That resembled a guilt trip. “You didn’t answer my question. What do you have to lose?”
“I risk losing my son’s respect. If I lose it, I’m not sure how much time I have to regain it.”
I focus on my toes because I’m lost on what else to say or do. That’s wrong. She’s divulging something personal with me, I can reveal something personal back. Something that I’ve been dying to purge since it happened. “I saw my mom and Eli hug at that warehouse.”
I hug my legs and rest my chin on my knees. It doesn’t sound like much, but witnessing that wounded me. More than the picture of me and Olivia. More than seeing Mom’s name on the tree. Maybe more than when I thought I was being kidnapped.
“It wasn’t a hey-let’s-hug-because-we-made-a-kid-together hug. It was a real hug. Intimate. The type that she should only share with my dad.”
A cold hand on my arm and I glance over at Olivia. “Whatever you find out, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t love you or your adoptive father.”
My frown deepens because that’s exactly what I’m afraid it means. “If this is as big as you make it out to be, then isn’t it possible that she’s lied about everything?” Integrity issues, as I explained to Oz.
An ache slices through me at the thought of her not loving my father and Olivia must sense it as she squeezes my arm. “I swear I’m not doing this to hurt you. I just want you to understand your past.”
Moisture stings my eyes and I rock slightly in a poor attempt to prevent tears from escaping. “All of this feels an awful lot like hurt.”
“Unfortunately, that’s something your mom and Eli were good at. Hurt. I’m trying to stop them from passing that hurt down to you.” Her hand slides along my arm until she reaches the fingers that are still clasped around my legs.
“Then maybe they were right to hide this from me. If what you’re saying is true, then maybe keeping the past a secret is the best way to stop me from hurting because this sucks.”
“The pain the two of them created was built on secrets and lies and regardless of what they think, the past would have caught up to you. Hiding and denying does nothing but cultivate the fear.”
“You sound a lot like my dad.”
Olivia smiles. “I told you already, he’s a good man.”
“He is,” I say. “He’s the best.”
I loosen my grip on my knees and let Olivia take my hand. She lowers our joint fingers to the comforter. While Olivia still scares the crap out of me, this moment feels right. Like how it should be between a grandmother and her granddaughter.
“I’m assuming Eli and your mom didn’t know you saw them hug?”
“No.” My face becomes a space heater. “I blackmailed Oz into letting me eavesdrop.”
She laughs so loudly that I’m both startled and amused.
“You are your mother’s daughter,” she says between breaths.
My eyes narrow on her and she holds up a hand. “I mean that in a good way. Meg and I were close once, which is why I’m assuming she sent you to the wake.”
Mom and Olivia were close once. I test the words in my head, but the entire sentence tastes sour. How could they go from being cozy to the bitterness they now share?
“We sat on this bed once—holding hands. In fact, she was the same age as you.”
I peer at Olivia out of the corner of my eye. “That sounded an awful lot like sharing. Are you sure you don’t want to go ahead and spill?”
She chuckles. “It’s late, I’m tired, and if I’m going to say anything else that will get me into trouble I might as well say this. Your father, Eli, he wanted you.”
A wave of agony devastates my soul. “My mother’s a great mom.”
It needed to be said. Even if she’s lied to me. Even if my worst fears are confirmed and my mother caused these people pain.
Weary and defeated, I collapse back onto the pillow. It’s soft and comfortable and Olivia pats my hand. The air conditioner blows on the bed and I’m suddenly envious of Olivia and her blanket.
“I won’t say there isn’t bad blood between us and your mother,” says Olivia, “but it would be tough to argue that she didn’t do a good job raising you.”
Was that a white flag? “See, it wasn’t so hard to say something nice, now, was it?”
She smirks. “Don’t get used to it.”
What’s shocking is that I’m not swamped with animosity for her, nor is there any pulverizing terror that I’m next to the lady who voluntarily lay in a casket. And what’s kick-in-the-head surprising? I’m genuinely grinning. I notice the bruises dotting the inside of Olivia’s arm and my happy moment fades. “How sick are you?”
Olivia produces the sad smile. The type where the corners of the mouth tilt up, but the lower lip is yanking down. The one my mom does when she pretends everything is okay and it isn’t. My stomach cramps seeing it on Olivia.
“Sick enough that I threw my own wake.”
A shiver runs through me and I push the conversation forward, away from coffins. “What type of cancer?”
“You’ve been hanging out too much with Oz. He focuses on details he can’t change, never on what he can.” Olivia’s eyelids flutter and my time with bio-grandma is coming to an end. I extend my legs to slide off her bed and Olivia stops me. “Stay.”
“But you’re tired.”
“Stay,” she demands in the kind of voice that causes me to immediately comply. “I’ll give you another clue tomorrow. This one should be easy to figure out, especially if you can convince Oz to help you.”
“You realize that this is a messed-up scavenger hunt, right? You have to admit it’s a little deranged. What do you do for birthday parties around here? Load up piñatas with snakes? You are, by far, the strangest group of people I have ever met.”
I expect Olivia’s witty comeback, but nothing. Odds are she’s heard the same distant rumble of motorcycles that has caught my attention. “Maybe that’s Eli.”
And what’s weird is the happy anticipation of seeing him again. Does it make me a bad daughter if I’m looking forward to the next few days?
The sheets shift and then my hand begins to tremble. A deadly cold overtakes my body. It’s not me that’s shaking. It’s Olivia. Her body flinches uncontrollably. Quaking in a way that’s unnatural. Her eyes roll back in her head and her arm drops off the bed.
I hover over her as I hold on to her hand. “Olivia!” She continues to shake and panic bursts inside me. “Olivia!”
Terrified to leave her, unsure what to do, I turn my head and scream, “Oz! I need you!”
Her body still twitches under my touch and she needs help and I don’t know what to do. Her body moves closer to the edge and I lean over her to prevent her from slipping off. My eyes search frantically for a phone and when I come up empty my head whips over my shoulder again. “Oz! Plea—”
My cry is ripped short as a large man in black leather barrels into the room. Fear spikes into my chest and as I shield Olivia with my body, he speaks. “How long has she been seizing?”
I blink at the familiarity of the voice. It’s Cyrus. My grandfather. Her husband. He rushes to Olivia’s side of the bed and his eyes dart to mine. “How long, Emily?”
“A few seconds,” I answer. A dip on the bed and Eli’s by my side. He attempts to tear me away from Olivia, but I dig my fingers in. If I let go she’ll fall. If I let go she could die. My throat burns and wetness fills my eyes. “I turned the air conditioner on and I shouldn’t have and we talked and this happened.”
“Holy fuck,” another guy mutters as he enters the room then yells down the hallway, “Someone call Izzy.”
The convulsing stops. Cyrus crouches next to Olivia and brushes a finger slowly along her cheek. “Olivia?”
She opens her eyes, but there’s no awareness t
here and what frightens me more is how her hand remains lifeless in mine. “Is she okay?”
Cyrus looks up at me and then behind me. Nausea rages in my stomach. This man is huge. Death-defying. He should be answering yes. He should be able to fix her. That’s how strong he is, but he’s not fixing her. His eyes are glassed over and he’s a mirror of Olivia—broken.
“You were real strong staying with her,” says Cyrus in this gentle voice. Too gentle. So gentle that I check to make sure that Olivia’s chest rises with air. It does. Her eyes are still open, but this feels final. “Why don’t you let me take over?”
“She asked me to stay.” My voice sounds hollow. Echoed. As if I’m floating. Detached from the entire situation.
Fingers in a black glove slide along the hand I’ve linked with Olivia’s and then slowly extract my hand from hers. In a heartbeat, my body moves and I’m in the arms of someone as they carry me out of Olivia’s room.
Oz
EVEN IN ELI’S arms as he carries her away, Emily’s hand stays outstretched toward Olivia. Tears pool in her eyes and a pulse of protectiveness races through me. I step forward and Dad pounds a hand on my chest with such power that it nearly knocks the wind out of me. “Let Eli take care of his daughter.”
“Emily screamed for me. She wants me.” She needs me. Her panicked voice still rings in my head. She called for me right as Dad, Eli and Cyrus walked up the porch after returning from their run. It was almost a fight as the four of us raced to get to Emily and Olivia.
Dad’s towering over me like he’s willing to take a swing and he motions to my fisted hands. “Get it together.”
I ram a hand through my hair, trying to silence the noise in my mind. Running in here, seeing Emily losing her shit, watching as Olivia’s body twitched like she was some washed-up fish on the shore. I bend over, slamming my hands on my thighs. Jesus. This isn’t it. This can’t be it.
“How far out is the ambulance?” I ask.
Cyrus is still crouched on the floor next to Olivia. His forehead rests on the mattress and Olivia weakly raises her hand and touches his gray hair. “You have to be strong for me.”
He doesn’t lift his head, only shakes it. I rock with the sight. Olivia makes a shushing sound that pierces my heart.
“How far out is the ambulance?” I demand.
No one says a thing and, except for Cyrus, they all stare at me. My father, Hook and Olivia. Each one shares a haunted expression. The type where they know you’re the only one who hasn’t received news of a death.
“Pigpen called your mom,” says Dad. “She’ll be here in a few minutes.”
The world sways. “I didn’t ask that. I asked about the ambulance.”
“There’s no ambulance,” Dad responds in a low tone.
“Why the hell not?”
“The tumor’s grown,” Olivia whispers. “And the cancer’s spread to my blood.”
I turn away as my eyes burn and I prop both hands on the wall to keep myself up. What the hell?
“We found out not long after Emily came, but decided to keep it quiet.” Dad’s footsteps tap against the wooden floor and a heavy hand gently presses on my shoulder. “Olivia wants to die here, son.”
Shit. Just shit. “They said they’d do another round of chemo.”
“It’s over, Oz,” Olivia says.
I smack my hand against the wall and my palm stings. “It’s not.”
“Jonathan,” she whispers.
Fuck this. “No!”
Dad squeezes my shoulder and I recoil with my hands in the air as a visual stop. “This is bullshit!”
My gaze immediately hits Olivia. She presses a hand to her heart, like she did when she lowered herself to my height and explained that it was time for me to go live with Mom and Dad. Just like she did when she wiped my tears away and explained that this would always be my home. That I would always be her family.
Ten years later and when I tell someone I’m coming home, it’s not to the trailer down the way, it’s to here. Olivia is my home.
“Why are you giving up?” I beg. “You swore to me you’d never give up.”
Olivia closes her eyes. A single tear escapes and slowly slides down her cheek.
She’s giving up. The person I love more than anyone else is giving up on living. She’s giving up on me.
My insides twist and all of the building hurt bursts through into anger as I punch open the door in her room that leads to the porch. The cooler air of the night crashes around me as I clutch the railing and lean over.
She’s dying. The person I love the most in my life is going to die.
Emily
MY BODY IS set on something soft and then there’s the click of a lamp. The smell of leather overwhelms me when black gloves frame my face.
“Is she dead?” My voice isn’t my own. It’s too high-pitched. It’s too hysterical.
Eli fills my vision and my body starts to tremble. His hold on my chin is firm and gentle and it prevents me from jumping off the bed and returning to Olivia.
“No, Emily, she’s alive. This happens. Not a lot, but it happens.”
“So this is normal?”
Eli maintains eye contact, but he doesn’t respond, which is the worst type of answer. She’s dying. This is his mother and he should be with her and not me. “You should go to her.”
“No, I’m staying here.”
She’s dying. Olivia is dying. Her body is breaking down, no one can fix her, and I don’t want her to die—I want her to live. My lower lip quivers. “She’s your mom.”
“And you’re my daughter.”
I detest dead things. Dead things are cold and unmoving and terrifying, but Olivia is very much alive and I need her to stay alive. She may not be the cookie-baking type. She might scare me and act crass and rude, but I like her. I briefly close my eyes as pain rips through me. I more than like her, and I haven’t spent enough time with her. Not enough time...
“Dad’s with her,” Eli says and I spot the ache in his eyes. “He needs time with her. He just needs...time.”
Eli rarely refers to his parents as Mom and Dad. Instead, he uses their names, except when he’s hurting. I don’t know much about Eli, but I can tell an awful lot about him when he’s in pain and that’s not right. There’s something fundamentally wrong that I understand him better hurting than I do when he’s happy.
“Don’t you need time with her?” I ask.
He barely nods. “Mom understands I’m running out of time with you, as well.”
All of the emotions of Olivia and Mom and Dad and Eli and even Oz crash into me and I lower my head into my hands, but I bite my lip to keep from crying. Somehow it doesn’t feel like I have the right to cry. I’m not the one on the verge of losing my mom.
“Hey.” Eli lets go of my chin, settles on the bed next to me and wraps an arm around my shoulders, gently pressing so that I’ll lean into him. Because I’m a mess, I do, and feel worse that I’m letting him comfort me. “It’s okay, Emily. For tonight, she’s okay.”
I push down my hurt and rapidly blink to keep the tears away. Eli’s strong. Olivia’s strong. I can be strong, too, but as I go to pull away, Eli only readjusts us so that we’re sitting back against the wall with me still tucked close to him.
“It scared me,” I admit, and hope it’s a plausible explanation for why I’m so messed up because I’m not sure he’d believe that I like her and I’m not sure how I feel about it myself.
“Scared me, too. Each and every time it happens, it scares the shit out of me.” Honesty is etched over his face.
“I have a hard time believing you’re scared of anything. I mean...you’re you.”
He’s a lot like his father, Cyrus. He’s big and he’s strong and basically has an entire army of scary men in black le
ather who ride motorcycles and carry guns at his disposal.
“I’m scared of a ton of things and all of them have to do with losing the people I love.” He pauses. “I learned a long time ago that I can’t control everything and now I’m learning I can’t control death. Sometimes I feel cursed. Like I get to watch everyone I love slip through my fingers.”
He wanted me. Olivia said he wanted me. I open my mouth to ask if I’m one of the people he’s referring to, if Mom is, but I snap it shut. I don’t know how to ask without divulging that Olivia is sharing secrets with me and I can’t take the respect Eli has for her away over my need to understand my past.
“What?” Eli asks.
“Nothing.”
“No, you were going to say something, what?”
My mind is completely blank. What can I say? What should I say? “I don’t like pulled pork. I don’t like any pork actually. It’s tough and it’s stringy and it’s a pig and...well...pigs gross me out. Which means I don’t like bacon either, so...yeah...that’s it.”
Eli blinks as he tries to understand any of the hot mess that just fell out of my mouth. He pulls on his earlobe and his face contorts as if he’s trying not to laugh. “You ate an entire pulled pork sandwich in Nashville.”
I did. “You were superexcited about me trying it and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I feel like that’s all I do—hurt you. I don’t want to, but I do. Even when I’m not trying to, it still happens.”
“Emily.” He lowers his head so that we’re eye to eye. “You don’t hurt me.”
“Yeah, I do. Every time I look at you, I see that you’re in pain.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t cause that. It’s something I did to myself. But thank you.”
My forehead furrows. “For what?”
“For telling me something about you.” And he leaves off how he didn’t have to ask a million questions to learn it or how he appreciates how honest I was. Hating pork, it’s simple really, but to Eli, it seems like a lot.