Page 149 of Never Forever

“Dad!” I cried, but I didn’t know where to start on this situation first. Shower curtain? Vomiting?

“Patrick,” Cecelia said from the doorway, her hand covering her mouth in obvious shock at what she was seeing. I whirled on her.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled and she quickly ran away, her face pale and her eyes wide.

“Dad?” I said, once she was gone.

I turned off the shower and got him untangled from the shower curtain. I gave him a towel to protect his pride and I hung the shower curtain back up on the old tension rod and made sure it was steady.

“Go,” he whispered from the bathroom floor, still gagging like he wasn’t finished throwing up. “Tell her…to keep it quiet.”

Torn in a million terrible directions, I eventually went downstairs, only to find Cecelia in the kitchen of all places. Cleaning up the pile of dishes on the counter. Her ugly purse on the counter.

“Mrs. Piedmont,” I said. “Please don’t do that.”

“Patrick is sick?” she said.

“The flu-”

She turned and I realized where Carrie got hercut the shit, look.

“That’s not the flu,” she said. “Patrick hasn’t been working the ferry for weeks now. It…hasn’t gone unnoticed.”

My chin dipped to my chest. Suddenly, it all seemed so stupid. There was no hiding this. There was no pretending this was going to get better. He was sick. Really sick and it was going to take months of treatment…

“It’s cancer,” I said, my voice cracking.

Slowly she nodded, as if she needed a minute to take it all in. “Carrie doesn’t know?”

“No one does.”

She hung her head for a second and dried her hands. “What about university? Have you deferred?”

“Not yet,” I said.

Because Dad hadn’t wanted me to. I walked over and dropped on the couch, my head in my hands. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Someone needed to tell me.

When she approached me, I braced myself. But she only put her hand on my shoulder.

“Your father will get worse before he gets better,” she said. “That’s how it is with cancer treatments. I had a dear friend who had breast cancer. She struggled for months during chemo.”

I nodded, feeling the tears clog my eyes and throat.

“You know he can’t be alone.”

“I know,” I said, swallowing hard so I wouldn’t embarrass myself any more than I’d already been embarrassed.

“Listen to me, Matt.” She sat next to me on the couch. It was weird too, because in so many ways she was a stranger. Only she wasn’t, because she was Carrie’s mom. “Do you love Carrie?”

“I do.” The words felt torn from me. The words felt like all I had. Carrie was all I had.

“If that’s true, then you must want the best for her. The future she’s working so hard for.”

I nodded.

“If she comes home and sees that your father is sick, she’ll put all that aside.”

“I won’t let her.”

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