Page 108 of Cul-de-sac

Chapter Thirty-six

The middle-aged woman marches intoLola’s Lingerie as if on a mission.

“I need a new bra,” she tells Heidi.

Heidi takes a glance at the literally hundreds of bras on display throughout the store. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place. Any particular style in mind?”

“Not really, no.”

“Well, why don’t you have a look around and see if anything appeals to you?” Heidi glances surreptitiously at her watch, noting that her shift is up in less than ten minutes. And while she’s normally very patient with customers who have no idea what they want, she’s been feeling tired and a little nauseous the last few days, and she’s been looking forward to going home and putting her feet up.

Especially since Aiden’s mother has announced she’ll be moving in over the weekend, and this is probably one of the few evenings she’ll have to relax over the next few weeks.

Dear God, please don’t let Lisa’s renovations drag on any longer than that.

“What size are you?” Heidi asks.

“That’s part of the problem,” the woman answers. She has long flaming-red hair and is what might euphemistically be described as full-figured. “I don’t know anymore. I used to be a 38D, but everything’s so damn tight, I can hardly breathe anymore. God, I hate these things.” She motions toward her ample bosom. “What men see in them, I’ll never know.”

Heidi nods sympathetically. The cancer that killed her mother had started in her breasts, and Heidi has always had something of a love-hate relationship with her own as a result. While they’ve always been enviably round and full, lately they’ve been looking swollen and feeling heavy. As if they belong to someone else.

Something is wrong.

Her mother wasn’t much older than Heidi when she succumbed to the disease—the cancer having metastasized from her breasts to her lungs, spine, and brain—and Heidi knows there’s a possibility that she inherited the deadly genetic strain.

How else to explain the fatigue, the nausea, the swelling of her breasts despite her recent loss of appetite?

She has cancer. She knows it.

Heidi reaches into a drawer containing a colorful selection of size forty DD bras. “Suppose we go up a size. How about something like one of these?”

“I guess I could try one on.” The woman reluctantly takes the lined sepia-toned bra from Heidi’s hands.

“The fitting rooms are over there.” Heidi swivels to her right. A wave of dizziness sweeps over her, and she grabs the woman’s arm to keep from falling.

“Are you all right?” the woman asks.

“I have cancer,” Heidi whispers.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry.” She thrusts the bra back into Heidi’s hands. “I’ll come back another time.” She runs from the store as if Heidi’s cancer might be contagious.

Heidi watches her bright orange head of hair disappear into the steady flow of people walking the mall’s main thoroughfare.

“What the hell did you say to her?” her co-worker, Shawna, asks, appearing at Heidi’s side.

“I told her I have cancer.”

Shawna takes a step back, her brown eyes opening in shock. “Why on earth would you tell her something like that?”

“Because it’s true.”

“You have cancer?”

Heidi nods.

“What kind?” Shawna asks.

“Breast.”

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