Page 153 of The Cost of Forgetting You

“We’ll get another life, Lucy. Another chance.” I lift our joined hands to my lips. “I promise. I’ll find you when I get there, and I’ll never let you go.”

Tru walks in. I don’t have to look over my shoulder to know. She finds him, her eyes softening at the edges as soon as she does.

“Maybe we already got our second chance.” Her hand pulses in mine, and her words are barely above a whisper as she juts her chin toward her son and adds, “Maybe it’s them.”

I glance over my shoulder. Truett meets my gaze, a question in his own. He’s welcome to search, but he’ll find no answers in mine. All I know of the future is hope. And hope is what I want to give Lucy.

“Maybe it is,” I reply, letting my thoughts drift to my daughter. I wonder how she’s doing. If she’s happy. If I’ll ever get to see her again.

She loved Lucy, once upon a time. Would she want to know Lucy’s dying? Would that knowledge bring her home?

It’s unfair and a bit manipulative, but I consider it for a moment.

Then Lucy releases my hand and rises, grimacing in pain as she does, and I’m pulled back from the cliff’s edge. I jerk to my feet, reaching for her, but she waves me off. “I’m fine. Not an invalid yet.”

She pads over to meet Truett, who’s still standing in the doorway with a raised brow and tearstained cheeks. “Everything okay, Mom?”

“More than okay,” she muses, reaching up to pinch one of his dirt-smudged shoulders. “Any new babies to name?”

“You know it’s not good to name them,” he says, a discouraging scowl on his face.

“Amuse me,” she replies.

A heavy sigh deflates his chest, but his eyes are warm when they regard his mother. “We’ve got a new girl. 542 calved sometime during dinner.”

“Perfect. We’ll call her Rosie.”

His expression softens. “Okay, Mama. Rosie it is.”

Lucy rises on her tiptoes to kiss her son, and it makes my chest ache with a jealousy I can barely stomach.

“I’m going to head to bed, you two. Big day tomorrow. Lots of needles.” She winks even as Truett and I wince. “Relax, y’all. It’s not the end of the world. Just of me.”

“Mom!”

“Lucy,” I groan simultaneously.

“Good night!” she singsongs, ignoring our objections.

We both watch her disappear down the hall toward her bedroom, and when the door shuts, I keep my eyes on it as I say, “Dare I ask, what is tomorrow?”

“More tests. Determining a treatment plan.” Truett slips out of his boots and crosses the room, taking the seat beside me that his mother just abandoned. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you be able to come with us?”

I glance over, finding tears welling in his eyes. He looks so much like his mother that for a moment it steals my breath.

“I don’t know how to do this alone,” he admits.

I look at him and see myself, twenty-some-odd years ago, facing a funeral I didn’t know how to plan. A loss I didn’t know how to grieve. A responsibility like no other I’d ever had before.

So I reach out and pat his knee, catching his gaze and holding it tight. “I’ll be there every step of the way.”

“Thank you,” he manages to whisper. “I’m really glad you’re here.”

My smile is a pathetic, mournful thing. His responding one the same. But we aren’t alone in our fear, our uncertainty. For that, I’m eternally grateful.

May 1st, 2022

Lucy Parker dies on a Sunday morning, with sunlight streaming in her bedroom window, painting her sunken cheeks gold. “You’ll Be in My Heart” plays on the radio, and Truett holds her hand, weeping softly. Roberta, her caretaker, sits in the corner, tears streaming down her cheeks. I stand at the foot of her bed, counting each rise and fall of her chest, until there’s nothing left to count. Until loss collapses in on us like a demolished house, destroying everything we once knew home to be.

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