Page 32 of Eleanor & Grey

We were rushed to the hospital, and Dad met us there.

He forced me to sit in the waiting room as he searched for answers.

I sat, I waited, and I cried.

I sat, I waited, and I cried some more.

Mom was released a few hours later and the whole ride home was completely still.

That was the day when it became real for me. That was the first time since finding out about her cancer that I was really afraid. For a while, I was naïve enough to think that she was getting better than worse, then a wake-up call hit me in the fresh produce aisle.

The next morning, Mom walked into my room and gave me a small grin. She wore a Janet Jackson T-shirt with overalls, and her hair was wrapped in a bandana. For the most part, she looked like her regular self. You could hardly tell anything was wrong just by looking at her. From the looks of it, she didn’t seem like a woman who had just blacked out the day before. I thought that was the hardest part to wrap my mind around: how could she look okay but not be?

“Hey, beautiful,” she said.

“Hey, Mom.”

“So…yesterday was tough.”

“You should be in bed,” I told her. “You need rest.”

I sat up a bit. “Sorry about that. I—”

She shook her head. “It’s fine, really. I just want to make sure you’re okay. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

“You shouldn’t be worried about me.”

“I’m a mother, sweetheart. Worrying about my child is all I ever do.”

I lowered my head. “I’m scared, Mom.”

“I know.” She moved into the room and sat on the edge of the bed beside me. She wrapped an arm around me and I rested my head against her shoulder.

“I just need you to be okay, alright? Can you do that?”

She combed her fingers through my hair but didn’t reply.

Mom was never one to make promises she couldn’t keep.

“Your dad went out to clear his head and will probably be out for a while. You want to drive over to Laurie Lake?”

“Are you okay enough to travel?” I asked warily.

“I promise, Ellie. I’m okay.”

“Okay.”

We headed to the lake and walked out to our secluded area. It was hot that late morning. The high was supposed to be around ninety-five degrees, but it already felt like it was triple digits.

We sat under the sun, melting and drinking from the water bottles we’d brought. It was quiet for a while. I wondered if we were quiet because we didn’t have anything to say or because we didn’t know how to say it.

Mom tilted her head up to the sky with her eyes closed and felt the sun beating against her skin. “I was thirty-three the first time I found out I had cancer. You were two years old.”

I turned to face her, stunned. “You’ve had cancer before?”

“Yes. You were so young, and I remember crying with you in my arms, because the idea of leaving this world was too hard to face. You were so new to me, and your father and I had fought so hard to have you in our lives. You were just becoming your own person. I was watching you grow into this beautiful little girl with her own personality. I thought about all the things I’d miss, all the firsts you hadn’t even discovered. Your first day at school, your first dance…your first boyfriend, your first kiss. Your first heartbreak. I remember getting so mad at the world, at my own body for bringing you to me only to take me away. It felt unfair. I felt as if I’d betrayed myself. One day when my worries were so loud and my heart was breaking, do you know what your father said to me?”

“What?”

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