Promises to Keep (33 page)

Look at Steffi now, with her parents finally—finally—back in the same room. She is practically skipping up the stairs, looking from her father to her mother with delight in her eyes.

Honor gathers the cups and the teabags, and smiles to herself. Walter looks very good. She is surprised, but perhaps she should not be. As is so often the case, Walter has gotten even better looking with age. His hair is now white, and it suits him. He looks very like his father—an elegant, good-looking patrician man who has somehow, despite his awkwardness in the doorway, grown into his skin.

But he is still uncomfortable. Poor Walter. She feels now, as she always did, a wave of sympathy. He is a good man. She knew it then and knows it now, but he is a man always crippled by his background. So stiff. So intent on reserve. Never able to relax and just
be
.

She pours the tea, sets out a plate of cookies. For a moment she is tempted to take her cup and go upstairs, as she had planned, and take a nap. Leave Walter and Steffi to drink their tea by themselves. She is not tired anymore. Adrenaline is now pumping through her system, and she suspects a nap is out of the question. Sitting at the table, she pours some milk into her tea, and opens a magazine.

 

Walter unpacks his suitcase, stacking his clothes neatly in the chest of drawers: underwear on the left, socks on the right, undershirts below and sweaters below that. It is the way he has always organized his chests of drawers, and the way he always will.

He hangs his trousers, making sure all the creases are in the right place, and his shirts next to them, lining up his shoes at the bottom.

His razor and shaving brush go in the bathroom, with the small pot of shaving soap. He has always refused, on principle, to succumb to shaving foam in a can. He still loves the daily ritual of swirling a wet brush in the small pot and working up a lather.

Finally, he can’t delay it anymore. He has to go back downstairs. Although . . . it wasn’t so bad. He has been dreading seeing Honor for all these years, yet seeing her down there was oddly . . . comforting. She looked exactly the same. Obviously older, grayer, more tired, but smelling her for those few seconds, seeing that look in her eyes, swept him back, and instead of feeling the resentment and anger he has felt for so many years, he felt . . . on familiar ground. Perhaps that was the best way to put it.

“So what do you think?” Walter says, sitting at the table.

“I think it’s pretty shitty,” Steffi says, and her father gives her a look.

“Language,” he says.

“Sorry. But as Callie was saying earlier, who knows what they’ll develop in the next year? They’re coming up with new cancer treatments all the time. Mark said a year, but Callie pointed out that they may have come up with a cure by then.”

“She’s a fighter, our daughter,” Walter says, looking Honor straight in the eye for the first time.

“She is.” Honor smiles. “I just don’t know whether this is a fight she can win.”

“Mom!” Steffi says. “We can’t think like that. We have to be positive; we have to presume she can get through this.”

“You’re right,” Honor says. “I’m sorry. Did she say anything else to you?”

“Yes. I told her I was going to be with her every day, and she told me absolutely not.”

“She doesn’t want you there?”

“That’s what I asked, but she said she doesn’t want everyone showing up with depressed faces. She understands that this is a huge shock, and we’re all going to feel like shit.” She looks at her father. “Sorry, Dad. She knows we’ll all feel horrible for a while, but she doesn’t want us to. She said if she can’t go out and live her life, we have to live it for her.”

“What does
that
mean?” Walter asks gruffly.

“That means she doesn’t want us to mope around her and burst into tears, although, God knows, I’m a disaster. You know Callie—she’s never been able to stand being around depressed people, and she says if we all carry on the way we are now she may have to kill herself in way less than a year.”

Honor and Walter both smile. That’s their daughter, all over.

“She said it’s not that she doesn’t want us all around, but she wants us all around in a happy way. Apparently the radiation is going to be rough. She’ll be exhausted and sleeping a lot, so when she’s awake she wants to hear good things.”

“Any other directives?” Honor asks.

“Yes. Guacamole. She wants me to make her guacamole. She says she has a craving.”

“Well that’s good!” Honor is excited. “If she’s showing an appetite that must be a good thing, no?”

“I would think that must be a good thing,” Walter agrees. “Is there anyone doing any research on this disease of hers?”

Steffi nods. “Lila’s boyfriend, Ed, is a journalist. He’s apparently spent all night on the computer doing research. They’re going to come over later. I’m going to run down to the store and get some avocado and cilantro. Anyone want to come?”

“I’ll come,” both Walter and Honor chime at the same time.

“Great!” Steffi cannot hide a big grin. “I’ll drive.”

 

Reece has just paid the pizza-delivery man, and is wondering where in the hell everyone is. He wants to get back to the hospital to see Callie, but there’s no one at home. They’ve done ice cream, done a movie, done the playground on the way home. He was hoping to dump the children on Honor, then run off to Callie, but there’s no one here, no note, nothing.

As he places the pizza on the table, the back door opens and—thank you, God, for listening!—Steffi and Honor troop in, followed by Walter.

“Walter!” Reece walks over and gives him a man hug just as the children come running into the room.

“
Grandpa!”
they both yell at the same time, climbing up his legs. Walter scoops them up and covers them with kisses.

“Eliza! Look how big you are! And so pretty! When did you get to be so beautiful?”

“I think it was last year,” Eliza says very seriously, laying her head on his shoulder and stroking his cheek.

“And Jack! Show me your muscles!” Jack flexes his little arm proudly and Walter throws his head back and laughs, then squeezes the children tightly, burying his head in their hair and inhaling their smell.

There
he is, thinks Honor, watching them in amazement.
There
’s the real Walter. She has never imagined him as a grandfather, has had no idea what he would be like, would never have dreamed that his grandchildren would be able to unlock his stiffness, his awkwardness.

But look at him now! Warm, and easy, and loving.

There he is, at last. She smiles to herself.
Who knew?

“W
hat do you need me to do?” Lila has dragged the armchair up to the bed, and is holding Callie’s hand.

“I need you to look after the children.”

“I will.”

“No, I mean even now, when I’m in the hospital, or when I’m home but can’t be around for them. I know you’re their godmother, but I want you to really look after them. What I need is for you to do something with them a few times a week, while I’m having radiation. I know they’re at school, but if you could take them to a class, or the playground, or something.”

“Of course,” Lila says, trying not to show a glimmer of panic. Children, she has always said, are fine in small measure, and as long as they belong to other people.

“I
know
parenting’s not your strong point.” Callie squints at her and Lila smiles. “But they’ve known you their entire lives, and they love you. My mom’s in her late sixties and she’s tired, and I’m worried about giving Steffi this kind of responsibility. It won’t be forever, but just while I’m going through the radiotherapy.”

“I would do anything for you,” Lila says. “Ed too. He’s been up all night reading up on your disease.”

“He’s a great guy, your boyfriend. Did you know that?”

“I do. I’m lucky.”

“Not lucky. You deserve it. I’m glad you found each other. Did he uncover anything?”

“Well. As you know, it’s not great. Apparently, though, there are cases of people living up to two thousand days.”

“Lila, I have no brain cells at the moment. What is two thousand days?”

“Five and a half years.”

“Really?” For the first time in days a light switches on in Callie’s eyes.

Lila grins. “Really.”

“In five and a half years,” she muses, “Eliza will be thirteen and Jack will be eleven. That would be . . . okay. I could leave them then. Screw the statistics, I’m going to be the one who outlives them all.”

“That’s my girl.” Lila squeezes her hand. “I know you can do it.”

“You know I have an ulterior motive in having you look after my kids too, right?”

Lila sighs. “Go on, then. You’re trying to turn me into a mother. Have you been talking to Ed?”

“Not since I’ve been in here,” Callie says, “but I did talk to him once and he said he’d love to have more children.”

“Why don’t you come right out and say what’s on your mind?”

“I have to say these things. I don’t have time to mess around. I have to tell the people I love what I really think. I think you should have children with him.”

“No way!” Lila holds up a hand. “We already had this discussion and I said no.”

“I know. And I’m going to change your mind.”

“By having me take your kids out? That’s not going to change my mind. The only reason I love your kids so much is because I can hand them back at the end of the day. Trust me, if your kids were with Auntie Lila twenty-four/seven, there’d be no love lost between us.”

“What if I asked you to have kids and then I die?” Callie grins, with an evil glint in her eye.

“Don’t you dare, because then I’d have to, and I don’t want to. I’m serious, Call. You can ask me anything but don’t force something on me that I don’t want to do.”

“Oh but, Lila, you’d have these little chubby toddlers with curly black hair who’d speak in plummy English accents. They’d call you “Mummy”! And I know you’d fall completely in love.”

“Hmmm. I told Ed I’d think about it, so that’s what I’ll say to you. I’ll think about it.”

 

 

F
ive and a half years.

Five and a half years.

Steffi feels some of the heaviness lift as she drives back home to Sleepy Hollow. Even if it’s just one person who lived for five and a half years, why can’t Callie? Hell, why can’t she live even longer?

“I am putting Callie on a strict vegan diet,” she announced that afternoon, after they all heard the good news that Callie is coming home as soon as they get the pain under control—and it is looking hopeful that this may be in the next day or so. “I’ll make something else for you guys, but Callie cannot eat animal products. If she has any chance at all of making it through this, she has to do everything she can, and there are amazing stories out there of veganism helping people recover from cancer.”

Everyone shrugged their agreement—whatever might help, they are willing to try.

Steffi stops at the big food market on the way home, inspired now to start cooking. She will cook for Mary this week, and for Amy. And she will cook for Callie. For when she does not know what else to do, what else
can
she do, but cook?

And she is fired up. Recipes fly through her mind. Cookies and cakes for Mary, fish and chicken for Amy, vegetables and nuts and grains for Callie.

Two hours later she is whizzing around the kitchen in a happy blur. Her iPod is plugged in and Sarah McLachlan is filling the room at top volume as she chops, and blends, and tastes. She doesn’t hear the truck, and only hears the knocking on the door after several minutes.

Stanley is standing on the doorstep, with a bunch of gas-station flowers and a six-pack of Budweiser.

“Hey,” she says, surprised. “It’s you again.”