Blackberry Cove

by Roxanne Snopek

  “My head.” He chuckled, a rough, gravelly sound like pouring wet cement.

  “Your head. I don’t follow.”

  “All those years I worked on my legs, my back, my muscles, and bones, and what turns up to punch my ticket but brain cancer.”

  He’d said the words so casually, that it took a moment for Abby to recognize that yes, he’d said brain cancer. It still triggered the same sensation inside her chest, as if she was filled with insects trying to beat their way out.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” he’d emphasized. “Not Jon. Nobody at the ranch. I don’t want pity or handouts or advice. I don’t want Daphne rolling in like a freight train with casseroles and flowers and cards. All that well-meaning shit will kill me faster than anything.”

  Yes, that had been her chance to force his hand, right then. She could have said no. She should have said no. She should have called Jon up right then and told him the truth.

  He’d be so angry.

  She looked at the thin figure surrounded by white sheets. “Roman, it’s not fair to Jon, your keeping this from him. It’s not fair to me, either. I have a job. Garden season is about to begin and Olivia’s counting on me.”

  “Sorry if my dying wishes are inconvenient for you. Go play with your flowers. See if I care.”

  “Don’t be such a baby.” She blew out a breath and looked upward, searching for the right words to convince him. “I’ll support you to your dying day. But I’m just one person. You need more than I can give you.”

  “You’re exactly what I need.”

  “You need your son,” she corrected. “Please, please tell him.”

  He grimaced. “I will, damn it. I told you I would. It’s not the kind of conversation to have over the phone.”

  “Well, then, you’re in luck. He’ll be here in a few hours.”

  He glared at her. “I never told you to call him.”

  “You never told me not to. I didn’t say anything about the cancer. I left that for you.”

  Poor Jon. He’d be prepared for bruises and sprains. Not a glioma tumor.

  Brain cancer.

  Poor Roman. Poor Jon.

  She got up and went to the door. As soon as Jon arrived, she would find some doctors and make them explain everything. Who knows, maybe they’d learn that Roman was wrong, that he needed a second opinion, that Doctor Google had filled his head with too much information and he’d convinced himself he had a disease he did not.

  “Sit down, Abby. I’m not telling him, you’re not telling him, and the staff won’t tell him. Not until I give them the okay.”

  She realized he was right. On numb feet, she walked back to the bedside and sank into the chair.

  Jon would know something was wrong, though. Roman had lost weight. He’d hidden it beneath loose clothing, but he was definitely thinner than he’d been last summer. He’d taken to shaving his head too, but she hadn’t thought twice of it until now. Lots of men did that. Bald is beautiful and all that.

  When he lifted the plastic glass of water, his hand trembled. A symptom of the tumor? Roman refused to give her details, but she’d read up on glioblastomas. The early signs were subtle, but Roman had them all. The dizzy spell that made him fall was just one more indication that, no matter how he wished to pretend otherwise, he was getting worse.

  Roman sipped, coughed, and returned the tumbler to the table. He turned his eyes to the ceiling and sighed again. “I’ve still got a few months left. Maybe a year. These are hard to predict, I guess.”

  “A few months.” The wings beating against her ribs grew more panicked. “I can’t possibly keep this to myself that long.”

  “I know when the time is right.”

  “I’ll help Jon. We’ll look into treatment. We’ll figure this out, I promise.”

  “That’s not how it’s going to go, Abby.” Roman’s gaze turned steely. “Jon’s going to give me enough of a fight. When the time comes, your job will be to help him understand.”

  She didn’t like the way that sounded.

  “Understand what?”

  There were no tears, no self-pity or sentiment or fear, just determination. He spoke as if reading from a fact sheet.

  “They want to cut open my head. Fire radiation at it. Pour me full of poison. I’m not doing that. None of it. Do you understand?”

  “But if surgery extends your life—”

  “I’m not letting someone stir around up there with a scalpel. It’s not happening. You have to help my son understand that.”

  “Jon will never understand that. I don’t understand it! What if treatment could extend your life?”

  Time is all there was. Who wouldn’t fight for every second of life they could get?

  “A few extra months of shitting the bed and puking my guts out? No way. With any luck, I’ll have a nice quiet stroke and go out in my sleep.”

  Abby put her hands to her ears. “Stop. Stop it. This is wrong. You can’t expect me to be okay with this.”

  Roman shifted his legs beneath the sheets, wincing. As firmly as he’d spoken a moment ago, he now looked uncertain. “You’re stronger than you look, Abby. That’s why I chose you. Jon will have a difficult time with this.”

  A laugh burst out of her, mingled with tears. “You think?”

  “I mean,” Roman continued, “he will fight me, to push for treatment, to argue with doctors, to fly me to the Mayo Clinic or Mexico or wherever for experimental drugs or clinical trials or healing prayers or drum circles. And I don’t want that. None of it. I want to die in my own home, with my dog and my garden and my birds. I want Jon there with me. And I want you there too, as much as possible.” He paused. “You’re good company. Jon’s going to need that.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can for him. As long as you tell him the truth. Promise me, Roman!”

  “I will.” Roman exhaled heavily. “When I’m ready. And not a moment before.”

  Chapter Three

  The trip from Los Angeles to Sunset Bay usually took over fourteen hours but an accident just outside of San Francisco had shut down the highway for nearly forty minutes.

  Standing outside his car in between bouts of rain, Jon listened to the driver ahead of him tear a strip off the poor flag person. Despite his own frustration at the delay, he reminded himself that if fault fell on anyone, it certainly wasn’t the young man in Day-Glo orange.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” the man yelled, punching the air. “Single lane alternating, is that too much to ask? There’s no reason for a complete standstill.”

  He was a little younger than Roman, Jon guessed, but of a similar temperament.

  The road worker approached the man. “Sorry for the inconvenience but until I get the go-ahead, no one’s moving.”

  “How long is it going to be?”

  “I don’t know.” Water was dripping down his hooded cape.

  The man snorted. “Give me your best educated guess.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know. Some guy up there missed the turn and ended up sideways on the road. Traffic’s blocked in both directions. It took forever to get emergency crews in.”

  “Any injuries?” Jon asked, leaning on his open door. Their inconvenience was nothing if people were hurt.

  “I don’t think so. I saw the driver walking around, talking on his phone.”

  “Probably what caused the accident in the first place,” groused the other driver. “I hope his car is totaled. This road should be better patrolled for stuff like that. This is ridiculous.”

  There were worse things than being stuck on the road because of an accident. Being a participant in the accident, for one.

  “Come on, man,” Jon said. “Ease up. This isn’t helping.”

  The flagman threw him a grateful look but the older gentleman wasn’t impressed.

  “Ah, to hell with both of you.” The man swore and stomped around to the other side of his car and lit a cigarette, fuming.

  Jon considered engaging the
annoyed driver but between worry for his father and the humiliation of being escorted out of Diversion, he wasn’t feeling too sanguine himself at the moment. Hal had never indicated that the trips back and forth to Oregon had been a problem, so to hear about it from Whitey pissed him off royally.

  Jon hadn’t taken any time off since Christmas, plus he’d been working his ass off. He’d managed all his assigned pieces, as usual. Better than usual, even. He’d been on a roll lately, on track for a raise, a promotion.

  Maybe Whitey Irving wanted to cut back on expenses. He could hire two cub reporters for what they were paying him. Maybe he’d been looking for a way to fire Jon for months and the piece on Richard Arondi was simply a convenient excuse.

  Power dynamics.

  This wasn’t a power struggle. Jon hadn’t been insubordinate.

  He’d been enterprising.

  Journalists needed to be self-starters, go-getters with an eye for what others didn’t see. That’s what they’d valued in Jon. At the start, at least.

  He got back into the car, gripped the steering wheel, and dropped his forehead over it. Now that the shock was wearing off, he felt overcome with fatigue. Every mile closer to Sunset Bay had increased his concern for his father.

  Concern. More like a gut-clenching sense of being proven right. He’d known some kind of health crisis was coming. He’d told Roman it was too dangerous to live alone, off in the wilds, as he did.

  Naturally, his father gave Jon the brush-off. He didn’t take advice from anyone, let alone his son.

  The anger at Whitey Irving was easy. There was a clear enemy, a bright white line between right and wrong.

  There was nothing clear or easy about his anger toward Roman. Jon thumped the wheel with his fists. How was he going to convince his dad that he needed to be closer to civilization and the help and company of his only child?

  How did you help someone who didn’t want to be helped? How do you engage someone who’s hurting, when they won’t even talk to you?

  Sometime during the last decade of Jon’s thirty-two years, he’d been forced into the awareness that fear and pain and uncertainty don’t disappear simply because a person is told to grow up, to buck up, to be a man. That river of emotion goes underground, morphing, gaining power, eventually erupting far from the source, unrecognizable and sometimes, uncontrollable.

  He’d seen Roman erupt enough times to recognize the cycle. Only the knowledge of what lay beneath the rage allowed Jon to ignore it and keep pushing for an in.

  He loved his father.

  Couldn’t stand to be with him for more than a few days at a time, but he still loved him.

  The driver ahead of him was stomping back and forth in front of his car, peering through the line of vehicles and shaking his head. It looked like he was losing his own battle for control. Was he an entitled asshat, used to always getting his own way? Or was he already upset about something else and this accident was the last straw?

  Jon understood that all too well. If Roman was any indication, self-awareness wasn’t a skill prioritized by the older generation.

  The man banged his cell phone against his hand and then threw it through the open window of his car. For a moment, he stood there, braced on the car door, hanging his head. He looked pitiful. And all too familiar.

  Jon told himself there was no need to draw more lightning onto himself.

  Not your business.

  On the other hand, he could consider it a warm-up for dealing with his father.

  Jon sighed, stepped out of his car, and walked over to the man.

  “Excuse me, sir. If your phone is dead, you’re welcome to borrow mine.”

  “What?” He drew back and stared at Jon. His face was florid and pulsating. Deep bags under his eyes suggested the man hadn’t slept well lately, or maybe ever.

  “My phone.” Jon held it out. “If that will help.”

  The man looked at him suspiciously, as if unwilling to believe the gesture. An array of reactions passed over his features before it sagged like an overfilled balloon with a slow leak. He ran a hand over his scalp. “It’s my wife’s birthday. I’ve got dinner reservations. I promised that this year I’d be there.” He stuck out a hand. “Don’t know if she’ll believe me, but a man can try.”

  He keyed in the number, spoke briefly, then handed the device back. “Thanks,” he said gruffly. “Hope I’m still married when I get home.”

  Maybe he was more aware than Jon gave him credit for.

  “Good luck,” Jon told him.

  Twenty minutes later, the flag person returned, calling for drivers to return to their vehicles.

  Finally.

  As the line of drivers began starting their engines, the young worker walked toward him. He glanced at the car ahead and lowered his voice. “I thought he was going to rip me a new one. Thanks for calming him down.”

  “No problem. He’s got a lot on his mind.”

  It was so much easier to be courteous to a stranger, no baggage, no strings between them. And the stranger’s backstory was plausible, if weak; could be he was simply one of those people who took delight in creating misery for those around him.

  Jon knew Roman’s backstory. He understood why his father clung so hard to his independence and privacy, the pain that made him lash out at times, the betrayals that had destroyed his trust. But this last winter, his father’s attitude had deteriorated to the point where Jon dreaded every phone conversation. When all you got was grief for not coming sooner, it didn’t engender excitement for a return trip.

  Once past the accident—a pickup truck with two sides smashed in, and a driver lucky to be alive—he quickly made his way onto the coast road toward the little town of Sunset Bay, his fingers tight on the wheel, the muscles in his arms like piano wires.

  With nothing to distract him, dread at what lay ahead filled his mind. He drew in a deep breath and let himself feel what he’d been suppressing since he got Abby’s call.

  Fear, pain, uncertainty, and most definitely anger.

  His dad was getting worse. It wasn’t safe for him to be living out there all alone. Jon knew something like this would happen; he’d predicted it, seen it coming a mile away, and had been forced to sit back and wait for the crash. They’d been lucky that Abby had found him when she did, but luck and neighborly kindness was hardly a long-term plan.

  Not for Jon, at least. This was the last straw. If Roman wouldn’t move back to Los Angeles with him, then Jon would have to find an assisted living facility in Sunset Bay for him.

  Did a town of that size even have such a facility?

  He hated the thought of his sharp-as-a-tack father living surrounded by dementia patients. Roman would never forgive him, but what choice did Jon have?

  He loved his father.

  But he had a life, too.

  There had to be a better way.

  He wished, not for the first time, that he had a sibling to share this responsibility with. But Roman had never remarried after the divorce, and the half sibs on his mom’s side, schoolkids he barely knew, had nothing to do with this.

  He turned the steering wheel into town, easing up on the gas and followed the signs to the hospital. The parking lot was empty and free of charge, one of the perks of small-town living.

  He locked the car and jogged toward the emergency entrance. The last he’d heard from Abby was that his father was having diagnostic tests done but that it looked like he’d received only minor injuries. It was the longest conversation they’d ever had. Her voice had been husky with tears, which had surprised him.

  He’d met her the previous summer when he was driving Roman and Chaos to the service dog training program at Sanctuary Ranch. Abby was friends with Jamie, the trainer who’d been working with the dog, but she usually disappeared whenever he showed up. She worked in the kitchen and gardens, he thought.

  But apparently sometime during the winter, while Jon had been busy tanking his career, Abby and his father had become friends.r />
  She’d warned him that Roman had banged himself up pretty good and had some spectacular bruises. Jon should prepare himself, she’d said.

  Prepare himself? He’d been dreading a call like this for months. How much more broken could his father be? Another fall was about the last thing the man needed.

  The glass door was locked after hours but a security guard got up from his post and greeted Jon through an intercom.

  “My father was brought in earlier today,” he said. “I got here as quickly as I could.”

  The guard checked his name against a log, then buzzed him in and directed him to the triage center. He glanced around. The room was lit up, but empty.

  No, not empty.

  “Hey, Jon.” Abby’s husky voice echoed against all the chrome, tile, and stainless steel.

  He looked over to see her curled up in the corner waiting area. She unfolded her slender legs from the seat of an uncomfortable-looking chair and stood. Her hair was mussed and dark circles smudged the honeyed skin under her eyes.

  Guilt over the fact that she’d been the one to find Roman, instead of him, the son, sharpened his tone. “What are you still doing here?”

  She straightened, swiped a thick mass of hair over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to leave him here alone.”

  Fatigue and hurt roughened her voice.

  Good job, Byers.

  He gritted his teeth and searched for his earlier calm. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. It’s been a long day. Traffic was a mess. I thought I’d never get here.”

  She gazed at him without blinking. Then one eyebrow lifted. “Sorry you had to come out.”

  The shot hit the mark and he took it, knowing he deserved it. A few hours ago, he was calming an asshat on the side of the road. Now he was that asshat.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his index fingers against his temples. “Can I start over?”

  The eyebrow arched higher. She crossed her arms and tossed her head, sending that strand of chestnut hair tumbling down her back. “I’m listening.”

  When she talked, which she didn’t do a lot, her voice was like a hand-knit sweater, a little scratchy, warm, and comforting. But she listened with her whole body angled toward you, like she wasn’t just waiting for her turn to speak, but really hearing what you had to say.