Page 13 of Don't Forget Me
“I was always popular.” She lifted a hand slowly and pointed to the chair. “Sit, Liz. Please.”
Elizabeth did as she asked, pulling Owen onto her lap. Evelyn perched on the end of the bed.
“Rules, Liz.” Molly smiled weakly, knowing her friend would get her meaning.
When they’d both been sick before, they made rules for their time together.
1. The C word was off limits.
2. No lies. If one of them looked like crap, the other never said they didn’t.
3. They had to make each other smile.
4. No tears.
That was it, their friendship. They’d been thrown together by illness, knowing it could end in heartbreak, but they wanted to be the normal kind of friends and nothing less.
Elizabeth swallowed the tears clogging her throat and forced a smile. “You look like death, Mols.”
Her laugh turned into a cough. “That’s because I’m close to it.”
Elizabeth held onto Owen tighter. She’d never hidden the realities of cancer from them, but even this was too much.
“I think you look beautiful.” Bless Evelyn and her sweet soul.
A smile curved Molly’s lips. The rules didn’t apply to the kids. They never had.
Molly flipped her hand over so her palm faced up, and Elizabeth reached forward to grip it.
“Tell me something that makes you happy, Liz,” she whispered. “Tell me a story of a place so far from any cancer memories, a place where nothing but joy exists.”
Elizabeth’s first cancer experience was with her mom when she was fifteen. It happened quickly, but everything after that was so wrapped up in her memories of the illness.
There was only one place she remembered being truly happy.
“There’s a lake,” she started. “It’s in the mountains of Virginia. It has the clearest water. In the mornings, fog comes down from the mountains, rolling across the lake, and everything is quiet.” She closed her eyes, picturing it. “Everything is calm.”
“It sounds beautiful.” Molly smiled.
Elizabeth nodded. “It is. A cloak of green covers the mountains, forests so thick they seem to go on forever.” She rested her chin on Owen’s curls. “We owned a house there, my parents and me. It had a wall of windows at the back overlooking the dock where our kayaks sat.”
“Please tell me you had a hot tub on the deck with a view of the lake.” Molly closed her eyes. Was she picturing it?
“No. We weren’t hot tub people. There was no deck at all, but a grassy hill led down to the dock, and there was a fire pit. My mom loved to sit near the flames with her guitar, and the three of us made up songs.”
“I’m there right now,” Molly whispered. “It’s beautiful.”
A tear rolled down Elizabeth’s cheek, and she wiped it away before Molly saw.
Evelyn curled her legs into her chest, staring at her mom like she too was invested in the story. “Can we go there, Mom?”
“I wish we could.” She hadn’t realized anyone else had entered the room, but she looked up to find three nurses, Booker, and Dr. McCoy listening to her story.
Molly’s body stilled as her shallow breathing evened into sleep. Booker put a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder. “You okay?”
“No.” She wasn’t okay at all.
“Well, your story pulled the nurses from the hall station in here, and that’s some feat with the big story they were gossiping about.”
