The house is still unfamiliar, even though I’ve been here for weeks. My eyes are adjusted to the dark, so when I walk through the kitchen door, I can see Amber clearly sitting at the counter in the shadows. Her hand is wrapped around a low-style cut-glass tumbler that people use for hard liquor.
“Hey,” I whisper.
When she looks up, I can see she’s been crying. She swipes at her face and fixes a bright smile.
“Sara, what are you doing up?”
“Thirsty,” I say.
Amber rises immediately and fixes me a glass of water. I see her wipe her face on the cuff of her robe when her back is turned. She’s more composed when she turns to hand me the water.
“Thanks,” I take a long drink, glancing back at the glass of alcohol on the counter, wondering what to do. I’m not good at dealing with emotional conversations, so it would be easy to walk away from this right now and head back to bed. I don’t know Amber very well either, and maybe she’ll think that asking questions is intrusive. I’m sure she’d rather talk to her sons than me, but despite all that, I know that walking away right now isn’t the right thing to do.
“Is everything okay?” I ask. “I know you haven’t known me very long…you can tell me you don’t want to talk about it, and I’ll go…but…you seem upset.”
Amber sinks back onto her stool and gulps back everything left in her glass. Her sigh is long, like a ball of tension finding a way to escape her chest. She shakes her head as though what she’s thinking is wrong, or maybe she’s angry. I can’t work it out. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Your dad has asked me not to, but…” She takes a deep breath and looks to the ceiling in the way that people who need to cry do when they’re trying to keep themselves composed. “Your dad is sick.”
“Sick?” The way she says the word makes it obvious that this isn’t just a virus or food poisoning.
“He has cancer.”
My hand goes to the edge of the counter, and I slowly lower myself to the stool nearest to me. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Cancer.
I’ve known my dad for such a short period and now…I don’t even want to consider what “now” might involve. Suddenly the reason that I’m here becomes clear. Steve didn’t just have a crisis of conscience. He didn’t seek me out because my mom died or because it was abruptly the right time. He came to Eastern to find me because he’s ill.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“He didn’t want your time together to be about this. He wanted it to be filled with good memories, not sadness.”
Although I can understand Steve’s rationale, what he’s done isn’t fair. I had a right to know from the start. I had a right to make all my decisions about our relationship based on the truth. Would I have acted any differently? Maybe. Maybe I wouldn’t have come here to meet a man who’s going to be stolen from me before I get a chance to know him. Maybe I wouldn’t have put myself through losing another parent in the space of a year. Maybe I would have gone to Egypt and forgotten about all of the things that have the ability to tear my heart into shreds. Maybe I’d have been selfish.
Or maybe I’d have come here full of guilt, wanting to please, not being myself. Maybe this visit would have been filled with false emotions and an urgency that would have corrupted everything.
Neither of those options would have been as good as how things have been so far.
I’m too shocked to move, but I want to run. I want to go upstairs and pack my bags. I want to get into my car and go back to Eastern and pretend that none of this has happened.
But I can’t do it now.
I can’t turn the clock back and forget my father. He might have made a lot of mistakes when it comes to me, but he’s a good man with a good heart, and I’m a better person for knowing him even for this short amount of time.
“Do the boys know?”
“Only Jefferson,” Amber says. “He found a letter from the hospital in the office. I swore him to secrecy so that your visit with your dad wasn’t ruined. Steve’s already got enough on his mind. I couldn’t face this going wrong too. I don’t think he would have coped with it.”
So Jefferson knew.
He knew, and he didn’t tell me. He knew, and he…
Now I’m thinking about everything that has happened between us, and about the way Jefferson is and wondering how much of it is because he’s known this all along. Known and resented me for being here and forcing him to keep a terrible secret. Known and imagined his life without the man who’s raised him in happiness.
“The doctor told us your dad should be looking to try an experimental treatment. The problem is that it’s not covered by our insurance.”
“How come?”
“Not enough data to prove its value, but that’s why it’s experimental. How do treatments ever move from experimental to proven without somebody trying them? The data they have from the trials they have run is really encouraging.” Amber drains her glass and reaches below the counter, pulling out a bottle of brandy. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“Is the treatment expensive?”
“Fifty thousand dollars,” she says, shaking her head and fiddling with the empty glass on the counter. “We don’t have it in savings, so we’ll have to sell the house. Steve won’t agree to a GoFundMe. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d want to help out, but he has too much pride. He told me tonight that he doesn’t want to go ahead with the treatment. He doesn’t want the boys disturbed so close to the end of college. He wants us to stay in the house so that we don’t have any worries when he’s…”
The unsaid part of that sentence makes my throat burn, and my stomach drop. Steve would rather give up fighting than disrupt his family. He’d rather they have a secure future, and he have no future at all. It’s the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard.
“I’d give up every possession we have to make him better,” Amber says, a tear running down her cheek. I have no doubt that she’s speaking the truth. Even though I don’t know Amber well, I put my hand on her arm. She smiles, just a flicker. “It’s good you’re here,” she says. “Your dad…well, he needs people around him who care for him.”
“I’m glad I’m here too.”
As I sit next to my father’s wife, a woman who I only met days earlier, I realize that everything happens for a reason. Fate has long fingers that dip into our lives, setting out plans for the future long before we even know what that future may bring.
“I shouldn’t have told you all of this. I don’t want to ask you to pretend, but I don’t know how Steve will react to you knowing.”
“I’ll keep it a secret,” I say. “It’s his story. I’ll leave it for him to tell.”
Amber nods, relief flooding her face. “We should go to sleep. It’s another day tomorrow.”
“Yes, it is,” I say.
And it will be because now I know exactly what I need to do.
