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“Her condition.”
Time stops. The world around me freezes. The blue sky, the palm trees, the bright concrete. Even the people around us, the older couple mid-conversation, the executives in summer wool sipping iced tea, the family in the pool.
Everyone stops.
Lexi studies my expression carefully. She lowers her voice to something sympathetic. “She didn’t tell me.”
She wouldn’t.
“I was at the hospital, for my yearly. And I saw her. She’s easy to recognize with that silk trench coat. Who wears a trench coat in southern California?”
“She says it’s raining men.”
“She’s a riot.” Lexi’s laugh dissolves in the air. The lightness fades. Even with the bright sun and the white concrete, the world dims in response to the reality of the situation. “I was going to say hi, but then I saw where she was going. Oncology. That’s where my mom…where we sat, as kids, watching her chemo treatment. I didn’t really understand what it was then, only that what the doctors gave her was supposed to make her better, but it made her sicker. And then she died anyway, and…she was sick before, wasn’t she? Your grandma?”
“More than ten years ago.”
“And this was more than a normal follow-up?”
“Yes.”
This time, she freezes, and everything around her moves. The breeze ruffles the white table linen. The palm trees sway. The sun shines. “Shit.” She moves with a tiny motion of her hand, a half an inch toward mine. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“Is she going to be okay or…?”
“It’s too soon to say.” I don’t know how to explain it, so I fall back to the words she repeated a million times. “The doctor insists her odds are good. And she says she’s fine, that she’s only worried about losing her hair, and about me sticking around for too long, but it’s hard to believe that.”
Lexi’s eyes fill with sympathy. “I know what you mean. Is she trying to stay strong for you, or…” She looks to her sister, watches as Deanna laughs at one of Jake’s bad jokes. “I know I should give you more grace, with the situation, but I overheard your sisters at the house once.”
“Do you eavesdrop on everyone?”
“They were yelling,” she says.
They do yell.
“And they said you’re supposed to leave soon, go back to New York, but you’re arguing about it.”
“That’s what Grandma wants,” I say.
“But you want something else?”
“I want to be here for her,” I say.
She studies me carefully. “And leave, when she doesn’t need you here anymore?”
Right. I see what she’s trying to say. “Deanna knows I don’t plan on staying here forever.”
“She could help, you know. Be here for you.”
“I know,” I say.
“But you won’t tell her?”
“I promised Grandma I wouldn’t say anything.”
“She’s falling in love with you,” she says.
