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“What?”
Dad and I have been growing closer since Aunt Dorothy’s heart attack. We talk or text almost every day and he hasn’t mentioned it once. I know he’s in London right now for business and wonder if he told her before he left? It doesn’t seem like him, though. Sure they’ve had their…problemsbut he’s never mentioned being unhappy with their marriage.
“That’s right. He’s asked me for a divorce and there’s more.”
“What else?” I ask quietly.
“I found a lump. In my right breast. I need you here with me when I hear the results from my doctor. Of course I have the best doctors, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need my daughter here with me.”
I sit quietly. “A lump?”
“Yes. So you see, it’s a delicate situation and with your dad announcing he’s leaving me I don’t want him around. I need you here.”
“I’ll be there,” I promise.
“Good. I’ll send you the details.”
She clicks off and I stare at my phone, thinking that shoe dropped down and exploded like a bomb.
ChapterNineteen
Hadley
“Mom?” I yell, walking through the front door of my childhood home. It’s strange that no one opened the door for me, but I shrug it off.
When she comes to the entry, I audibly gasp.
Never, not once in my entire life, have I seen my mother without her hair done, makeup applied perfectly, and in anything remotely like what she’s wearing now. Aside from when she was in the Nashville jail, of course. But she’s wearing actual sweatpants and a ratty t-shirt. I didn’t even think she owned clothes like that.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“Of course I’m not okay. Your father is abandoning the family and I might have cancer invading my body.”
I reach out and pull her into an awkward hug. We aren’t an affectionate family and I don’t remember the last time I actually hugged her like this.
“Tell me everything.”
She leads me to the kitchen and pours us both a glass of wine.
“Your father is leaving me. What else is there to say?”
“But, that makes no sense. What brought this about?”
“Who knows,” she says, throwing her arms in the air. “He’s lost his mind, I guess. He’s not acting like himself and just told me when he gets home from London he’s moving to the guest house. No explanation.”
“Mom, that doesn’t sound like him.”
She cuts me a harsh look. “You don’t think I know that? He’s my husband, Hadley. Of course this doesn’t sound like him. But I will not beg. If he doesn’t want to be married to me any longer, I won’t fight him but I definitely won’t make it easy on him.”
That’s the mom I know.
“And the lump?”
“I am supposed to be receiving a call from the oncologist in an hour or two.”
“They don’t want you to go into the office?”
“I told them I wasn’t going in there again unless it was absolutely necessary. If they tell me I have cancer, I’ll deal with it then but I won’t step foot in that place if I don’t have to.”
