Drew’s anxiety began to ramp up the moment they drove past the old post office with the WELCOME TO HISTORIC HYE sign painted on the brick facade. It had been a year since he’d come here. If not for Elias running the biggest guilt trip on him, Drew would have gone the rest of his life avoiding this picture-perfect town that had captured his mother’s heart.
It’s not that he had anything against Hye. In truth, he was grateful to this tiny town and the tiny number of people who lived here. It was quaint and safe and had provided his mother with the kind of peaceful existence she’d dreamed of after years of running from one place to the next. The residents had embraced her as one of their own, and Drew had reciprocated in kind, becoming a silent benefactor to Hye and several of the small towns that dotted this stretch of highway 290.
He’d anonymously funded the science lab at the high school, bought new computers for the local library, provided a new roof for the veterans’ home, and paid off the mortgages of more than a dozen struggling families. He’d given to just about everything in this area.
Except the local hospital.
Drew tightened his hands on the steering wheel. His biggest regret would forever be the lack of attention he’d paid to the local hospital, naively believing that it was adequately managed.
Because of that hospital, just saying the word Hye left a bad taste in his mouth. It was difficult for him to disassociate the town from the place where his mother had first sought treatment for the cancer that she’d kept from him. It was hard for him not to blame their lack of resources for being a contributing cause to her dying at fifty-three years old. After everything she’d endured because of his father, she had deserved to live a long and happy life.
As he turned onto the road that would take him to his mother’s house, the turmoil in his gut had Drew on the verge of losing the light breakfast he’d shared with London before leaving the hotel this morning. If it had been at all possible, he would have gladly paid Larissa to come to Texas and take care of this for him. But Elias was right; this was a task that only Drew could perform. How could he allow someone else to decide which of his mother’s possessions he wanted to keep?
There had been countless times over the past few months that Drew had picked up the phone to call the Realtor and tell her to just box everything up and put it in storage. Maybe if he gave himself another year or two, he could eventually bring himself to go through her things. But it would be pushing off the inevitable, and in his heart, Drew knew that a thousand years wouldn’t be enough time to heal the wounds he suffered. Or to assuage the guilt he felt when he thought about his mother’s final months.
He pulled the Cayenne up to the yellow house with moss-green shutters and felt his heart lurch.
“How adorable,” London said. “I love a carriage-style house.”
She was out before Drew had the chance to open his door. He took his time leaving the safety of the car. London met him at the front bumper and grabbed hold of his hand.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m good.”
“It’s okay for you not to be okay,” she said. “In fact, I would expect you to not be okay.”
“I’ll never be one hundred percent okay when it comes to facing the fact that she’s gone,” Drew said honestly. “But I need to do this.” He squeezed her hand.
“Is this your first time returning to her home since she passed?”
He nodded again.
She wrapped her arms around him, and Drew’s immediately closed around her. He melted into her hug, clinging to the meaning behind it and drawing in every single ounce of comfort she offered.
“Thanks for coming with me,” he whispered against her ear. “I promise this won’t take long.”
“We have the whole day, Drew. Take however long you need.”
He reluctantly released her, and she took hold of his hand once again. Together, they traveled up the walkway. Drew fished the single flat key from his wallet and prepared for the assault on his emotions when he walked through the door.
It was worse than he’d imagined.
The house still smelled like his mom, a combination of Bath & Body Works Cucumber Melon scent and whatever type of hairspray she used. It had been over a year; there was no way those scents still lingered in this house. Yet, just being here evoked memories that clutched Drew’s throat in a vise grip.
He let out a slow breath and steeled himself against the pain.
“Can I just say that I adore your mother’s sense of style?” London said as she looked around the living room.
As he took in the decor, Drew realized how similar the pieces were to what he’d noticed in London’s house yesterday.
“If you see anything you want, just let me know,” he said. “I won’t be taking any of the furniture. It will all stay here or be donated. Except for the vanity in her bedroom. I don’t even know what I’m going to do with it, but I remember how excited she was the day she bought that thing. It was the first piece of furniture she bought from a real furniture store, and not from a thrift shop or secondhand store.”
London squeezed his fingers. “Maybe you can put it in your bathroom. I hear it has an amazing view,” she said in a teasing voice.
Drew appreciated her attempt to bring some levity into the space. She always knew exactly what he needed.
He spotted a ziplock bag with colored Post-it notes and Sharpie markers, just as Elias had told him he’d find. There was a handwritten note inside, letting him know which color meant keep, donate, or toss.
Most of this would be donated, because knowing his mother, she’d already tossed anything that was in unusable shape. Not having many possessions for much of her life had taught her to take care of the little she did have, even when her son could buy her anything she could ever want.
“Wow,” London said as she browsed the pictures on the wall above the rolltop desk. “Someone was very proud of you.”
Drew came up behind her, perusing the framed photos of him from high school, college, and grad school. He hadn’t bothered to attend the graduation ceremony when he received his MBA—he was too busy working—but his mom had made him take pictures in his cap, gown, and honors stole at one of the last remaining Sears Portrait Studios.
“You know how you said you did everything to make your dad proud?” Drew asked. “It was the same between me and my mom. Except she had no problem showing me just how proud she was. She attended every basketball game and every debate match.”
“I remember,” London said. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Did I ever tell you about the time she tried to hook us up?”
Drew’s head snapped back. “What? When?”
“The senior awards banquet. She was right behind me in the buffet line, and she spent the entire time trying to convince me that you would be the perfect boyfriend. She said smart people like the two of us should be together because we could match wits with each other.”
He barked out a laugh. “She never told me that, but it definitely sounds like something my mom would do. What did you say?”
“That I would rather eat dirt than go on a date with her son,” she answered.
Drew slapped a hand to his chest. “The daggers, London. The way you sling them deserves a medal.”
“I’ll admit that I was harsh, but if you’ll recall, you’d just won the award for Student of the Year. Let’s just say that I was a bit salty when it came to you.”
He chuckled. “I guess Mom was lucky that’s all you said to her.”
“But that wasn’t all she said to me,” London said. “She told me that she wouldn’t be surprised if I changed my mind one day. Prophetic, don’t you think?” London grabbed his hands and brought them up to her lips. She pressed a gentle kiss to the backs of his fingers. “I can only hope that she’s smiling down on us now.”
A thick, weighty knot of emotion formed in Drew’s throat. He fought the urge to drop to one knee and propose marriage. She would laugh it off as a joke, but he was as serious about his feelings for her as he had ever been about anything in this life or the next.
He was fucking in love with London Kelley.
It wasn’t the infatuation he’d felt back in high school. This was true and bone deep, and it wasn’t going away. Drew felt it with his entire being. Even when he eventually went back to New York, the love he felt for London would remain with him. Even if she couldn’t give him everything he wanted, he hoped she was willing to give him time to nurture what was blossoming between them. That would be enough.
For now.
“I know she is,” Drew finally answered. He leaned over and pressed a kiss against her soft lips.
“Okay, it’s time to stop stalling,” London said. “Give me those sticky notes. You talk, I’ll write.”
She followed him from room to room, commenting on his mother’s style and the items he chose to keep. There wasn’t much. Mostly things he knew his mother had cherished, like the headband with a flower made out of mother-of-pearl stones—a gift from her own mother—and the afghan she’d knitted years ago in the Barbara Jordan High School colors of orange and blue.
“Wait, your mom was a yarn lover too?” London asked when they stepped into the bright yellow craft room. The right side of the room was made up of dozens of cubbies to house all her yarn. There were no less than five hundred skeins, all arranged by color.
“My mom started knitting when she found out she was pregnant with me,” Drew said. He walked over to the closet where she kept a supply of baby blankets. “Baby blankets were her specialty. She would send them to hospitals, and women’s shelters, and she always kept a few on hand for gifts.”
“The craftsmanship is breathtaking.” London ran her hand along the blankets. “I’m sorry I didn’t get to know her better.”
“She would have loved you. Despite how badly you treated her son,” he added with just enough humor in his tone to show her that he was only teasing.
But when she looked up at him, her face was void of amusement. “What type of cancer was it?” she asked in a soft voice.
“Abdominal,” Drew answered.
“Was it pancreatic? Gastric?”
“Primary…”
“Primary peritoneal,” she finished for him. She winced. “It’s rare. And it can be aggressive.”
“It is and it was,” Drew said. He took a couple of steps back and perched against his mom’s craft table. “It all happened pretty quickly. The fact that she kept it from me for months didn’t help. I could have gotten her better care earlier if I’d known she was sick.” Drew shook his head as disgust welled up in his throat. “No. I’m putting the blame on her, when it belongs here.” He pointed to his chest.
London dropped her head back and sighed up at the ceiling. “I’m going to regret asking this question, because I just know your answer is going to piss me off.” She leveled him with an irritated look. “Why are you to blame for your mother’s cancer?”
“I don’t blame myself for her cancer. I know I’m not the reason she got sick. But if I had been here, if I’d visited more often and paid attention to more than just my work, I would’ve known something was wrong. I was too caught up in my own bullshit to even notice that she wasn’t herself when we had our Sunday phone calls.”
His words hung heavy in the stagnant air. Several long, excruciating moments drifted by before London said, “Have you gotten it all off your chest, or is there more?”
“For a physician, you can be just a little too blunt, you know that?”
“First of all, I’m a surgeon, and we’re notorious for not having the best bedside manner. I, however, have an excellent bedside manner when it comes to my patients.” She held her hands up. “And I apologize for being blunt, because I get it, Drew. I do. I’m the queen of holding stuff in until I just erupt and spread my word vomit all over the place.”
“That’s graphic,” he said. “Is that what I just did?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “And I would tell you that nothing about your mother’s illness was your fault, but based on your tone it’s obvious that you’ve already convinced yourself that you’re the world’s worst son.”
“Pretty much,” he said, echoing her words.
London closed the distance between them and covered his cheeks with her palms.
“You are not,” she said. “You have a demanding career, and you were a thousand miles away.”
She was trying to soothe him, and she was doing a damn good job. But he didn’t deserve coddling—not even London’s somewhat bristly brand of it.
“I purposely stayed away, even though I knew I should have visited more often. By the time I found out about her cancer, it was too late.”
“You purposely didn’t visit your mother? Did you two get into a fight or something?”
“No, nothing like that. Never that.” He hunched his shoulder. “I hated Texas and didn’t like coming here.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you have against Texas? Texas is great—at least Austin is.”
Drew shook his head. He started to speak, then stopped, because he honestly wasn’t sure how to explain something that had never made much sense to him.
“I was jealous of it. It borders on absurd, but that’s the only way I can describe my aversion to this place.”
“You were jealous of a state?” she asked slowly, a fair amount of disbelief in her voice.
“Yeah.” He laughed, but none of this was funny. “Did you know I went to fourteen different schools before we moved to Austin?” London’s eyes went wide. Drew nodded. “Fourteen schools, from kindergarten through the eleventh grade. Five different states, nine different cities.” He opened his legs a bit wider to make room for her.
“That’s a lot of change for a kid to go through,” she said, stepping into the space he’d created.
“It was, but no matter where we were, I knew that I was the central thing in my mom’s world. Those places we lived in, they were just locations. Nothing special. It was no big deal for her to pick up and leave, because as long as she had me, she had everything she needed.
“And then we landed in Texas.” He gnawed on the inside of his lip for a moment. “I don’t know what it was about this place that she found so enchanting, but it captured a piece of her heart unlike anything I’d ever seen. I don’t like to think that I was so selfish that I didn’t want to share my mom with anyone, even a place—”
“But didn’t she raise your uncle? You shared her with him, didn’t you?”
“She did, which is why E and I are more like brothers than uncle and nephew.”
“Yet you were upset that your mom finally found a place that she loved enough to put down roots?”
“I told you it didn’t make sense,” Drew said. “What makes it even worse is that it was the perfect time for her to settle down. I was finishing high school and heading off to college. Why wouldn’t I want her to finally settle down in a place she loved?”
London folded her arms across her chest and tipped her head to the side. “I only did one psych rotation, and it was very early in my residency, so you can take this with a grain of salt. Actually, it’s probably best that you take it with a grain of salt, because that psych rotation was the only time I doubted myself as a doctor.”
“But…” Drew asked, because that but hung in the air like the scent of microwave popcorn a half hour after it’s been popped.
“But is it possible you were upset because she was finally settling down? Because after so much upheaval—after being uprooted time and time again—she finally chose to settle down just as you were leaving?”
Drew would be lying if he said he hadn’t thought the same.
He blew out a breath and shrugged. “Who knows? I’m too much of a coward to see a therapist because I’m afraid everything I’ve suspected about myself will turn out to be true. But it makes sense that I would resent that she decided to stay in Texas after moving so many times. The one thing I do know is that I allowed this aversion I have to the state to keep me away. I’d fly my mom and Elias up to New York, but I could have visited more.”
“So, what are you doing here now, Drew? You avoided coming here for so long, yet you’re working the account at County? You have partners in your firm who could have taken on this job, don’t you?”
Damn, she was quick. Then again, this was London Kelley, one of the smartest people he’d ever known.
“I’m here because I want to make sure County can provide the best care possible to the people who rely on it,” he said. “I guess you can say it has become my mission. One of the reasons I left my hedge fund was to focus on helping hospitals in rural areas and underserved communities operate at their best.
“Even though I could afford to send her anywhere in the world for treatment, my mom used the small hospital that served this area for her normal checkups. I mean, why wouldn’t she? It’s not as if you go see a specialist if there’s nothing wrong. But because of the type of cancer she had, the scan of her stomach lining required more sensitive equipment than what was available, and months went by before they diagnosed it. Who knows what could have happened if they’d discovered the cancer earlier?”
“I’m sorry, Drew, but if it was aggressive, it wouldn’t have made much difference,” London said.
“That’s what her doctors said, but I could have brought in specialists. I would have paid for—”
“An acute case of primary peritoneal cancer doesn’t care how much money you have in the bank. Telling yourself that you could have done something to prolong her life, when in actuality there was nothing that you could have done, is unnecessary torture.” She captured his hands again and gave them a firm squeeze. “Don’t do this to yourself. Your mother loved you. She was proud of you. And by all accounts, she was extremely happy with her life in this adorable little house, and adorable little town. Find the blessings in that, and throw the rest of that shit away.
“Just so you know, I’m mentally jotting this down so that I can repeat it to myself, because that was some grade A advice I just gave you.”
He laughed in spite of himself.
“Yes, it was.” He pressed a kiss to her lips. “And since you’re mentally jotting down good advice, add what I told you earlier about massages to that list.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, I will. But not every week.”
“No, London. Every week. If not the massage, then find some way to decompress that’s just for you every single week. I think about how my mom was quick to grab Robitussin and ginger ale whenever Elias or I so much as sneezed, but when she was sick, she just pushed through it. Who knows how long she wrote off her pain as just a stomachache.”
London trailed her fingers along a green-and-white baby blanket. “You’re probably right. I see it at the hospital all the time. Women, in general, but mothers, in particular, focus so much on taking care of their family that they ignore their own health.”
“I’m sure it’s the same for hardworking pediatric surgeons.”
“You know, it’s not so much the massage, or the crocheting, or taking walks in the park next to the hospital that’s the problem,” London said. “It’s knowing that there are other things I should be doing. My Friday night get-togethers with Taylor and Samiah are supposed to be about taking me time, but often I’m sitting there thinking of charts I should be working on, or my patients waiting for surgery, or the dozen other things that are more important than me sipping on a margarita and talking about Taylor’s latest antics.”
Drew walked up to her and cradled her face in his palms. “You can’t be everything to everybody, and you can’t do everything, London. And you cannot feel guilty about taking time for yourself. If there is nothing else you take away from this weekend, let that be it. You deserve to have a life outside of that hospital, away from your responsibilities. Promise me you will take time for yourself. I learned the hard way that time is the most precious commodity on this earth, and once it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“I promise,” she whispered.
Drew kissed her again. Partly because kissing her was one of his favorite things to do, and partly because if his lips were pressed against hers, then the words I love you were less likely to come out of his mouth.
He still wasn’t sure whether she was ready to hear those words from him just yet. And the last thing he wanted to do was mess this up.
He’d been patient all these years, what was a little bit longer?