my cheeks, and pressed her lips to my forehead. “I love every minute I spent raising you,” she whispered, her breathing now ragged and spent. “Don’t ever doubt that. Even when I was here, and you were away, there has never been a moment when you haven’t been on my mind.”
God. I lost the final thread of my self-control, the final barrier holding my emotions in check. Like a little girl, I scrambled from the chair I had been in and climbed into the bed next to my mom.
“Let me hold you, my darling daughter,” she whispered, her lips pressing against my forehead again. Her arms were frail and lacked the strength, but it didn’t matter. We lay like that for several minutes, our soft cries the only sound in the room, and her love the only thing I felt. “Marry a man you love, Gabriella. If that man can’t be Malik, make sure he loves you fiercely and would risk his life to keep you safe.”
I shook my head, unable to answer. Her weak grip tightened around me.
“Promise me,” she said, her voice suddenly firmer than it had been in weeks. “Promise me this so I don’t worry about you.”
