I’m a house of cards with two coffee cups stacked on top of each other in my hand, my bag slung over my shoulder, files pinned to my chest. My watch says I’m late and I need to start taking the stairs. They’d probably be faster than this elevator—which, let’s face it, has cursed me—that now stops on the eighth floor.
“Ah!” Richard claps his hands as he steps on. “Just the man I was looking for.”
For the past few weeks of my internship, every time I see Richard around the office, he seems happy to see me, excited, even. And it used to feel great. If being Richard’s intern wasn’t possible, I was happy to take being in his good favor.
But now it’s just getting weird.
He doesn’t ask any of the questions I’d expect him to ask about my internship or the work or the company itself. He wants to know about my personal life—not in a weird way—but he always wants to know more about Amy, how we’re doing without Mom, if I’ve talked to my dad lately. We’ve talked about baseball and my high school team and a recital he saw Amy perform in when we were sixteen.
If he did this with all the other interns it wouldn’t seem so strange. But he doesn’t talk to Mark, his own intern, as much as he talks to me, and it makes me suspicious, like when the conversation quiets the second I walk into a room and everyone does their best to avoid eye contact with me.
“Hi, Mr. Skyler.”
“Call me Dick.”
I’m...not going to do that.
“How’s it going?” I ask instead.
“I’m well, son.” He smiles at my stack of coffee cups and my tenuous grasp on the files. “Coffee fan?”
That’s another thing about Richard: for a CEO and all-around brilliant marketer, he’s a little clueless.
I glance down at them. “One is for Ms. Blunt,” I say slowly.
“Right,” he says. A sad little frown creases his forehead. “Is she getting on all right? Does she need any help preparing for her presentation?”
He jingles the change in his pocket and the sound confuses me as much as his question does. The tinkling is so out of place partnered with his concern.
I pause to stop the confused stutter from escaping. “I think she’s getting on fine?”
He turns his frown toward me. “Well, you know,” he says. “What with her mother’s cancer and all.”
Blood rushes through my ears so I don’t quite hear what he says next. His eyes glint, like he’s sharing a tasty morsel of gossip rather than the news of someone’s potential death sentence. He shakes his head in that way people have—feigned regret—his mouth still moving but all I can hear is the beep, beep, beep of my mom’s heart monitor.
My head spins as we step onto our floor. Richard walks to the Hill City lobby doors but I’m still trying to catch up with his news. And the fact that he thought he should be the one who gets to tell me.
“Are you going to be okay, son?”
I’m not your son, I almost snap.
I’m not anyone’s, really. Not anymore.
“Why...why wouldn’t I be okay?” I ask, my mouth barely forming the words past the dryness in my throat.
“Didn’t I say?” He leans back, his hands in his pockets, still jingling that change, like an unconscious tic. “She has ovarian cancer, too.”
In the silence afterward, Richard blinks. Takes a step away. I’m scowling at him, I realize. My face contorted into a gargoyle’s version of itself.
I shake my head to clear the expression, but it does nothing to extinguish the sudden urge I have to throw all the crap in my hands to the floor and deck Richard Skyler right in the mouth.
“If you need to take any time, just let me know.”
“I think I’m late,” I say, turning away. My feet feel like they move faster than the rest of my body but I still can’t get away from that conversation fast enough. Not until I’m in the hallway, standing in front of my desk outside Ms. Blunt’s office, do I let myself stop.
The pounding heart is replaced by a tightness in my chest that might be heart failure. I shake my head trying to keep the images from behind my eyes. But it all comes back.
The grayish color to her skin, the sound of her labored breathing, the smell in her bedroom. Feeling alone once she was gone and still feeling that way now, months later.
Everything in my body wants to stay out of that room. Walking in there would be reliving it all again, from the beginning. But I have to go in. And not just because I’m late for our meeting.
Corrine Blunt doesn’t like me and her reasons for that might be misguided but right now I might be the only person in this building who knows exactly what she’s thinking.
The files start to fall as I push open her office door.
“I know. I’m late. I’m sorry,” I say, grabbing and pulling at the papers so they don’t fall all over the floor. I grapple there, in pointed silence, until all of the files are straightened.
As I stand up again, I stitch myself together. My stomach climbs up my legs, my rib cage uncrushes itself, my throat no longer burns. I expect to find her at her desk with her ass parked on the edge of it, her arms crossed, her scowl firmly in place because I was supposed to be here ten minutes ago.
My gaze trips over her slouched form on the white sofa, staring at her phone. She doesn’t even acknowledge me. I creep forward slowly, placing the files on the table, her coffee in front of her.
“Ms. Blunt?”
Her eyes are red, her cheeks blotchy. She quickly looks away.
“Is...” I swallow past the lump in my throat. My twin sister is my best friend and also the most dramatic person I’ve ever met. In other words, I’m used to—and comfortable with—women crying.
But seeing Ms. Blunt cry is different. Seeing Ms. Blunt cry is like acknowledging the truth I’d tried to let myself forget: that she is not only a human being but one who can be hurt. One who has been hurt, even unintentionally, by me.
Also I need to text Amy immediately to tell her that Ms. Blunt does, in fact, have tear ducts.
“Are you all right?”
The question feels like a lie. I already know that she isn’t. Fuck Richard for playing fast and loose with something like this.
Devastating news should only be shared by the people it devastates.
“My mom,” she warbles. Quickly, she swipes her palm across her face. “She has ovarian cancer. We found out last night.” She takes a shuddering breath. “I just told my brother.”
Hearing it again doesn’t get any better. I feel off-kilter. My knees weak.
I have something to tell you, my mom said when we got home from school. She’d made cookies and set out milk, like she used to when we were kids. But my dad sat at the kitchen table and he was never home that early on a Wednesday. That’s when I knew my life was about to change. I sat down, relieved because I’d thought my parents were going to tell us they were finally getting a divorce.
My body thuds into the armchair with no arms, a delayed response to when Richard first broke the news. “I, uh. I’m sorry.” My voice still sounds like someone’s hand is wrapped around my throat.
She nods, once. Sniffles.
“Do you need to go see her or something?”
My hands started shaking at some point so I clench them into fists. I can’t fuck this up. I can’t make this worse for her. “I can cancel your presentation and—”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No. They’re in Minnesota. She doesn’t want me to come. Not yet.”
I nod, slowly.
Your mom is sick. She has cancer, my dad said. He started crying.
“What’s her name?” I ask.
I say the words louder than I intend, trying to keep the memory of my father’s sobs out of my head. I’d had no idea he cared that much.
Ms. Blunt startles.
“Your mom,” I say again. “What’s her name?”
She studies me. Long enough that I think she won’t answer. “Linda,” she says in a choked whisper.
The air in my lungs leaves me in one great gust. I smile, even though I really want to cry. I look away when I feel a prickle in my eyes.
“My mom’s name was Laura.” They’re not the same, of course, but right now they’re close enough that my stomach hurts.
This is the sickest déjà vu I’ve ever had. Why the fuck would the universe think I need to relive this?
She blinks once, twice. “Oh god. I’m so sorry. Oh god.” She drops her head into her hands. “Your mom was sick, too.”
When my mother was diagnosed, our family rallied around her. Amy and I were in our senior year of high school and Dad was working sixty-hour weeks. But he cut back to take her to all her appointments, drive me to baseball practice and Amy to ballet. And when Mom received a clean bill of health, only a year and a half later, he took us all on vacation to Hawaii.
When she was diagnosed a second time, my father split. It turned out that the whole time, since her very first doctor’s appointment, he’d been having an affair.
I felt so betrayed the day he moved out. I sat on the front steps, remembering the way he used to lift me up over his head, rubbing his beard into my neck just to hear me laugh when I was a kid. The pride that would fill my chest when he’d refer to us as his “little miracles.”
I called him a pig. Hurled the word at him as he folded himself into his car, the back seat filled with boxes of his clothes. He sighed at me, loud enough that I could hear it from the front steps. “Aren’t I allowed to be happy, Wesley?” he asked.
So I called him a pig again, a fascist pig, even though he’s been a registered Democrat since he was eighteen, and went back in the house.
“It’s fine,” I assure her but I still don’t feel quite right; the same not quite right I felt the day my mom told us. I think I’ll feel like this for the rest of the day. Maybe the rest of my life.
Tears fill her eyes again. I don’t think I’ve ever sat close enough to her before to notice her eyes. They’re like autumn. Gold and orange and red and yellow. They’re so pretty and something in them makes me reach out, clasp her hand in mine, and squeeze.
“Everything will be okay, Ms. Blunt.”
She laughs sadly, quietly. Her hand feels cold. “You can’t possibly know that.”
I shrug. “I can hope it, though.”
This time, when she looks at me, she looks at me. She studies my face. I feel her gaze over my brow, down the bridge of my nose. I feel it touch my lips, move away, then touch my lips again.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Ms. Blunt? To help?”
She doesn’t answer right away. Her eyes linger on mine and for the first time since I’ve met her, I don’t want to shrink away from her. I don’t want to fidget with my hair or adjust my socks. My first instinct isn’t to fold in on myself and make myself smaller. It’s the ninth inning and I’m squaring off against the best batter in the league and this time I’ve got nothing to hide.
So I don’t.
I let her see me. Let her see that there are no tricks up my sleeve, and that I’m not who she thought I was.
At the moment when my chest is cracking in two, I feel strong, stronger than I’ve felt in months. Strong enough for the both of us.
She sits up taller, mirroring me, like she’s feeling a little stronger, too. She picks up her coffee cup, flicking open the file on top of the stack in front of her, pulling her mock-ups into her lap. She transforms in front of my eyes, a metamorphosis into a badass butterfly.
“Yes, Mr. Chambers.” She takes a sip of her drink and scowls down at the cup. It’s probably cold by now. “You can get back to work.”
Everything will be okay, Wesley, my mom said.
You can’t possibly know that. I wiped at my face. I didn’t want my dad to know I was crying, too. My mom smiled and said, I can hope it, though.