I shook my head. “That’s urban legend. That can’t be real.”
“It is real. It’s documented.”
“You can’t just imagine a tumor away!”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But there’s certainly no harm in trying.”
Twenty-three
AND SO WEwent home. And made supper. And sat in the garden while the sun went down. There was nothing else to do.
It hit me in strange waves. There were moments when I felt gutted, and moments when I felt almost normal; moments when I felt at peace with Diana’s acceptance, and moments when I felt panicked to do something; moments when I felt like somehow, when all was said and done, everything would be okay, and moments when it seemed like nothing would ever be okay again.
Remember when I was all about trying to keep my life from getting destabilized?
Yeah, that whole concept got shot to hell.
I had four days before my next shift. Four days to figure out how to face the rest of my life. So I just helped Diana weed her garden, and I helped her make supper. We looked through old photo albums and sang Christmas carols, even though it wasn’t Christmas. She showed me her old diaries and old portfolios from art school. She walked me through her jewelry box and tried to educate me about which long-gone relatives had owned which rings and necklaces and charm bracelets. Wedrank a lot of coffee and made a lot of tea. We made sure not to miss the sunsets.
I tried, with at least partial success, to savor the time we had left. That was the goal, anyway—to enjoy her living presence near me and not fixate so much on the sorrow to come that I forgot to pay attention. To learn to make the best of things. As fast as I could.
Every night that week, after supper, the rookie showed up at the front door, wanting to check on us, or do something for us, or help.
But I wouldn’t answer it.
He came anyway, though, and left tubs of scones and muffins and cookies for comfort.
We brought them in later and arranged them on the kitchen table. But I couldn’t eat.
Finally, on the last night before our next shift, he knocked—and kept knocking.
“Me again,” he said, when I finally opened the door.
He’d been texting me, too—to see how my mom was, and how my ankle was, and how I was doing about the brick. He’d left a few messages. But I hadn’t answered anything.
I wasn’t ignoring him, exactly. I just had no idea what to say.
How could I put any of this into words?
The sight of him there, in the doorframe, felt like salvation. I wanted to grab onto him like a life preserver in an empty ocean.
Instead, I made myself keep treading water. If I stopped, I’d never start again.
“You can’t be here,” I said to him, like the threshold was some great barrier neither of us would ever cross.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I can’t. You know? It’s too much.”
“I know. You just got this stalker thing dealt with—I hope—and the last thing you need is me showing up like a pain in the ass.”
“It’s not that.”
“I just need to see you.”
I shook my head.
“Five minutes. Please.”
