The Last Letter

by Rebecca Yarros

  “She goes where I go,” I said to Ada.

  “Not to the hospital. I know she’s a working dog, but they’ll let only service dogs in.” Her eyes echoed her plea. “Mr. Gentry, Ella wouldn’t let me go with her. Or Larry. And I know about…Ryan’s letter and all.” She glanced at Colt and back to me. “And I wouldn’t want Havoc cooped up in a hotel if you were to…say, stay for the duration of the surgery tomorrow.”

  She was calling me out, no doubt. But she had no clue how badly I wanted to be there for Ella, or how hard it would be to leave Havoc.

  A litany of swear words ran through my head, none of them adequate to express my conflicted feelings. Havoc would be safe here and cared for. It wasn’t like we hadn’t spent a weekend apart before. When we weren’t deployed she was kenneled with all the other working dogs as per regulation, but she’d been with me every deployment and every moment since Mac had died.

  But Ada was right, and Ella was going to be alone.

  I took a deep breath and dropped down to look Colt in the eyes. “You have school tomorrow?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Teacher day or something.”

  “Teacher work day,” Ada corrected.

  I nodded and rubbed my hand across his spiky hair growth. “Okay. Then you are in charge of her. Okay? Her bag is in the truck, and it has her food and favorite stuff.” The more I explained how to care for her, the brighter his eyes became, until the kid was pretty much a Care Bear for all the joy he was emanating.

  She’d be in good hands.

  I got her bag and took it back to Colt, then dropped to my knees in front of Havoc, took her face in my hands, and looked into her eyes. “Stay with Colt. Be nice.” I added that little extra order so she knew I meant only stay and not protect. Teeth came out otherwise. But this was her choice, and if she showed any hesitation, she couldn’t stay—she’d have to leave with me. It was the very reason we were retiring together.

  Her head swiveled to look at Colt, indicating she understood not only the command but who he was.

  “I’ll be back in a few days. Stay. With. Colt. Be. Nice.”

  I let her head go, and she immediately trotted over to the boy.

  “Good girl.” Equal parts of relief and worry hit me right in the gut.

  “It wouldn’t be a good idea to separate them,” I warned Ada.

  “Will she bite?” she whispered.

  “No. Not unless someone messes with him. If that happens, God help the person, because she’ll only release a bite at my command. You still sure you want to keep her?”

  “Absolutely.” She wiped her hands across her crisp, spotless apron.

  “Let’s go, Havoc!” Colt said, racing out the side door of the house, her Kong in his little hands. She trotted with him, tail wagging.

  Ada tilted her head. “It’s funny…”

  “What?”

  “She looks like such a docile little thing. You’d never guess she’d be capable of ripping someone apart.”

  “She’s like any other woman in that regard, ma’am.”

  Five minutes later I was driving toward Ella and Maisie, finally able to do the one thing I’d been sent here to do: help.

  Chapter Ten

  Beckett

  Letter #2

  Chaos,

  I’m so glad you wrote back! First off, happy birthday, even though I know you’re getting this weeks later. Looking at the dates on your envelopes, it’s taking about four or five days for mail to reach me, which is crazy fast. I remember when it used to take six weeks.

  Second, how about this? Let’s always write in pen. Never erase, just say whatever’s honest and comes to mind. It’s not like we have a lot on the line, or need to put up a front.

  It’s okay that you’re not good with people. In my experience, there are very few people worth making the effort for. I try to give everything I have to those closest to me, and keep that circle small. I’d rather be great for a few people than be mediocre for a bunch.

  So let me ask you a question that won’t get censored out—by the way, it’s creepy to think that people read our letters, but I get it.

  What’s the scariest choice you’ve ever made? Why did you make it? Any regrets?

  Most people would think that I would say it’s having the twins, or raising them, but I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life as I am about my kids. It’s not even Jeff—my ex-husband. I was too starry-eyed to be scared when he proposed, and I can’t regret everything that happened, because of my kids. Besides, regret doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it? There’s no point rehashing things that have happened when we need to move forward.

  My scariest choice was actually made just last year. I mortgaged Solitude, which isn’t just a B&B, but a sprawling two-hundred-acre property. My grandma had kept it free and clear, and I wanted more than anything to keep that legacy, except we were run-down on every level. I couldn’t bring myself to sell off any more land, so I made the terrifying choice to mortgage the property and throw everything into improvements, hoping to launch us as a luxury retreat of sorts. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it will work. Between the capital I took out for improvements to the cabins and properties and the construction loans on the new cabins to start in the summer, I’m this crazy mix of hopeful and scared. Not going to lie, it’s kind of exhilarating. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

  Off to take on my next scary choice…volunteering with the judgy ladies on the PTA.

  ~ Ella

  …

  Wedging Maisie’s binder under my arm, I checked my phone for the room number just as the elevator dinged on the pediatric oncology floor.

  It was almost eleven p.m.; those moments with Colt had cost me some time, but I’d had a pretty smooth drive.

  “May I help you?” a nurse wearing a kind smile and Donald Duck scrubs asked at the desk. She looked to be about midforties and really alert for how late it was.

  “I’m headed to room seven fourteen for Maisie MacKenzie,” I told her. One thing I’d learned in my decade serving in our unit was that if you acted like you belonged somewhere, most people believed you did.

  “It’s past visiting hours. Are you family?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” According to Colt, I was, so in a really convoluted way, I wasn’t lying.

  Her eyes lit up. “Oh! You must be her daddy. We’ve all been waiting to see what you’d look like!”

  Okay, that one I wasn’t going to lie about. It was one thing to throw the broad generalization out there, and another to claim the honor of being Maisie’s dad. As I opened my mouth to speak, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “You made it,” Ella said with a soft smile.

  “I made it,” I echoed. “So did the binder.” I handed it over, and she hugged it to her chest in an all-too-familiar gesture that made my chest ache. She should have someone to hold her during times like this, not some inanimate object.

  “I’m going to take him back,” Ella told the nurse.

  “You go right on ahead.”

  I walked down the hallway with Ella, taking in the bear murals. “They weren’t kidding about the bear floor label, huh?”

  “Nope. It helps the kids remember,” she answered. “Want to meet Maisie? She’s still awake, despite my every effort otherwise.”

  “Yes,” I answered without pause. “I would very much like that.” Understatement of the century. Next to the pictures of mountains Colt had drawn for me, Maisie’s pictures of animals were my favorites. But those belonged to Chaos. Just like with Ella and Colt, I was starting from scratch with Maisie.

  Our steps were the only sounds as we walked down the long hallway.

  “This wing is for inpatient,” Ella told me, filling the silence. “The other two are for outpatient and transplants.”

  “Gotcha,” I said, my ey
es scanning the details out of habit. “Look, you need to know that nurse thinks—”

  “That you’re Maisie’s dad,” Ella finished. “I heard. Don’t worry, she’s not going to force adoption papers on you or anything. I left all the dad info blank because like hell were they going to call Jeff in case of emergency. He’s never so much as seen her.”

  “I wish I could say that I don’t understand how someone can do that, but it happens all too often where I’m from.”

  She paused just outside the room labeled with Maisie’s name. “And where is that?”

  “I grew up in foster care. My mom dropped me at a bus station in New York when I was four years old. Syracuse to be exact. The last time I saw her was when she had her rights terminated in court a year later. I’ve seen some horrible parents in my life, but also some great ones.” I pointed to her. “And if your ex is so pathetic that he’s never seen his daughter, then he didn’t deserve her. Or you. Or Colt.”

  There were a million questions swimming in those eyes of hers, but I was saved by Maisie.

  “Mom?” The tiny voice called from inside the room.

  Ella opened the door, and I followed her in.

  The room was a good size, with a couch, a single bed, a padded rocking chair, and the giant hospital bed that held a small Maisie.

  “Hey, sugar. Not sleeping yet?” Ella asked, depositing the binder on a table behind the door and moving to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “Not…tired,” Maisie said, pausing in the middle for a giant yawn. She wiggled around her mom to peek at me. “Hello?”

  Those crystal-blue Ella eyes took in every inch of me in cursory judgment. She was thin, but not too frail. Her head was perfectly shaped, and the lack of hair only made her eyes seem that much bigger.

  “Hey, Maisie, I’m Beckett. I live in the cabin next to yours,” I told her as I came to the foot of her bed, using the softest tone I had.

  “You have Havoc.” She tilted her head slightly, just like Ella.

  “I do. But she’s not with me. I actually left her with Colt to keep him company while I came to see you. I hope that’s okay. It seemed like he could use a friend to talk to.”

  “Dogs don’t talk.”

  “Funny, that’s what your brother and I talked about, too. But sometimes you don’t need someone to talk back to you. Sometimes we just need a friend to listen, and she’s really good at that.”

  Her eyes narrowed for a moment before gifting me with a brilliant smile. “I like you, Mr. Beckett. You let my best friend borrow yours.”

  And just like that, I was a goner.

  “I like you, too, Maisie,” I said softly, scared my voice would break if I raised it any further than that.

  Maisie was everything I knew she’d be and more. She had the same sweet, determined soul her mom did, but brighter and undimmed by time. And at the same moment that I felt overwhelming gratitude that she’d accepted me, I was swamped with the irrational anger that she had to go through this.

  “We’re going to watch Aladdin. Wanna watch, too?” she asked.

  “We were not going to watch Aladdin. You were going to sleep,” Ella said with a stern nod.

  “I’m nervous,” Maisie whispered to Ella.

  If my heart wasn’t hurting already, it was screaming now. She was so little to have a surgery like this tomorrow. To have cancer. What kind of God did this to little kids?

  “Me, too,” Ella admitted. “How about this. We’ll start the movie, and I’ll curl up with you? We’ll see if we can’t get you to sleep.”

  “Deal.” Maisie nodded.

  Ella cued up the movie, and I moved toward the door. “I’ll leave you girls to your evening.”

  “No, you have to stay!” Maisie shouted, stopping me in my tracks.

  I turned to see her eyes wide and panicked. Yeah, I wasn’t going to be the cause of that look on her face ever again.

  “Ella?”

  She looked from Maisie back to me. “Maisie, it’s really late, and I’m sure Mr. Gentry would rather have a nice big bed—”

  “There’s a bed here.”

  Ella sighed, shutting her eyes. I saw the battle she’d written about—the need to parent Maisie as if there wasn’t an overwhelming chance that she was dying warring with the knowledge that she most likely was.

  But that pleading in Maisie’s eyes wasn’t an issue of being spoiled; there was a stark need there. I crossed to her bed and sat on the edge. “Can you give me a reason?” I whispered so Ella couldn’t hear us.

  Maisie glanced back at Ella, and I looked over my shoulder to see her busying herself with inserting the DVD.

  “You have to tell me, Maisie. Because I don’t want to weird out your mom, but if it’s a good reason, I’ll go to bat for you.”

  She glanced up again and then at me. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

  Her whisper ripped through me louder than an air raid siren. “Tomorrow?” I asked.

  She nodded quickly. “If you leave, she’ll be alone.”

  “Okay. Let’s see what I can do.”

  Her little hand gripped the edge of my jacket. “Promise.”

  There was something solemn in the way she was asking that reminded me of Mac, of the letter. It was almost as if she knew things she shouldn’t…couldn’t.

  “Promise me you won’t leave her alone,” she repeated, her whisper soft.

  I covered her small hand with my own. “I promise.”

  She searched my eyes, passing judgment again. Then she nodded and lay back against the raised bed, relaxed.

  I crossed the darkened room to Ella as she slipped off her shoes. “I’ll absolutely leave if you want me to, but she’s pretty adamant.”

  “What’s her reasoning? I’ve never seen her demand something like that.”

  “That’s between us. But trust me, it’s pretty sound. What do you want me to do?”

  “There’s just the couch and that little bed.” Ella bit her lower lip, but it wasn’t intended to be a sexy gesture. Mac had the same tell when he was worried. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  “I’ve slept in far worse conditions, trust me. It’s not a problem. What do you want me to do, Ella?” I’d do whatever she wanted, but God, I hoped she wanted me, any part of me. Knowing how scared she was of this moment, of what was coming for Maisie tomorrow, and not being able to comfort her in the way she needed was killing me.

  She released her lip with a sigh, her entire posture softening.

  “Stay. I want you to stay.”

  My chest constricted in a way that made taking a deep breath impossible. So I sucked in a shallow one and ditched my jacket on the back of the rocking chair. “Then I’ll stay.”

  …

  The procession in front of me was solemn, almost reverent. The nurses pushed Maisie, in her bed, down the hallway toward the thick blue line that marked where the surgical wing became doctors-and-patients-only.

  Ella walked by her side, Maisie’s hand in her own, leaning over her daughter. Their steps were slow, like the nurses knew Ella needed every single second she had left. They probably do know. After all, this was just a normal day to them. Another surgery on another kid with another type of cancer. But to Ella, this was the day she feared and longed for with equal ferocity.

  They paused just before the blue line, and I hung back, giving them the space she needed. With her hair pulled back, I could see the faint, forced smile on her face as she ran her fingers over Maisie’s scalp, where her hair would have been. Ella’s lips moved as she spoke to Maisie, the strain visible in the tense muscles of her face, the periodic flex of her neck.

  She was holding it together, but the string was thin and fraying by the second. I’d watched her unravel since six a.m., when the first nurses came in to begin Maisie’s prep. Watched her bite her lip
and nod her head as she signed the papers acknowledging the risk of removing a tumor this size in a girl this small. Watched her put on a brave face and smile to keep Maisie comfortable, joking about how Colt would be so jealous of her new scar.

  Then I watched the FaceTime conversation between Maisie and Colt, and my heart broke for them. Those two weren’t just siblings, or friends. They were two halves of a whole, speaking in half sentences and interpreting one-word answers like they had their own language.

  Though Ella was terrified, I knew it was Colt who had the most to lose when it came to Maisie, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep from going to her. That need pulsing through me was selfish, because holding Ella would help me but not her. There was nothing I could do for her besides stand and witness what I knew she feared would be her last moments with her daughter.

  Powerless.

  I was so damn powerless. Just like I’d been when we’d finally found Ryan’s body, three days after the op had imploded. There was nothing I could do to bring back his heartbeat, to erase what had to have been the worst hours of his life, or miraculously heal the bullet wound that had entered at the base of his skull and exited…

  Havoc. Sunset on the mountains. Ella’s smile. I mentally repeated my three as I let out a shaky breath, blocking out the thoughts. The memories. They didn’t belong here. I couldn’t help Ella now if I was trapped then with Ryan.

  One of the nurses spoke to Ella, and my throat squeezed shut momentarily when Ella leaned forward to kiss Maisie’s forehead. Maisie’s hand appeared over the rails of the bed, handing over a worn pink teddy bear. Ella nodded and took the bear. They wheeled Maisie down the hallway and through a set of swinging double doors.

  Ella stumbled backward until her back landed against the wall. I lurched forward, thinking she might hit the floor, but I should have known better. She held herself against the wall, the bear clutched to her chest like a lifeline as she raised her head toward the ceiling, taking gulping breaths.