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“Gigi.”
“That’s right.” He looks impressed. “She was named after my grandmother.”
And then, another memory, one that arrives with a sickening spasm. “I promised to help, didn’t I?”
Actually, it’s worse than that. I made a promise to connect him with one of Cam’s regular clients, a board member at Piedmont Hospital. I wrote down Sebastian’s number and asked for a couple of days to connect the two.
And then?
And then I got busy. Running errands and picking up school uniforms at the mall. Meeting friends for lunches and coffees. Carting the kids to violin and soccer and the movies, cooking healthy dinners for my family. I went back to my busy, cushy life, and I didn’t even think about Sebastian and his poor, sweet, sick daughter until many weeks later, when I pulled a wad of lint from the pocket of freshly laundered jeans and connected it to my broken promise.
But it wasn’t too late. I could have tracked Sebastian down. I could have picked up the phone and called that board member. I could have donesomething.
And yet, I didn’t.
I swallow down a surge of self-loathing. “Jesus... No wonder you hate me and Cam so much.”
Sebastian barks a laugh. “You think?”
“I’m so sorry, Sebastian. I wish I had an excuse, but the truth is, I don’t. All those things I told myself at the time, all the reasons I justified not following through...of course they’re all bullshit. I mean, ofcourseI could have followed through. Ishouldhave. But the more time passed, the more I just figured...” I look up at him and I search for the right thing to say, even though I know there’s not a word that exists to make this right.
“You figured what? Spit it out. What did you figure?”
I wince, closing my eyes. “I figured it wouldn’t matter, since our paths would probably never cross again anyway.”
“Even though they’d already crossed a handful of times.” He grimaces, shakes his head. “But of course, you didn’t remember that, either, did you? I was just a stranger with a sorry face and a sad story.”
“Iknow. And I hate myself for it. If I could go back and change things, I would in a second. The board member’s name is Gordon Howard. He’s in my phone. Let’s call him together, right now.”
“And say what, exactly?”
“That your daughter is sick. That you need help navigating her options. You didn’t tell me what she had, but tonight I heard you mention cystic fibrosis. You said she needed a lung transplant.”
He nods. “Her doctors say they have four, maybe five months left in them, and that’s assuming she doesn’t pick up B. cepacia, which for someone with CF is pretty much a death sentence. She needs that transplant.”
If I wasn’t convinced before that Gigi is Tanya’s niece, I am now. How many sixteen-year-old girls in Atlanta are facing this exact situation? We must be talking about the same person. Wemustbe.
“And the most screwed-up part is that the insurance will cover the lungs. But only if I can guarantee I have the money for all the therapy and antirejection drugs she’ll need to have after.”
I say to Sebastian what I told Tanya when she told me the same story. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Beatrix sucks in a breath at the curse word, but she’s heard worse, alotworse from her father, and if there was ever a situation that warranted the f-bomb, this is it. A girl’s life cut short before it’s really begun, on the verge of womanhood, because her father can’t afford the medication to make her lungs stick.
“Tell me about it,” Sebastian says. “And those drugs are just the beginning. There’s testing and rehab, and do you know they even want to charge me for flying the lungs in to the hospital? Why is that something I should have to pay for? If you can’t afford to live in this country, they’re more than happy to just let you die.”
“But Cam’s right, though. This is not the way to go about getting money for her operation.”
My comment seems to anger him. He puffs up his chest and balls his fists, glaring across the coffee table at me. “You think I wouldn’t give her my lungs if I could? You think I wouldn’t rip open my own chest and yank them out myself if I thought it would save her from wasting away? Knowing I’m a match is the worst kind of torture because it doesn’t do either of us any good. I still can’t help her. She’s still going to die without that operation.”
Despite everything, the gun, and the threats, and my son in the enemy’s house across the street, and my daughter strapped to the chair, sympathy rises in my chest for this man. For a sick girl I’ve never met.
“I’m sorry. That must be so hard.”
I mean every word, too, just like I meant them the first time I said them—in this very same room even, after I brought him coffee and a muffin so he could take a break from installing the nanny cams. Sebastian—Bas—came highly recommended by none other than Tanya across the street. The neighbor who’s always picking up our mail. Bills, junk, bank account statements. What we’ve always assumed was a friendly gesture was her way of keeping tabs.
But the more pressing point is, Sebastian knows about the cameras. He’s known it all along.
Not only that.