Page 24 of Our Little Secret
“Sure.” Brooke drove to the street, waited for several buses to pass, then melded into traffic.
“What happened to you?”
“What?” Brooke glanced over at her daughter.
“Your face. It’s all messed up.” Marilee’s expression was a mixture of worry and revulsion.
“Oh.” Brooke caught a glimpse of her visage in the mirror. Saw the cut on her chin and the raspberry on her cheek that makeup failed to completely hide. “I fell down.”
“You fell down?” Marilee repeated and turned on the radio, already set to her favorite station.
“Yeah, I was running and didn’t see a curb, tripped, and down I went.”
“Really?” Marilee asked skeptically as she turned up the volume. Taylor Swift’s most recent hit was playing.
“Really.”
“You have to be careful.”
“I know.”
Marilee’s eyebrows drew together. “So—are you okay?”
“You mean other than my pride being wounded?” She flashed a smile she didn’t feel as she turned on the windshield wipers. “I’ll live.”
“Geez, Mom, maybe you’re too old to be jogging.”
“Seriously? I’m thirty-four. Prime of my life!”
“Yeah, but didn’t Grandma die at like thirty?”
“Thirty-eight.” Brooke hated to think about it, how the cancer had come quickly, barely diagnosed and then Carole Fletcher was gone. Brooke had been a little younger than Marilee when she lost her mother. Even now, her heart twisted with that particular pain reserved for the loss of a parent. And despite her bravado, it wasn’t lost on her that she would soon reach the age when her mother had passed.
“And her mom?”
“No, no.” Brooke shook her head. “Nana made it to fifty-eight.” Cancer too had taken Mary O’Hara quickly because she relied on faith, didn’t believe in “popping pills for everything that ails you,” and had ignored the symptoms. By the time she’d been diagnosed, it was too late to save her.
“So she wasreallyold.”
Brooke slid her daughter a glance. “I suppose at fourteen you’d think anyone in their fifties was ancient, but no, it’s not all that old.”
“So she didn’t get sick when she was younger? I mean like you?”
“No.”
Brooke had been lucky. Last year’s lumpectomy had been a success and she was seemingly cancer-free.
So far.
She had the urge to cross her fingers but didn’t.
“So, if you’re not too old to jog, you need to be more careful,” Marilee repeated, and some of her ever-present petulance seemed to have dissipated. When she turned to Brooke her eyes showed genuine concern.
“I’ll try to remember that.” Brooke turned the wheel and steered the Explorer onto the tree-lined street they called home. Their house came into view. Eyeing the Victorian situated across the street from a park, she remembered those happier days and tried not to think what their lives had become. What was it Nana had said? “For every problem there’s a solution. You just have to look for it and pray. God will show you the way.”
She hoped so.
Dear Lord, she hoped so.
