But like all good things, the laughter gradually subsides and then dies entirely. Maddie wipes the corner of her eye. I scrape one hand back through my mane and try to look away from her without success.
"I forgot how much I love hearing you laugh," I say, and then immediately regret it, although there's no way for me to take the words back.
Something moves across her face as she swallows, then it's gone.
"I missed hearing you laugh, too. For what that's worth."
Nothing in the kitchen moves. The copper pans hold their position, the light over the island holds its warmth. But something between us just quietly rearranged the very air we breathe and made it heavy.
"Agatha told me that you were working at the Shop-N-Save before going for that interview at Elven Mercy? Aren't you an RN?"
Maddie doesn't answer right away. She bites into her half of the sandwich. Chews. I watch her decide whether the question is safe to answer, and apparently it clears some internal threshold, because she exhales and sets the sandwich back down.
"I used to work an ICU job in New York City," she says. She looks at the counter, not at me. "Then Mom got her cancer diagnosis and I quit to come back home and take care of her. That was three years ago."
The words slap me right across the face and I go very still.
I had no idea, although to be fair, it shocked me to see the formidable Grace Berwick so thin and fragile when I came to offer Maddie the job. If she's recovering from cancer, it would explain it.
Something cold moves through my chest, slow and deep. I put my hands flat on the counter because it gives them something to do.
"How is she now?"
"She's in remission," she says, and her lips quirk up in a half smile. "It will be one year in a few weeks. Dad is throwing her a party. We call it the cancerversary. It's better than his first idea, which was a Cancer-Butt-Kicking-Day."
The relief that moves through me is so out of proportion to the moment, so involuntary, that a small chuckle escapes. Of course Lenny Berwick would call his wife's one-year remission Cancer-Butt-Kicking-Day.
"Good." And I mean it completely. "That's really good. I had no idea she's been sick, but I'm glad she's better now."
Maddie is still watching me. Her expression has lost some of its caution and this time, she offers me a small but genuine smile.
"I quit so I could come home," she says, quieter now. "Help Dad out. Take her to appointments, manage the schedule so hedidn't have to drop clients." She pauses. "It wasn't supposed to be for long."
"But it was," I say.
"But it was." She picks up the sandwich, then puts it back down. "And then time passed and I'm still here, I guess."
A pause. "I couldn't let them down, not after all they did for me. And a part of me still can't make myself leave."
We stay like that for a moment, in silence. The weight of the years that passed settles between us, heavy with things unsaid, a whole life unshared. So much happened, it's hard to even believe we are the same two people.
"But even if we're all happy she's better, the treatments weren't cheap," she goes on and looks me dead in the eyes. "Insurance covered what it felt like covering and left the rest. Fifty-three thousand dollars in total."
I absorb that number and now I understand everything. Shit. I've been such a prick.
That oddly specific number, it was a hospital bill.
I stop myself from saying something I can't take back. Something along the lines of you should have come to me.
She shrugs and takes a bite of her sandwich.
"So now you know."
She holds my gaze like she's daring me to say something, to offer some pathetic platitude or another. I know better. The Madison Berwick I knew would rather walk on hot coals than have me pity her.
So I don't.
"You were always the most generous person I knew," I say instead.
