When I stand to leave a few minutes later, Luke says, “I’ll walk you out. Be right back, Mom.”
We go out through the front door and down the driveway in total silence. Finally, when I can’t stand it anymore, I say, “She said she wanted to dance. It wasn’t my idea.”
“What?” he asks, looking distracted.
“She said it was criminal not to dance to that song.”
“No,” Luke says, shaking his head. “No, you don’t have to explain.”
“Oh.” Of all the things I was expecting him to say, it was not that.
“Listen,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “The one thing I’ve never doubted is how much you care about her. Never.”
He meets my eye on the last word, and I feel like I’m drowning in the pool of his eyes.
“That’s good. I ... I’d never hurt her intentionally.”
“I know,” Luke says.
I slide in behind the wheel of my car, and Luke steps back so I can drive away. As I go, I hear his words again:the one thing I’ve never doubted.
And I’m glad he doesn’t doubt that, but it confirms what he hasn’t said this whole summer: that he doubts everything else that happened between us.
13
THEN
“How can youtell me not to come home? She’s in the hospital,” Luke said over the phone, and I imagined him tugging at his hair the way he used to do when we were little and he was stressed about something. “I can be there in six hours. Five, if I push it.”
“Yeah, but the doctor said the fever’s under control and she’ll probably be able to go home tomorrow,” I said. “Plus, you have like three midterms.”
“Screw midterms,” he said, and I wasn’t used to the dark tone in his voice.
“Luke—” I said with a sigh.
“I should never have come here,” he said. “I knew I shouldn’t have, but she swore she’d be fine. And she said all that bullshit about wanting to see me live my life so she’d know I would be okay.”
I stayed quiet so he could keep venting, but he was silent after a minute.
“I promise I’ll call you if anything changes,” I said.
“Even if it’s bad?”
“Even if it’s bad,” I promised.
Mel ended up being in the hospital for two nights. Her treatment had weakened her immune system and she’d caught an infection, but by the time Naomi brought her home on Wednesday afternoon, there was a little more color in her cheeks.
Ro and I sat at attention in his room while Mel slept across the hall. Technically, Ro was pretending to play a game on his computer and I was pretending to do some history homework.
“What do you think happens to the house when she’s gone?” Ro asked out of nowhere.
“Don’t talk that way,” I scolded him.
“Don’t tell the truth?” he asked.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen. She could ...” Get better? Outlive every known patient with her diagnosis? “She could still have a long time.”
Ro made a noncommittal sound and went back to his game.
