Before I Go (38 page)

I dial his number.

He picks up on the first ring.

“Daisy,” he says. “I’ve been trying to call you.”

This, at least, is true. When I picked up my phone this morning to turn the ringer back on, I had three missed calls from him and ignored two more during the day.

“Sorry,” I say. “I’ve been meeting with a lot of therapists and stuff.”

“Yeah, that’s what your mom told me. But everything is going well, right?”

“Yeah. They said I can go home tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” I hear the surprise in his voice, but it’s more of horror than of delight, and it drives the knife deeper into my chest and brings my bitterness directly to the surface.

Sorry to break up your little love nest.

But then, I’m not sure I will break up his love nest, because I’m not sure I’m ready to see him just yet. “I think I might just stay at my mom’s, though. Rest up there.”

“For how long?” he asks, and I wonder if he’s calculating how many more nights he’ll have with Pamela.

“I don’t know. When do you want me home?” It comes out more heated than I anticipate, but, well, I
am
heated.

“I want you home now,” he says, and it sounds so sincere I almost believe it. And for a second I have a flash of sympathy for Jack. It must be hard to have a dying wife and a healthy lover waiting in the wings. But at the word “lover,” the bubble of sympathy bursts, and my anger flares again.

Jack keeps speaking, oblivious to my warring emotions. “But you probably should get your rest. How about I drive down and get you on Sunday? We’ll just leave your car at your mom’s. Figure out how to get it later.”

“That’s fine,” I say. And even though we haven’t been fighting, haven’t really been talking about much of anything, the conversation is exhausting me.

“OK,” he says. “And, Daisy?”

“Yeah?” I ask, but the only sound on the other end of the line is Jack’s steady breathing.

And then he speaks. “G’night.”

“ ’Night, Jack.” And for a split second I’m back home in our bed and there’s nothing between us—no miles of road or Lots of Cancer or Pamela—but the sheets.

twenty-four

I
AM SIX YEARS old.

Well, I feel six anyway, tucked into my twin bed, watching my nineteen-inch TV while Mom fiddles with the rabbit-ear antennas. “How’s that?” she asks after she has made the squiggly lines slightly less squiggly with her expert maneuvering.

“Good enough,” I say. “I think I can still grasp what’s happening on
The Price Is Right.
”

She smiles. “I’ll go get you something to eat.”

“Thanks,” I say, and turn back to Drew Carey and his pencil-thin microphone.

I fall asleep at some point during the Showcase Showdown and wake later to find a tray on my nightstand with a plate of sliced oranges and a bowl of cold chicken noodle soup. It immediately reminds me of Jack and the night that I yelled at him. I should have just eaten the damn soup. And then curled up on him and looked him in his imperfectly perfect face and told him I was lucky to have him.

But now Pamela is lucky to have him.

No. I shake my head, determined to stay angry with Jack. He lied to me. He betrayed me.

But as hard as I try, I can’t muster the energy to be mad at him.
And I know it’s because I love him. And because I betrayed him first.

I turned away from him when I should have turned toward him. I spent the last three months looking for a wife for him, telling myself I was doing it because I loved him, because I didn’t want to leave him alone. But all I was doing was leaving him alone.

And then I remember what Kayleigh said to me at the funeral home. That I was the one wasting my time. And I know for once she was right. I’ve been wasting my time. I think of all the hours, minutes, seconds that I could have spent petting his fingers, tracing his face, kissing his crooked smile. All the days that I should have spent with him, just talking to him about algae and hip pins and how I was terrified to die, to go somewhere without him.

A sound erupts from the pit of my stomach and out through my mouth that sounds like a cat being tortured.

The thought of being away from Jack for one second longer is more than I can bear. And I can only hope that Kayleigh is right again. That it’s not too late.

“Daisy?” I hear my mom call from somewhere in the house and then the sound of her footfall in the hallway as she comes rushing to my room.

“Are you OK?”

“No,” I say. “I need Jack. I have to go get Jack.” If I started it, maybe there’s a chance I can end it. Maybe Kayleigh’s right and it’s not too late.

“Honey, he’ll be here on Sunday.”

“
Now!
” I say, putting one sock-clad foot on my bedroom floor.

“Daisy, lay back down. You’re in no condition—”

“I’m going,” I say, standing up and ignoring the fact that the room is slightly off-kilter. “If you won’t take me, I’ll drive myself.”

“OK! OK,” she says. “I’ll get my keys. But stay right there. I’m helping you to the car.”

DURING THE NINETY-MINUTE drive to Athens, I practice what I’m going to say to Jack. How I’m going to convince him to forgive me, come back to me, be mine. But it’s hard to concentrate with the pitching of the car and the intense throbbing in my head. I’m lying with the seat fully reclined and my mom keeps shooting me worried sidelong glances that she thinks I can’t see.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I say through clenched teeth. “I’m fine.”

By the time we pull up in front of my house, I consider just living in my mom’s car for the rest of my days, as I’m not sure I even have the strength to open the door. But I somehow manage to slowly raise myself up in the seat and look out the windshield. The first thing I see is an unfamiliar car in our driveway. Not a car, but a truck. A gray pick-up truck. And something clicks.

I saw that truck on Facebook. On Pamela’s home page.

And suddenly I find a store of energy that I didn’t know I had. I throw open my mom’s car door and stomp across the yard to the front steps and then I’m at the front door, swinging it open and looking for Pamela like a lion stalks a gazelle.

I’m barely registering the disarray my house is in—where the hell is my couch?—when I see Pamela standing in the hall, staring at me, her perfect mouth locked in an O.

“Daisy,” she says.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I growl, surprised at my own venom, like I’m a mama bear and she’s an evil hunter who’s just shot one of my cubs. But it’s kind of an apt analogy, because really, what kind of woman dates someone’s husband? Even if his wife
is
dying.

Before she can answer, Jack appears behind her.

“Daisy,” he echoes, his feet glued to where he stands. “What are
you
doing here?” His eyes are already big, shocked at the sight of me, but then they widen more as he takes me in, and it’s only then that I realize what I must look like—my head wrapped in gauze, my sallow-just-had-surgery complexion, a pair of my mom’s gray sweatpants that have ridden up on my calves during the ride here. And I’m sure I look especially dreary compared to perfect Pamela, who still looks put together in a white T-shirt and a pair of ripped-up jeans. What the hell is she wearing?

“Daisy?” My mom appears at my side and her eyes dart from me to Jack to Pamela, trying—like everyone else in the room—to decipher what, exactly, is happening.

“Can’t you wait in the car, Mom?” I say through clenched teeth, crossing my arms in front of me. “I’ll be right out.”

“Honey, I really think—”

“Mom.” I cut my eyes at her, but she hesitates, looking at Jack, Pamela, and then me once more. Then she nods and turns to go.

When she’s gone, I point at Pamela, but my energy is considerably sapped. “What is she doing here?” I ask again, in a weak voice.

He hesitates, and a look passes between him and Pamela before he looks to me. A secret look that two people who have a secret share. A flash of jealousy and anger stings my belly. He takes a deep breath, and when he exhales, he says: “You should sit down.”

He walks toward me and gently places his hands on my shoulders. And even though I came with the explicit intention of grabbing on to him and never letting him go, I want to shrug him off, because I suddenly can’t stand the thought of him touching me. Or where else his hands have been. But my head feels light and the room is spinning a little and I know he’s right. I need to sit. He steers me through the living room and into the kitchen, because it appears to be the only room that has any furniture at all right now.

“Jack?” I say, as I collapse into a chair, worried that the surgery was unsuccessful, that the screenings were wrong, that my brain is malfunctioning.

He studies me. “Are you OK?”

“No,” I say. “What is going on?”

“I didn’t want you to find out,” he says quietly. And I stare at him with a mix of horror and anger. That he’s so readily admitting to it. I mean, I guess he doesn’t have much of a choice, since Pamela’s here, but I realize now I was still holding on to a sliver of hope that I had been wrong.

“Well, I know all about it,” I say as angrily as I can muster, which isn’t very, considering the short walk from the car to the house—and the confirmation of Jack and Pamela’s relationship—has left me shattered.

“You do?” He furrows his brow.

“Yeah,” I spit, wondering how he can be so calm. How he can sit there looking at me with his deep dimples and his mock expression of concern.

He shrugs. “I guess I’ve never been a great liar.”

At this, I find one more inexplicable store of energy and explode. “You’ve never been a liar at all, Jack! I don’t even know who you are anymore. How you could do
this
.”

It feels good to yell at him—to blame him—even though I know it’s not entirely his fault.

We sit in silence staring at each other and he looks so sad that I fight the urge to reach out for him, to hug him. And it makes me hate him as much as I love him.

But then, in an instant, his countenance changes, and instead of sadness, his eyes burn with something else. Something that looks like fury. “What else was I supposed to do?” he shouts. “Tell me! You wouldn’t let me come to doctor appointments, I couldn’t postpone school. God forbid I try to
be
with you.”

I know he’s right. That this is my fault. But his words burn. So I latch on to the last thing he said, and lash out with it. “Seriously, Jack? This is all because I wouldn’t have
sex
with you?”

“What? No!” he says. “What is wrong with you?” He looks at me with his forehead crinkled, and then it relaxes, as if he’s thinking
Oh right, you’ve had brain surgery
. And it inflames me even more, because
he’s
the one who’s cheating, but somehow
I’m
the one who’s crazy. When he speaks again, his voice is quieter, more level. “I just . . . I thought it would make you happy.”

It’s my turn to furrow my brow, confused. Did he somehow find out my plan to set him up with Pamela? How
could
he have? Kayleigh’s the only one who knew and I know she wouldn’t have told him. She’s never betrayed me, and she wouldn’t start now.

I narrow my eyes at him. “What
exactly
did you think would make me happy?”

“You know, not having to worry about it anymore. I know it’s a big stressor and I just wanted to help. I had to do
something
to help.”

Wait,
it
? Doesn’t he mean
him
? Not having to worry about
him
?

“Jack,” I say, putting my hands on the table in front of me, as if that will stop the room from revolving and bring some clarity to my muddled mind. “What are you talking about?”

He tilts his head and gestures back to the living room. “Uh . . . the house?” he says, dragging out both words, as if he’s talking to a child.

I just stare at him, waiting.

“You know, how I got Pamela to work on it?”

I think of the bare living room and Pamela’s unkempt clothes, and pieces of a puzzle begin to slowly connect to one another in my pulsing head. All the things I know about Pamela race through my mind—the sky-diving,
Grey’s Anatomy
, her ability to make jam—but suddenly one tiny fact emerges above the rest. Something that Jack told me: Pamela and her dad built most of the farm themselves.

“What is she doing to it?”

“All the stuff that I wasn’t able to do,” he says. “She just finished the beams in the basement. Today she’s starting on the floors.”

I try to wrap my head around this new information. Pamela is not only my husband’s girlfriend, but she is, apparently, our new contractor.

“How much is this going to cost us?” I ask, my head swimming with numbers—prices that we can’t afford.

“Nothing,” he says. “Well, I mean, materials. And we had to rent a sander. But the labor is free.”

I take this in, trying to slow down the flood of information, to sort out what I’ve learned so far, to understand it. But a question still leaps to my lips: “Why?” I regret it as soon as it’s out of my mouth. I know I don’t really want to hear the answer. I know it’s because she loves Jack. That this is the kind of thing you do for someone you love.