Total pages in book: 167
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157162 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 786(@200wpm)___ 629(@250wpm)___ 524(@300wpm)
I stood at the kitchen island, containing my own need to pace, to rage, because my brother needed a tether to himself and his character.
“That was my first thought,” I agreed. It was too good to be true. There were too many questions. We’d tried to contact her when the chemo stopped working, when we learned she needed a transplant, but we’d had no luck. Her phone number was no longer in service, no one at her old address, no family knew where she was. How she even knew about her needing a transplant was a mystery. “I don’t know what she has to gain from this,” I told my brother, having wracked my brain in the short time since we’d closed the door.
His gaze shot to me. “Money. Her own sick thrills, power, who the fuck knows. There’s a game here.”
The cold certainty in his voice made me incredibly sad that the world had turned my brother into a cynic. But how could it not? With a sick child, one tended to lose all sense of wonder or hope in the world.
“Or maybe she’s not a wholly evil person and wants to save her daughter’s life,” I suggested. I’d lost a lot of my wonder but not all of my hope.
Beau scowled at me, but I could see it there, in the corner of his mind… Our father’s voice of reason. He was out with Clara. Thank God she wasn’t there when her mother arrived. We were careful about the way we talked about Naomi. Beau showed her pictures, told her the truth about where she was when Clara asked. She wasn’t ready to be a mother, and she knew that Beau would take care of her when she couldn’t. The urge to lie to her about Naomi, say she was dead instead of willingly abandoning her, had been tempting for all of us. But Beau had resolved to be honest with his daughter. Something I admired. And something that had paid off since Clara was objectively the coolest and kindest kid I’d ever had the honor to know.
“We don’t have money, she knows that,” I reminded Beau.
Which was true. But if she asked for it in exchange for the surgery—which very well would make her truly evil—my brother would rob a bank for it, and I’d be driving the getaway car.
“Is it that hard to believe that this is it? What we’ve been waiting for? Hoping for?” I kept my tone even, not wanting to get either of our hopes too high. “That you’ll be holding the shotgun when her prom date comes to pick her up, walking her down the aisle?”
My brother stopped pacing to stare right at me. I watched fury and pure despair battle on his face.
“You know that having hope is dangerous,” he whispered. The expression on his face chilled my blood. My brother had never been a cheerful man, but this past year had sucked the life from him. He was a husk.
I walked over to clap him on the shoulder, not letting any of my own dread show on my face. My brother needed an anchor right then. He needed someone to lean on. “It’s all we have right now, brother. And for that little girl,” I nodded my head to the framed photo of Clara on the island, one of many around the house along with every finger painting and drawing she’d ever done, “we’ll do anything.”
My brother gritted his teeth, and because he didn’t allow himself an ounce of emotion, his eyes remained dry. He was staying strong for his daughter, even if it meant shutting off every other feeling.
But he relented, nodding even though I knew it pained him to have hope that this horrible fucking nightmare might be coming to an end. That our salvation might’ve laid in the hands of the woman who abandoned her baby years before.
Though even I was doubtful of the hope trying to worm its way beneath my skin, the proverbial other shoe never dropped. We made a call to Clara’s doctor, who knew the importance of time and who pulled a fuck of a lot of strings to get the surgery scheduled as soon as possible. Clara was at the hospital, starting preparation for the transplant. Only for a night or two before the long stay leading up to the transplant and afterward.
You never got used to it. Seeing a small, perfect being in such a large bed, being pricked with needles and no longer crying because it had happened so often. Smiling at nurses and sucking on a lollipop. A fucking lollipop. All we could give her for enduring pain grown adults could barely fucking handle. Beyond drugs that made her stomach hurt and her head cloudy.
I was there as often as I could be, every free moment I wasn’t working. But wherever I was, I couldn’t escape my thoughts. And though I wasn’t a religious man, I had spent enough time on the ocean to believe in something greater than myself, understood that life was full of uncanny coincidences, miracles, and tragedies without a lot of logic.