“She likes you,” said Josh.
“Do you take care of her a lot?” said Lisa.
“Not really, but I told my parents I’d watch her for a while so they could enjoy their breakfast without having to worry about her,” said Josh. “They have a lot of catching up to do with your parents. They all used to be friends when they were in college.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Lisa.
“Apparently, my dad and your dad lived in the same dorm for a couple of years,” said Josh. “I guess they didn’t keep in touch after they graduated, but I don’t know why. It’s funny—until last week, I didn’t even know about your family.”
Lisa was thoroughly enjoying the conversation and wanted Josh to continue talking, but she heard a gasp and looked over her shoulder. Sabrina was standing behind them with a vague expression on her face as if she were gazing beyond them into a future in which she had no part. Her appearance was so eerie that it frightened Lisa. What if Sabrina dropped dead in front of them? It would be convenient, but she didn’t want to see it.
“Mom, are you all right?” said Josh.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m sorry, Josh, I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just thinking how nice it is to see you and Lisa with a baby.”
“Yvonne is a very cute baby, if that’s what you mean,” said Josh.
“It’s not,” said Sabrina.
Lisa thought she would die from embarrassment. She gave Yvonne back to Josh to communicate that she didn’t share his mother’s opinion of the situation. Josh’s face was bright red. Lisa suspected Sabrina had a habit of making awkward remarks. She hoped Sabrina would leave, but Sabrina put her hands on her hips and watched Josh as he busied himself with the task of feeding Yvonne.
“Josh, you’re not doing it right,” she said.
“What do you mean?” he said.
“She’s all squished,” said Sabrina. “How is she supposed to digest her food like that? She’s a baby, not a basketball. You can’t just tuck her under your arm and expect her to be okay. I know you’re trying to help, but you’re just making things worse, like you always do.”
“Mom, it’s fine,” said Josh.
“Don’t argue with me, Josh,” she said. “When I need your help, I’ll tell you. I want you to have a normal life. Go watch television or text your friends or explore the beach. Do whatever you want. I don’t care. Just be as happy as you can.”
Before he could protest, she snatched Yvonne out of his arms and gave her the bottle, but her hand shook as she held it. Lisa wondered if Josh had noticed the disintegration of his mother. She risked a glance in his direction, but he was staring off into space. The tension that existed between him and his mother made her feel so uncomfortable that she edged past Sabrina without bothering to excuse herself and retreated to the dining room. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she poured herself a bowl of cereal. Veronica made a face and nudged Stephen.
“That’s the cereal I told you about with the little brown seeds in it that look like bugs,” she said. “I actually found a bug in it once. I don’t know what kind it was, but I could see its tiny hairy legs.”
“Veronica, why are you so annoying?” said Lisa.
Veronica shrugged. “What were you doing with Josh?” she said.
“I wasn’t doing anything with him,” said Lisa.
“Are you sure?” said Veronica.
Lisa was furious, but before she could reply, Richard put down the newspaper. His brooding eyes made his face look ominous.
“They’re a nasty bunch, the Hamiltons,” he said.
“That’s a name I haven’t heard for a while,” said Lisa’s father.
“Consider yourself lucky,” said Richard. “The world is better off with-out them. Unfortunately, some of the idiots who live in this town don’t seem to agree.” He pushed the newspaper across the table toward Lisa’s father and leaned back in his chair. “Hamilton Estate has been declared a historical landmark.”
Lisa’s father glanced at the article.
“Who cares if it’s a historical landmark or not?” he said.
“It should be demolished, not turned into a memorial,” said Richard. “There’s something deeply evil about it that can’t be described with words. Houses tend to absorb the energy of their occupants.”
Lisa understood what Richard meant. She had seen Hamilton Estate from a distance on multiple occasions, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, it had always filled her with apprehension. As far as she knew, the Hamiltons had abandoned it after a disastrous business venture, but she didn’t know any of the details, except that the patriarch of the family had committed suicide.
“Richard, you’re scaring the girls,” said Lisa’s mother.
“You can’t shelter them forever, Nora,” said Richard with a sideways glance at Arthur, whose proximity prevented anyone from thinking he hadn’t overheard the entire conversation. “Although I have been ordered—quite rudely, I might add—not to discuss certain subjects in the presence of the children, including anything that could be wrongly identified as the product of insanity, I think a healthy sense of caution is completely justified, considering the circumstances.”
“Caution is one thing,” said Arthur. “Paranoia is another.”
“Unfortunately, death doesn’t discriminate between the two,” said Richard. “Would you rather sleep with one eye open or rot with both eyes shut? It’s better to be prepared than to be caught off guard. If your expectations are low enough, you’ll never be disappointed.”
“My expectations are nonexistent, at least when it comes to you,” said Arthur. He spoke with bitterness rather than anger. “I learned that lesson the hard way. I don’t want to hear anything else about the Hamiltons. Do you think you can respect that?”
“I can only speak for myself,” said Richard. “I would be ecstatic if they stayed in the grave where they belong, but there’s no guarantee they will, especially now that their former counterpart is on the loose—and you know who I mean. Stroke or not, he’s probably calling them up from the dead right now and hatching a diabolical plot to destroy us all. I always suspected he was in league with the devil.”
Sabrina walked into the room with Yvonne, and Richard stopped talking. Josh accompanied Sabrina. He didn’t look permanently damaged by her remarks, but Lisa knew better than to think he hadn’t been affected by them. She wondered why Sabrina was so harsh with him and concluded with a guilty thrill of satisfaction that the dysfunctionality in Josh’s family ran deeper than she had previously thought. She wished Richard and Arthur hadn’t stopped arguing. It was comforting to know her family’s problems weren’t unique.
“Speaking of historical landmarks,” said Lisa’s mother, “there’s a fort about a mile down the beach that was built during the colonial era. Maybe we could all walk down there after breakfast and take a look around. There’s not much of it left—just a few brick walls and a parapet over the water—but it’s worth seeing, and the beach is always covered with shells. I think the children would find it enjoyable.”
Sabrina pounced on the idea, but with a subtle alteration.
“That’s an excellent plan,” she said, “but I think Yvonne is coming down with the sniffles, and I don’t want her to get chilled. Maybe the other children could go by themselves. They’re old enough to stay out of trouble for a few hours, and they’d probably have more fun without us tagging along. It would be a perfect opportunity for them to get to know each other better. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
The enthusiasm in her voice was contagious, but Lisa wasn’t deceived. Sabrina was much too eager to get rid of them. Something else was going on. She glanced at Josh to see if he shared her suspicions, but he was either an expert at concealing his feelings or oblivious to what was happening.
“Can we go, please?” said Veronica to Lisa’s mother. “We won’t do anything dumb. I promise. You can trust us.”
“It’s fine with me, as long as all of you stay tog
ether,” said Lisa’s mother. “Lisa, you’re in charge. Veronica, listen to your sister, and don’t climb on any of the walls of the fort. They might collapse under your weight. Oh, and stay out of the water. It’s too cold.”
Veronica leaped up and dashed away. Stephen and Josh followed her, somewhat more reluctantly. Lisa felt sick. She suspected Sabrina was about to spring the trap, but she couldn’t prevent it without revealing that she had eavesdropped on her father and Sabrina. As she went upstairs, she heard a dissatisfied grunt from Richard.
“They shouldn’t be wandering around out there by themselves,” he said. “They’re too young, and it’s dangerous. They’ve lived their entire lives in an artificial environment, being coddled and pampered and told how special they are. They’re unprepared for the real world. They don’t know what it’s like to be hated or betrayed or killed.”
Lisa thought he was being ridiculous. The only people who were any threat to her family were already sitting at the table. Peterson was incapacitated and the Hamiltons were dead. They had no power to do her any harm. Despite Richard’s predictions, nothing sinister had materialized in the flesh, and she wasn’t afraid of hypothetical villains. The only enigma in the whole scenario was Graham.
∞∞∞
As soon as the children left—except Shannon, who refused to go—Sabrina gathered the others into the living room. She situated herself so Lisa’s father couldn’t look at her without seeing the urn and waited for everyone else to get comfortable. Arthur sat down beside her. Richard wandered over to the mantelpiece and stood there with his back turned to Lisa’s parents. Sabrina wrapped her arms around the sleeping baby, and Yvonne’s cherubic face covered them both with a veil of innocence.
“I’m glad you’re all here,” said Sabrina. “I don’t know how to preface what I’m about to say, except that I wish it weren’t true. Most of you already know I’ve been sick for a while, but I didn’t want to believe it was anything serious, so I tried to ignore it as much as possible.” She looked at Arthur and hesitated. “Maybe if I’d taken care of it sooner, it wouldn’t have gotten so bad. I feel like I’ve let you down.”
“Sabrina, don’t even talk like that,” said Arthur.
“But I lied to you,” she said. “I said I would be okay, but there’s no point in pretending anymore. I’m probably not going to get better.”
He stared at her in bewilderment.
“I have cancer,” said Sabrina.
“Cancer?” said Arthur.
“I’m so sorry, Arthur,” said Sabrina. “I should have told you sooner, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want it to be real, and as long as I kept it a secret, I could pretend it wasn’t happening. I knew if I talked about it, there wouldn’t be anywhere I could go to get away from it. I don’t want it to define me. When you look at me, I don’t want you to see it. I want you to see me.”
“I do see you,” he said. “I always will.”
He took her face between his hands and kissed her on the forehead.
“You’re trembling,” said Sabrina.
“I know, I just love you so much,” said Arthur. Sabrina heard him struggling to keep his voice calm. “Are you sure it’s cancer?”
“Yes,” said Sabrina. “I’m sure.”
“But you were fine the whole time you were pregnant with Yvonne,” said Arthur. “Wouldn’t the doctors have noticed if something were wrong, especially something like this?”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “I wasn’t having symptoms at that time. It’s difficult to see something if you’re not looking for it. Besides, this type of cancer grows quickly, which is why it’s so serious. It’s already spread all around my body.”
“That was going to be my next question,” he said, looking more terrified each moment. “It sounds bad, but it’s not the end of the world. It’ll just make things a little more complicated for us. You don’t have to be afraid, Sabrina. I’ll be with you every step of the way, and we’ll figure it out like we always do.”
“No, we won’t,” she said. “Don’t you get it? We won’t do anything. You will, though. You’ll figure out how to fall asleep every night in an empty bed. You’ll figure out how to raise four children by yourself. You’ll figure out how to love another woman, or you’ll figure out how to die alone. You won’t have a choice. It’s not going to be easy for either of us, but I wouldn’t trade places with you if you begged me on your knees. There’s nothing worse than being left behind.”
“Sabrina, I’m not worried about myself right now,” he said. “I’m worried about you. Even if the odds are against you, there must be treatments that could help you. We need to come up with a plan.”
“I agree,” she said. “That’s why I asked Andrew for his opinion.”
Everyone waited for Lisa’s father to speak.
“I don’t have any doubts about the diagnosis,” he said. “It’s a typical presentation for this type of cancer. The test results are definitive. Unfortunately, the scans showed several hotspots outside the primary tumor in Sabrina’s liver and spine.”
“So what should we do?” said Arthur.
Sabrina heard the desperation in his voice, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances. Peterson was a sore subject in the family. She had to back Arthur into a corner before he started thinking clearly again, or he wouldn’t allow her to carry out her plan. She hated manipulating him, but she thought she didn’t have a choice.
“Andrew, what sort of mortality rates are we looking at?” she said.
“Considering the characteristics of your particular case, the most recent statistics predict you have a ten percent chance of being alive five years from now,” said Lisa’s father in a dull monotone that made the odds sound even worse than they were. His robotic forecast of her future showed how uncomfortable he was with the interrogation, but Sabrina pressed on relentlessly.
“What would happen to me if I survived that long?” she said.
“The final outcome would be the same,” said Lisa’s father. “The cancer would continue to get worse, and there would eventually come a time when the treatment wouldn’t be able to keep it in check anymore.”
“So it would ultimately kill me,” said Sabrina. “I understand, but that’s not what I’m curious about. I want to know what changes would take place in my body. How would I eventually die?”
“I don’t see the point in speculating about that,” he said. “Every patient is different, and your experience will be unique, whatever it is.”
“You almost make it sound pleasant,” said Sabrina. “You probably think a positive outlook will improve my prognosis, but we’re way beyond that. Stop making excuses and tell me what I want to know.”
Lisa’s father remained silent.
“That’s what I thought,” said Sabrina. “You’re so disturbed by the prospect that you’re not even willing to talk about it. That’s okay. I think you’ve made my point for me. Some things are worse than death.” She glanced at Arthur to confirm he was sufficiently horrified to consent to whatever she had in mind, and took the plunge. “Luckily, there’s another option: a drug that has a better chance of working than anything else. You’ve heard about it before.”
“What is it?” said Arthur.
“It doesn’t have a name,” said Sabrina. “Its inventor only ever spoke about it in the most abstract of terms.”
“Its inventor?” said Arthur.
“Peterson,” said Sabrina.
Arthur seemed to be at a loss for words. Sabrina wondered if she had gone too far. The idea wasn’t disturbing to her anymore, but that was only because she had spent so much time thinking about it. She felt the situation slipping out of her control. She needed sympathy, so she pinched Yvonne, who started crying.
“Peterson was unethical,” said Sabrina. “We can all agree about that. I don’t approve of his methods, but to be perfectly fair, many of the foundational discoveries made by the scientific community were made by unethical people.”
“We
’re not talking about the scientific community,” said Arthur. “We’re talking about a murderer who injected people with poison, just to satisfy his own curiosity. How can you defend someone like that? He knew exactly what he was doing.”
“Oh please, Arthur,” said Sabrina. “Would you quit being morally outraged and look at the facts? Some of those people are alive right now because of what he did.”
Richard turned around.
“Don’t make it sound more spectacular than it is,” he said. “Only one of them is alive, and it’s probably a coincidence.”
“Fine,” said Sabrina. “Have it your own way, Richard. You’re the expert. Why don’t you tell them about the girl who survived?”
Richard sighed.
“Her name was Agnes,” he said. “She was fourteen years old when Peterson selected her for his bogus experiment. She had an inoperable brain tumor that wasn’t responding to treatment. Her family was so desperate for a glimmer of hope that they handed her over to him without any hesitation. He treated her with the drug for several months, and by some strange twist of fate, she got better.”
“What happened to her after she recovered?” said Arthur.
“I would like to say she lived happily ever after, but she didn’t,” said Richard. “The trauma she suffered was extreme. Peterson performed a lot of unnecessary procedures on her to collect as much data as possible. She testified against him at the trial, and then she disappeared.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Arthur, looking at Richard with undisguised contempt. “You don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“Actually, I do,” said Richard. “If you’d answered any of my countless phone calls over the last twenty years, you would have learned that she contacted me and thanked me for saving her from Peterson. She said she had finally come to terms with what he did to her. She had just found out she was pregnant, and she wanted to build a better life for her child. I still hear from her occasionally. She recently retired from her job as a nurse, and from what I’ve been able to gather from my conversations with her, she’s extremely happy.”
The Patient from Silvertree: Book One in the Silvertree Series Page 4
