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“Yeah,” she said, her voice as sharp as it ever had been when they were teenagers. “Get your last connections to Kimmie gone before whatever future you think you might have with Mina.”
The uncanny way his sister nailed thoughts he wasn’t fully willing to admit to himself made the back of his neck tingle. “That was uncalled for,” he said. Even if he had been thinking some variation of it, it wasn’t called for. And it wasn’t true, not really.
Or he didn’t want it to be true. This morning, he’d been taking care of Mina. They hadn’t been hanging out, they hadn’t been trying to impress each other or be their best selves, and this evening wouldn’t be any different.
And still the first thing he wanted to do when he got off work was see her, in all her coughing, snotty, feverish mess. Not that he wanted to take care of her, but that he wanted to see her. Seeing her made the world better.
Which made her like Kimmie, yet different. Seeing Kimmie had made the world better, but he’d also gone home wanting to take care of her, rather than just to be with her most nights.
When he’d been young, love had meant caring for someone, like you care for a child or a pet. Setting out Mina’s lunch this morning had been taking care of her, but that wasn’t what their relationship was based on, or what it would be based on.
At least now he was old enough to recognize that he’d done that to Kimmie; it wasn’t something she’d brought on herself.
“It will be weird to sit around the table at Thanksgiving with Mina instead of Kimmie.”
“It was weird for us to have a Thanksgiving with no Kimmie. I’m not sure this will be any stranger, and if it is, it will be because you’re determined to make it that way.”
“Why couldn’t Dennis have gotten a job here?”
“Brook? What is wrong?” It was clear in the way she jumped around in her upsets that something besides moving was at the root of it all.
“His cough is getting worse, Levi,” she said, accusatory, like he should know. But then her tone softened. “He’s not talked with you about it, either?”
“No.” Dennis’s coughs at the bar seemed—maybe—to be worse, but Levi had written it off as the end of the long day, the drying effect of the alcohol, etc. And he only really saw his friend once a week. Who was he to notice if it was different during those couple of hours at the bar?
Then the other shoe dropped. “Either?”
“He thinks I don’t know.” The fear in Brook’s voice broke his heart. “But I hear him at night, even when he gets up to sleep on the couch. And I saw the doctor’s bill. It wasn’t his regular checkup appointment. He made an appointment. Dennis never makes an appointment to see the doctor.”
Did his sister and her husband never talk to each other?
“Maybe he’s...” Levi started that sentence but had no idea how to finish it. He hadn’t been to the doctor in well over a year, and most of the men he knew didn’t go to the doctor until they were at the ER for a heart attack. Knowing better didn’t translate into action.
“Have you talked with him about it?” he asked, trying for another tactic. His partner had headed back inside after their short break, and Levi really should follow; but Brook was upset, and another ten minutes on the phone wouldn’t kill their timeline.
“I’ve tried,” she said, the words coming out in a long whine. “He says it’s a better job, and I should be happy for him.”
“Not about the job. About his lungs.”
Silence on the other end of the line was all the answer he needed.
“You have to talk to him about that. What are you afraid of?” The wind was picking up, and branches with their dried leaves clacked together. A crow cawed.
“That it’s cancer. That we’re moving, and it’s cancer, and he won’t admit it to himself, and he’ll be slowly dying, and I won’t be near anyone who can help.”
Cancer. The word stuck in his throat like a boulder that he couldn’t dislodge. Before he suffocated, he thought through what Brook had said. They didn’t know if it was cancer. She was worried that it might be cancer, and that Dennis wasn’t telling her. “Talk to him, Brook.”
