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On the walk down the hall I pass the little side courtyard that used to be a favorite hiding spot when I was little.
Dani and Gage are in there and they are sharing a moment. Her arms are hooked over his shoulders. His are firmly circled around her waist, just beneath the curtain of shiny brown hair hanging down her back. They stare into each other’s eyes. Gage says something to her and she laughs before stretching up for a long, slow kiss.
It’s like a snapshot of true love. I’m not in touch with that emotion. Doubt I ever will be.
And I’m an intruder on this scene so I pass by in silence, leaving them alone.
A walk through my childhood home is never a blast from the past. Nothing looks the same thanks to Matilda’s penchant for makeovers. There’s also zero evidence that a man named Ethan Lyonne ever lived here.
There’s no evidence that I ever lived here either.
Cecile’s bedroom is on the second floor, close to the one I used to occupy. My old room is unrecognizable, now a guest room with rose-patterned wallpaper. Matilda would always have fits because I drew and painted all over the walls. It’s what I did at night instead of sleeping.
There’s usually a home nurse around tending to Cecile but I don’t see one right now when I rap my knuckles on the door.
“Dani, is that you?” Her voice quavers, not nearly as forceful as it used to be.
“It’s Micah.” I walk into the room.
Cecile sits in an armchair with a tablet propped up on the table beside her. An audiobook narrator reads one of the romance novels she loves so much. The sunglasses always worn to cover her damaged eyes dominate her face and her cheeks are gaunt.
She tips her chin up. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Standing there and thinking that I look like hell.”
I give her a quick kiss on the cheek. There’s never any point in lying to my grandmother. “Conner is here too. He’ll be up soon. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m dying. Which I am.”
There’s a straight backed chair beside the table and I take a seat. “What does that mean?”
“Pancreatic cancer. The doctor gave me the news yesterday. No one else knows yet.”
It’s been clear for a while that Cecile isn’t well. Yet hearing this is a complete kick in the gut and I’m at a loss for what to say.
She sighs. “You’d better not be crying. I assumed I could count on you not to carry on, which is why I decided to tell you first.”
“I’m not crying.” Only because I never cry.
“And I won’t be dropping dead tomorrow so don’t say your goodbyes just yet either.”
My grandmother can be brittle and difficult. But she’s always been good to me. After my father was killed and I quit talking for a while, she said I didn’t need to speak if I didn’t want to. She also said she hoped I was saving up all those words because she would really like to hear them someday. She even pushed Matilda to buy me art supplies when Matilda was still clueless that I liked to draw.
It won’t be easy to get used to, the concept of a world without Cecile in it.
“Can I get you anything?”
She waves her hand. “You can open the window. Your mother keeps ordering the nurses to close it, claiming I’ll get a chill. As if that could harm me now. My own grandmother used to tell me that the soft breezes were gentle ghosts. It sounded foolish to me then. It doesn’t sound foolish anymore.”
I’ve already flipped the window open by the time she’s done talking. There’s an extra throw blanket folded at the foot of her bed. I hang it on the back of her chair in case she changes her mind about friendly ghosts and chills.
The narrator’s pitch reaches a frenzy.
“And now I see the duke’s manhood, erect and ready to take me. I quiver with excitement, ready to bend to his will, to become a woman for him…”
I want to plug my ears. “What in the pornographic hell are you listening to?”
