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My dad sighs, putting the letter down. He looks up at me. “Well. Guess there’s no point in hiding this anymore.”
Oh, no… I slide forward, leaning my elbows on the table.
“Dad.” My voice cracks with emotion. “Are you okay?”
He leans back, putting the letter down. “I am. I will be.”
“What does that mean?”
He shuts his eyes. “About a year and a half ago, I went to the doctor because something wasn’t… right.”
My eyes widen. For my dad to voluntarily go see a doctor, it has to be bad. “Okay?”
“He found something.”
“Dad, you have to tell me more. What did he find?” There’s true panic in my voice.
He leans forward and grabs my hand. “I’m really okay, Nora. It’s gone now. They told me I had… prostate cancer,” he mutters. “Had a surgery pretty soon after, and it went away. But I’ve been having to go back in for checkups and stuff, and honestly…” He sighs. “Honestly, Bluebird, I’m just not what I used to be, when it comes to doing stuff around the farm.”
My jaw is practically on the floor. Emotions surge through me. Am I mad that he didn’t tell me he had prostate cancer? Abso-freaking-lutely.
“You didn’t tell me,” I say, my voice quivering with tears.
My dad shakes his head, squeezing my hand. “No. I sure didn’t, Bluebird.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know, baby. I just… you were having such a good time at school. I didn’t want you to come rushing home and leave off in the middle of your degree. Didn’t want you to worry about me.”
“Obviously, I would have worried about you! You have cancer!” I can barely see now, my eyes foggy with tears.
“Had, baby. Had cancer,” he says in a low voice. “I’ve been doing real good. All the scans come back negative, or so they tell me, and that’s all… that’s good. It’s real good.”
I take a huge breath, then get up to blow my nose. When I sit back down, I take another deep, sucking breath. “Tell me everything.”
An hour later, I’ve practically cried my eyes out, but at least I know everything.
Dad’s right. According to the document he’s showing me, he’s cancer-free. Not even a scrap in his body, but he still has to go in for routine screenings. The surgery was successful, and I literally had no idea that he had gone in for an actual surgery. The shock of that feels… raw, still. Like a little cut in my chest that just won’t stitch back together.
I drum my fingers on the table and look at him. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I say finally. “But I really wish that you would have told me.”
“I know, Nora.”
“I could have handled it.”
He sighs. “No child should have to ‘handle’ losing both of their parents to illness.”
I shut my eyes. My mom’s sickness was different. She went for a swim and caught some kind of freak bacteria that caused her body to shut down, one organ at a time, in the span of forty-eight hours.
When I open my eyes again, I really look at my dad. What I see makes my chest squeeze, and that little wound opens all over again.
I have always seen my dad as someone infallible. Larger-than-life, more than human. He’s the strongest, best, kindest, and most awesome man in the world. He still is.
But as my eyes really look at him, I see things that I might have missed. The way that his hair, once a light, sandy blonde, is getting lighter, and it’s almost silver. The deep grooves in the side of his face. The way he puts his hand out, and the skin looks… thinner, somehow. Like an old man’s.
He leans forward, his chin tucked, and I really see it then. My dad is getting older.
He’s not ancient, by any means. I think he turns fifty-five soon. But fifty-five years of ranching is… It’s a hard life.
