by Liz Flaherty
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“DO YOU DREAD IT?” Luke looked over at Cass. She’d been quiet since he’d picked her up twenty minutes before for the two-hour drive to Kari’s Indianapolis office. He’d reached for her hand and held it on the console between them in the confines of his car. She hadn’t pulled away, but she hadn’t turned her fingers to hold his, either.
She nodded. “The first time I had to go back for follow-up, three months after treatment, I was a basket case. It gets a little easier each time, and I hope after this I won’t have to show up for a year. But I’m not intuitive at all. I never know what to expect.”
He gave her a skeptical look. He’d have bet she was. “You sure intuited out the coffee shop, Sister Followed-Her-Instincts.”
She laughed, although it sounded forced and didn’t show up in her eyes. “Everyone gets lucky sometimes. But back when I had to go in after a mammogram showed something, I thought it was just a bad picture. I take terrible ones, after all. When they said I had cancer, I thought it was all a mistake because…well, because I should have known, right? But I didn’t. And then I thought I’d get by with treatment or maybe a lumpectomy and didn’t even worry about anything more invasive. I now have a mastectomy and reconstruction under my surgical belt. Following those instincts you just so rudely made fun of doesn’t always work out well in the scheme of things.” By the time she finished speaking, her voice was brittle, although her smile held firmly.
“Point taken. Just think about this, then, after you’re done at the doctor’s office—or offices, because you have to see the oncologist, too, right?—we’ll stop for a lunch you don’t have to either prepare or pay for. How’s that?” He wanted to make her smile into a real one, but it wasn’t working.
Ten minutes later, he remembered why it wasn’t working. It wasn’t the first time, either, although the memory had slipped away. “She did it for me.”
Cass looked at him, a frown between her eyes. “Did what?”
“Oh, noth—” He stopped, swallowed and went on. “I used to say ridiculous things to Jill when we were on the way to the doctor. Sing stupid parodies of songs. Tell horrible jokes. Anything to make her laugh. And she always did. Always.” Pain angled sharply through him with the memory. “It just occurred to me—again—that she did it for me, to make me feel better. It cost me nothing to try to make her laugh—how much did it cost her to do the laughing?”
Cass hesitated. “I didn’t know Jill, but I doubt if she laughed just to make you feel better. I don’t believe you’re that kind of needy.” She grinned, turned toward him and pulled her knees onto the seat. Her fingers curled around his. “Matter of fact, if you look back really hard, wasn’t there at least one time when she said, ‘Hey, buddy, everything isn’t about you,’ and just ignored you?”
He raised an eyebrow, the last remnant of pain washing away in a tide of something else. Something warm and exciting and impossible. “Is that what you’re saying to me?”
“Pretty much.”
“Jill wouldn’t have done that.”
“Bet she would’ve.”
“Yeah, you’re right. She would’ve.”
They laughed together, there in the cozy warmth of the car, and Luke was pretty sure he heard a third voice in the laughter. He knew it was fanciful, but he wondered by the way she held her head if Cass had heard Jill laughing, too.
“Tell me about her. I’ve seen her picture at your house, but that doesn’t really tell me what she sounded like or what music she liked or if she liked to read.” Cass’s voice gentled. “I’d like to be friends with her.”
“She’d like that.”
At first it was hard. He felt disloyal, but knew Jill would have been the first to snort at that very thought. Being loyal to a memory wasn’t a concept she’d have appreciated. He thought of conversations with Mollie, which had given him such comfort after Jill’s death when no one—even seven-year-old Seth in his own profound grief—was willing to talk about her.
“Mollie said, after she died, that while she was an angel now, the Jill we knew hadn’t been one at all. She was so funny.” He thought for a minute, struggling with the memory, and went on. “When she was in the hospital the last time, she was worried about her hair because the last cut hadn’t been a very good one. She told her doctor she couldn’t die until her bangs grew out. He said of course she couldn’t, but she could and she did. At the funeral home, he cried because he hadn’t been able to keep his promise.”
He knew that later that night Zoey would either call or text him and ask if Cass really was all right or if she was just saying so to keep her family from worrying about her. Luke would be as honest as he could without telling anything Cass might have asked him not to tell.
He wouldn’t say aloud that talking to Cass about Jill was the closest he’d ever come to letting go of the woman he’d loved. He wouldn’t admit that his clumsy attempt to make Cass feel better had ended with him realizing beyond all doubt that he wanted her to be a part of every day for the rest of his life.
However, he’d been there before and he couldn’t go back. Even when he completed the process of letting go, he couldn’t return to that place.
But he would think about that later, when Cass wasn’t sitting beside him in his car. Her body was as aligned with his as if they were touching when they weren’t really, other than her fingers tangled with his. When she laughed and leaned in his direction in tandem with the laughter, he could smell her hair and the scent of her skin that was both delicate and earthy at the same time.
He would think about it when he wasn’t conscious of her leggings-clad knee so close to their hands that he finally moved their joined fingers to let them rest on the warm fabric. He could feel the smoothness of her skin through the soft knit, but he wasn’t going to think about that yet. That would come later, too.
They parked at the medical building with ten minutes to spare. When they walked toward its doors, she reached for the hand that had held hers for the last hour. Her fingers were still warm from his touch, a little damp. They trembled within his, and his heart broke more than he thought he could bear. But he knew he had to put that new laceration away in a safe place or he wouldn’t be at all what she needed today or ever. He would think about that later, too.
This was the point where Jill’s courage would waver and he would power up his own.
He stopped, pulling Cass to a standstill beside him, and held her amazing turquoise gaze. “Don’t be scared,” he said, and it was as if he was hearing his voice say the same words a hundred times before. “I’ll be right here.”
For just a minute—no, less than that—Cass leaned into him, her fragrant hair soft and warm against his neck. She felt as frail as she had the first time he’d seen her, standing tall and arrow-straight in her too-big black dress and greeting mourners when her mother died.
She straightened, releasing his hand, and gave an assertive nod. “It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”
Just as he had those hundred times before, he stretched his face into a smile and nodded, too. “You sure will. I can’t manage that daggone coffee shop by myself. Come on, Sister Tall Woman, let’s go.”
*
“LET’S DO A BIOPSY.” Kari Ross’s voice was quiet and firm. The sympathy was in her eyes and the way they held Cass’s gaze. “We’re not going to panic or count our chickens before they hatch or any of that kind of thing. You know the percentages—it’s probably a cyst. You’ve had them before.”
“Or it could be cancer metastasized to my ovary.”
“It could.”
“Can we take care of this at home or do I need to come here?”
“We can do it at the hospital in Sawyer.” Kari pointed at the screen. “Everything on every test looks good. Every single thing. But ovarian cysts are weird things, especially after breast cancer. We just have to be certain.”
“I know.” Cass took a deep breath. “I know.”
“How’s your arm doing?”
�
��It hurts sometimes.”
“But no swelling?”
Cass thought about that and realized there wasn’t, nor had there been for months. “None at all.”
“Been doing the exercises?”
Her face must have been a giveaway, because Kari shook her head, grinning at her.
“Thought so. Do them. And don’t work so hard. And don’t be scared. When is your oncologist’s appointment?”
“A half hour.”
“We’ll call over there with your appointment for the biopsy.” The doctor’s dark eyes held Cass’s again. “I know you’re going to worry. I’ll make it as soon as I can. What color of balloons do you want?”
Cass frowned. “Balloons?”
“Yeah, for when it comes back benign. We tend to party a lot at the clinic on the lake.” Kari squeezed her hand. “I know it seems like every step of this journey is uphill, and a ton of them are, but you’re never alone while you’re traveling. That’s a promise from A Woman’s Place.”
She was still scared, Cass admitted to herself later, after hearing more encouraging words from the oncologist, but it was a different kind of fear than she’d felt before.
The restaurant Luke chose for their long-awaited lunch was crowded but quiet. They sat across from each other and drank their first coffee of the day, neither of them needing to talk about just how good it was. But Luke did anyway.
“It’s better at the Round, so it’s a basic requirement of our Keep Cold partnership for you to stay healthy.”
“I’ll give it my best shot.” She finished the coffee. “And you’re wrong—that was every bit as good as we make at the Round. I need more.”
They talked about the coffee shop during lunch, still trying to decide on a definite closing time.
“There are evenings,” he argued, “when there are only two people in there after six o’clock.”
“And others when there are two dozen.” A situation that was always unexpected and therefore the shop was understaffed, but she didn’t want to mention that part.
“Why not just open it for events?” he suggested. “Meetings or parties. That’s what Neely does with the tearoom. Libby did, too. That works.”
“I know.” But it wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted accessibility for people who needed a place to go, whether it was to work or to be alone or even if they wanted to talk to someone. “But when I—” She stopped. She didn’t intend to share her personal life, but this day had so much of it bubbling to the surface she didn’t know what else to do with it.
“When you what?”
She looked down at her fingernails. They were short and neat and polished the purple Royce had festooned them with over the weekend. During chemo, Cass remembered, they’d become brittle and ragged and she’d spent hours on them, thinking they were at least one thing in her besieged life she could have control over. She’d been wrong, but she’d tried.
“When I was sick before, I still had computer work to do, but I couldn’t concentrate at home for some reason. I think it was because instead of being alone, I’d be alone with cancer and, believe me, that’s one nasty housemate.” The words came out in a rush, and she met his eyes, asking him to withhold comment until she’d finished. “So I’d get up in the morning and take all my meds and then I’d go down to the coffee shop. It was only a block, but I had to drive or I’d be exhausted by the time I got there. After the first few days, they knew me—I was probably the only bald woman in the place most of the time—and my cup of medium grind with hazelnut syrup and half-and-half was ready for me before I ever got to the counter to order. They called me by name, and I knew all theirs. I always took the worst table in the place because I was a table hog, and pretty soon they took my coffee there so I wouldn’t have to pick it up and struggle with it and my laptop and my purse. When my mother died, there was a bouquet of daisies and a card on the table.”
Before she knew it was happening, tears tumbled down her cheeks, and she looked away in embarrassment when the pretty server refilled their cups and gave her a glance that was both questioning and sympathetic.
Luke caught Cass’s hand. “That’s why,” he said, “Ground in the Round is more than a coffee shop to you. It’s a lifeline, isn’t it? Not for you specifically, but for people who might need one.”
She nodded. “Probably.” She scrabbled in her purse for a tissue and turned away again to blow her nose. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go all drama queen on you. And I realize we don’t have the coffee shop as a philanthropic entity, but—”
“We have the coffee shop for whatever reasons we choose, as long as they’re legal and within our own moral and business values. I think what you’re talking about fits those parameters just fine.”
She picked up her cup, then set it down. “Are you really that nice of a guy?”
He straightened in his seat, scowling at her in phony outrage. “I am. Didn’t my mother just tell you that at the festival? Were you not even listening?”
“No, she told me you’d never met a clothes hamper you liked and that you hogged any device that even resembled a remote control. She didn’t mention anything about a nice guy.”
“I’m sure she meant to.”
“She probably did.” She met his eyes. He hadn’t asked any questions after they’d left either doctor’s office, other than, “Is there anywhere we need to go besides lunch?” She could see concern in his expression, but she knew he wouldn’t ask unless she indicated she was willing to talk about the events of the morning.
She thought of Kari’s promise and remembered the table in the Sacramento coffee shop. She’d felt alone then, she realized, but she hadn’t been. Not really. And she was even less so now.
And she remembered that on the way here this morning, when her mind was on the sharper edge of crazy, he’d talked about Jill. He’d shared not only the joy of loving her but the pain of losing her. Sometimes his fingers had grasped hers so tightly it had hurt, but Cass would have allowed the grip to draw blood before she would have pulled away.
Neither of them wanted permanence in a relationship—that wasn’t even in question. Yet they had bonded over grief and laughter, two of life’s great motivators. They had known, whether they said the words or not, that they’d ventured further into intimacy than they’d intended to go.
The tears threatened again, pushing at her eyes and making her find another tissue. She was afraid, and she wasn’t alone.
She pushed away her plate and drew her cup closer. There was always comfort in a warm mug.
And she said, “I have to have a biopsy.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“JUST COME AND take a look,” Dan Graham encouraged via Skype. “I’ll even take you to check out a cider press while you’re here if you’re worried about wasting time away from your orchard. You can fly out one day and back the next.”
Luke sat at his desk in the orchard’s office. It was usually the most cluttered place in the apple barn, but the loss of a teenage employee’s cell phone had necessitated a thorough cleaning. He had to admit it looked kind of nice this way. Professional, even. But he couldn’t find a thing.
Dan looked tired, and Luke wanted to help him. The other man’s mentorship had been priceless in those first years after college. It would be nice to repay some of that support.
“Monday?” he said. “The orchard barn is closed all week for Thanksgiving.” A nice thing about having a rural business was that Black Friday shopping wasn’t an issue. Cass had even agreed to close the coffee shop from Thursday through Sunday to give everyone a break.
“That would work. You want to get your flight and we’ll reimburse? That way you can schedule at your convenience.” Dan sounded pleased.
“Sure.”
He hung up and gazed out the window over the desk at the neat rows of trees. He wouldn’t have to tell anyone where he was going, although he’d probably tell Seth and their parents. But he didn’t want Cass to know. Not yet. She had enough on her m
ind.
It was something he liked about their relationship, that they’d maintained a mostly strict hold on privacy, but it made him uncomfortable sometimes, too. He had a feeling she’d be upset if she knew he was considering leaving Miniagua, although she knew he’d intended to return to engineering someday. It was that “someday” that made the situation sticky—neither of them had ever given it a time frame.
Things had changed since the week before, when he’d taken her to the doctor in Indianapolis. They were closer in one way simply because of new things they’d learned about each other, but the revelations had made them both skittish—pulling away from each other for reasons he couldn’t clearly define. He doubted if Cass could, either.
No, that was wrong. Not that he could explain Cass’s motivations, but he understood his own quite well. He was falling in love with her. Three months of seeing each other nearly every day when there was an acknowledged attraction between them had led to a deeper attachment than he’d known in ten years. A whole lot deeper attachment than he wanted. Although he seemed to be developing an uncertainty as to exactly what he did want.
The next day was her biopsy at the hospital in Sawyer. When he’d offered to take her, she’d shaken her head. “Aunt Zoey will. Damaris has an appointment at nearly the same time just down the hall, so it will work out fine. She is so excited to get her cast off. Then she’ll just be down to one boot for a few more weeks and using a quad cane instead of crutches.”
On the surface, it was as if the conversations the day of Cass’s doctors’ appointments had never happened. Although they still saw each other, they were both busy virtually all the time.
Their longest and deepest dialogue had been during the weekly business meeting, when they’d argued once again about closing times. He wanted the coffee shop to close at six when the orchard store did, because it was safer. Although their exterior lighting was good, there was no getting around the fact that it was full dark on a country road and the working barista would be alone.
Cass wanted to close at nine. Even if the last few hours were slow, she argued, they could get the shop cleaned and ready for the next morning. They were on the sheriff’s office patrol route and it wasn’t as if Country Club Road was all that isolated anyway.
