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“Stop fishing,” Ally warned her. “I’m not telling you anything else.” She turned her head towards the windows.
“So, you’re having sex with him.”
“Mom,” Ally snapped.
“Kiddo, you have your whole life ahead of you. If you haven’t already had sex, don’t you want it to be with the one man, you spend your life with?” Sophie asked her.
Her daughter’s head snapped around and she had tears in her eyes. “How do you know Brian won’t be that one man?”
Sophie sighed at her.
“I mean, we have the same values. His parents have been together a long time too. He wants that like I do.”
“So, you are having sex,” Sophie stated.
Ally turned her head back to the window. “Mom, if we are and I’m not admitting to anything because that is private…between me and Brian, we haven’t been with anyone but each other.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. She chewed on her lip. Life was difficult. Ally was young. She and Josh got lucky or were just plain dumb or too stubborn to let anything come between them.
She decided she had enough on her plate. She needed to worry about herself and let her children worry about themselves. “I’m here if you need me,” she informed Ally.
“What?”
She almost laughed at the expression on her daughter’s face.
“You’re not going to interfere or hound me like you did Heath until he caved and told you he was no longer a virgin?”
“Nope. Hannah was his one and, only right?”
“She was, and it worked out so well for them too.” Her daughter wanted Brian to be her one and only. She could see it in Ally’s eyes. The hope of youth. Young love. She had it once. Hard, work and being adult had removed the rose, colored glasses. Love was hard, work but worth it. Her cancer was proof of what their love could endure.
Love was holding your spouse’s hair back while she puked either from morning sickness or chemo. It wasn’t pretty either way. Love was becoming a caregiver for that loved one when all you wanted to be was their lover. It wasn’t sexy or special. It was necessary. Love was putting aside your needs because they needed you now and hoping that in the future, things settled down and you could be a real couple again. There was always that, hope that they clung to. Sometimes it was all you had.
She smiled at Ally. “I hope it works for you and Brian too, sweetheart.”
She finished eating her pudding.
“Me too. I won’t see him until Thanksgiving. He’d like for me to come home with him, if you don’t mind.”
She did but she didn’t. Thanksgiving was usually a big deal for their family. That was a month away and two more chemo treatments. Sophie didn’t know how she would be. Food wasn’t that appealing, so she didn’t really care what they cooked but she wanted everyone together as a family.
Ally could go her own way this year. She didn’t want to force her daughter to be where she didn’t want to be. Sophie wanted to give thanks for what she had. She wanted to be surrounded by the precious family that she was blessed with. She never wanted to take for granted again what she had been given.
Chapter 15
Sophie
Her treatments were more of the same. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, she spent in bed. Monday through Wednesday the following week after treatment, she was weak and didn’t do much more than sit in the recliner in the living room and watch Netflix, the Hallmark Channel or Lifetime movies.
Her dad drove her to the hospital a lot for bloodwork, fluids, potassium included in her fluid mix when that was showing up low and needed replenishing. It gave Josh, a chance to work and it was time for her and her dad to bond. She had lost twenty pounds from her five feet two frame. She had gone from slender to scrawny. She barely weighed one hundred ten to one hundred fifteen.
Walking beside her dad, he held her elbow. She thought he was afraid she might float away with a brisk, breeze. She walked slower than she used to. Her gate once so quick, her brother’s long legs had difficulty keeping up with her. She now felt like she moved at a crawl, but she tired too easily to pick up the pace.
“Sure, you don’t want me to get you a wheelchair?” Her dad asked her. She gave her father a harsh look. “Never mind. I won’t ask again. You don’t want a wheelchair.”
“You asked me twice before we even left the garage.”
“I’m just trying to be considerate, Soph. Cut your old man some slack.”
