Page 78 of When Wildflowers Bloom

“Is this why you hired me? Because of my history?” I ask, thinking back to the first time I met her and how her tone shifted when she noticed my tattoos.

“Partly.”

My eyes flick from the road to her; hands in her lap, she’s as eerily calm as her voice sounds, but her usually timeless face is weathered by lines.

Then we’re quiet.

Sometime between when we leave the hospital and when I park in front of her house, the once bright, beautiful sky goes grey—as if it knows her diagnosis—and rain starts to fall in our silence. When I turn the van off, we sit, staring at the droplets that slam onto the windshield.

I’ve watched clients age for years, but there’s always been a kind of bridge between me and the end. There’s usually a decline until my services aren’t needed because they’re bringing hospice in or going to a facility for the final weeks or months. Even though Veda is still sitting in front of me, looking exactly like she did the first day we met less a few pounds, it’s different. Like that bridge I’ve gotten so comfortable with just had a bomb dropped on it and it’s been blown to smithereens.

“Do you remember your last days with your mom?” Her voice takes on a harder edge and the question sticks into my chest like a poisoned arrow.

I nod. “Of course.”

“Tell me about it,” she says firmly, as if she isn’t peeling my heart like an orange with her request.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath; my head drops back to the headrest as I let my mind take me to the same place the smell of the hospital had. A memory as vivid as it is devastating. I take one breath before I can talk.

“She spent the last weeks in the hospital. The chemo had made her sick—but the end—the end was worse. She looked like a bag of bones in her hospital gown. Sunken.” Rain plops onto the windshield as I sift through my memories. “She slept a lot, notsaying much when we visited. My dad stayed most nights in the last days, playing George Strait on a Walkman for her. I was staying with an uncle the night she passed. My dad was lying in her hospital bed with his arms wrapped around her when she went.”

I can still picture her, pale, frail, and hoarsely saying, “Hey there, Little Bird,” when she could summon the energy to talk during my visits. All the while, my dad stood stoically by, holding my hand while he watched the love of his life slip away, breath by shallow breath.

“I won’t do that to Bo, Birdie. Do you hear me?” Her tone is sharp, like she’s yelling at me about how to wedge clay more than her own pending death. “Bo will try to save me, and he can’t—you know it just as well as I do. He’ll ask me to get treatment, and I won’t be able to say no, but it’s not what I want. This is the end, and he won’t accept it. Won’t see it for what it is. There are no good goodbyes when you know it’s forever.”

I nod, numb. Tears for my mom, for Veda, and for what she’s asking me to do to Bo well up behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. I swallow them down along with the bile that’s rising in my throat.

She reaches her hand over across the open space between our seats and squeezes my leg. “I’m sorry, Birdie.”

I look at her, almost laughing. “You’re dying and I’m the one being comforted?”

She chuckles. “Well, you fell in love with my grandson, and I’m asking you to lie to him about something he might hate you for.Me comforting you seems about right.” Then she smiles in that knowing way she always does.

I don’t even argue. I can’t. She’s right about all of it.

Because—Veda has cancer.

Thirty-one

When I see mydad’s too enthusiastic wave through the lightly falling rain, I nearly break. George Strait runs toward him with his normal amount of gumption, but once I’m out of the van, every step takes maximum effort.

I put on a good face for Veda when we finally got into the house after the hospital. I pretended it was just another day and talked about the Forever Fun class she’s teaching in two weeks. I spent the drive home in a daze, almost convincing myself that this was all some kind of misunderstanding. Or nightmare. But now, the cold autumn rain slaps my skin, and seeing my dad’s familiar face, the truth crushes my chest like a barbell.

My throat burns with all the emotions I try to keep shoved down. I’m so sad. So angry.

“Little Bird, everything okay?” my dad asks, wrapping me in a familiar hug.

I start to say yes, but it’s drowned out by a rare sob. Then another. Then another. I bury my face in his chest and let myself weep for the whole damn day. My sobs turn to something on the brink of hyperventilating, I realize it’s not just for Veda. It’s for Vedaand.

And everything I never let myself cry for.

My mom.

My abortion.

My genetic mutation.

Bo.

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