Page 5 of Beside the Rolling Waves
Becky paused midstride. “I…thought I told you that I haven’t talked to Rodney in years.”
“Yes. You had. But Matt knew how to contact him, and I’ve already spoken with him. He told me yes immediately.”
“Wait. You’ve already talked to Rodney?” She talked to Rodney, Rodney jerk-face Blackstone who ghosted her years ago, after promising her the moon and the stars and all the romantic things, and then totally ditched her? Her sister went to him before she came to Becky?
Becky’s fingers had tightened on the phone so much that she was surprised the thing didn’t crack.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I knew I could ask and you would do it. You…have so much on your plate. But I want you. I want you more than anyone else. And you and Rodney will take care of my babies like no one else would.”
“Of course we will.”
She forced the words out, even though her entire heart and soul and spirit and everything within her was rebelling. She was not going to do anything with Rodney. The only way what he did to her would have been acceptable was if he would have been dead. And obviously he wasn’t if her sister spoke with him. How dare he. How dareshe?
She wanted to strangle both of them. And she wasn’t normally a violent person.
Well, maybe she was more violent than what she thought, because she didn’t want to just strangle Rodney, she wanted to reach into his chest to pull out his beating heart and throw it on the snow and stomp on it and?—
Okay. Maybe that was a little much. Even for her.
But that wasn’t the important thing. Not right now. Right now, she still hadn’t fully grasped that her beloved little sister had…cancer.
“Becky?”
“Yeah?” she said.
“I got the early appointment today so I would know as soon as possible. I…have a bad feeling.”
“Of course you do. Cancer would give anyone a bad feeling,” Becky said, not wanting to believe for one second that Rita’s bad feeling could be anything more than that.
“No. I mean, like a really bad feeling.”
“Rita Sue Rivers. You are not going to die. You are going to fight this cancer, and you are going to win. I will take care of your babies, but only on the condition that you are going to fight as hard as you can.”
“I’m sorry. You already agreed. You have no room to put any conditions on, because you said you’d do anything for me.”
Now Rita sounded like a little sister. Like she was taunting in Becky’s face the fact that she had Becky in a hard spot, and knew it, and didn’t care.
“Okay. You’re right. That’s what I said.”
“And you’ve told me a million times that a man is only as good as his word. And you also said, you don’t have anything but your word, so it has to be good.”
Nothing like having one’s words thrown up in one’s face when one wanted to go against everything she believed.
She wanted to tell Rita that she would only watch the babies for a set amount of time; that was how long Rita would have to fight the cancer and win.
But she knew those things couldn’t have such stipulations put on them, and she also knew that Rita was right. She couldn’t put stipulations on anything, because she had promised that she would care for the twins. No matter what. And that she would do anything for Rita.
“I need to go. The doctor’s office just emailed me, and I need to look it over. Don’t forget, Friday is the C-section.”
“I love you,” Becky said. Not knowing how she was going to pull any of this off, but her love was stronger than anything else.Her sister was the one thing she had in life that she constantly fought for. And she wasn’t going to let her go.
“I love you too.”
Becky swiped off on her phone and looked at it for a second, the pain of knowing her sister had a hard road ahead flowing through her. She had to push it aside. She couldn’t even think about that, so she focused on the next best thing. Her jaw tightened as she gripped her phone and then threw it as hard as she could into the far corner and screamed at the top of her lungs, “I hate you, Rodney Blackstone!”
It made her feel marginally better.
“That is going to make things rather uncomfortable, I would say.”
