Page 19 of Hell Bent (Portland Devils #5)

ANOTHER BEND IN THE ROAD

Sebastian

How did I feel driving home? I couldn’t even have told you.

All right, I could. It didn’t require too much introspection.

I was aroused as hell, more sexually frustrated than that, smiling inside at so many things, looking forward to Sunday, and wondering if I should’ve asked her to go out with me sooner than that.

Did a woman working ten hours a day at a physical job even want to go out to dinner, though?

I had no idea, because I’d never gone out with anybody who worked as hard as that. Maybe I should …

The phone rang. Maybe she was about to answer that question. I glanced at the nav screen, though, and it said Solange. Well, damn. Speak of the devil.

I thumbed the button and said, “Hey. Merry Christmas. I was just telling somebody about you. I should’ve called. Sorry. I?—”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, brisk as ever. Solange didn’t care for emotion. “You were busy. ”

“OK,” I said, confused. I checked the time. “It’s almost midnight. Everything all right?”

“Not really,” she said. “Are you awake enough to talk about this?”

“I’m driving,” I said. “I can talk. What’s wrong? Is it Ben?” My nephew, who was … what? Twelve? Maybe thirteen?

“No,” she said. “Or yes and no. Look. Seb. The cancer’s back.”

It was like somebody’d dropped me in ice water. I said, “I’m sorry,” then, “What can I do?” Because that seemed like the only thing to say.

“That’s why I’m calling you,” she said. “You can take my kid, that’s what.”

“Wait,” I said. “Hold on. Explain.” Now I knew what I felt. Panicked.

“Look,” she said. “I know you don’t want to. You don’t like commitment. I get that. But I’ve got no choice. Do you really want him to have to try to take care of me and watch me die? And then go to foster care? How hard was that for you?”

The words were out before I could call them back. “Why is this the first time you’ve ever asked me that?”

Silence, and I sighed and said, “Sorry,” even as she said, “I probably deserve that. I thought you’d understand, but if you can’t, you can’t. I’ll find someone. I’ll?—”

“Wait,” I said. “Tell me. What do you mean, watch you die?” My hands and feet had been steering me as we talked, and I was pulling into the condo’s garage. “I don’t want to talk to you in the car. Can I call you back in five minutes?”

“Not if it’s to tell me no,” she said. “I can’t handle waiting for a no. If it’s no, tell me now and get off the phone so I can find somebody else to raise my son.”

I felt the familiar exasperation. “Give me five minutes,” I said. “I’m calling you back.” I pushed the button to hang up, turned off the car, sat there holding the steering wheel for a minute, then shook my head as if that would clear it, got out of the car, and headed for the elevator.

The minute I got to the door, I heard the jingle that was Lexi’s tags, and the moment I opened said door, I had her furry self all over me.

She might be old, but she still had some dancing moves, and I was getting all of them.

I was crouched down, my hands stroking over her body, the fur silkier and the ribs less prominent now.

Almost normal looking, except for the shaved place and stitches near her right foreleg, and all the way changed from the quiet, sad, scared girl I’d taken from that rest area.

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, girl.” She responded like those were the two best words ever spoken, by her favorite person ever, and I scritched her neck some more and knew this was why people loved dogs.

I told her, “I need to make a hard call. Come help me do it,” stood up, and headed over to the couch with her following along, jumping up there with me, and putting her head in my lap as if she were saying, “I’m here for you.

” It may have choked me up a little, which lets you know exactly how shaken up I was.

Not as shaken up as Solange, though. I pulled my phone from my pocket, took a breath, and thumbed the button again.

“Hi,” she said, then stopped talking.

“Listen.” I ran a hand through my hair and tried to figure out how to do this. When I couldn’t, I just said, “Tell me what’s going on. I want to know.”

She said, “That isn’t what I want to talk about.”

“Except that I need to know,” I said, “if I’m going to help you. ”

“Oh. True.” A pause while she gathered her considerable forces. “You remember that I’ve had breast cancer.”

“Of course I remember.” It had been a bad one.

Triple-negative, they called it. She’d had a bunch of treatments, I vaguely knew.

Chemo, surgery, radiation. That had been two or three years ago, though, and she’d worked almost all the way through it.

“I’m not going to desert my patients,” she’d said when I’d asked, and then had changed the subject, because she hated to discuss her illness.

Which had been fine by me. Instead of talking, I’d sent food gifts.

Smoked salmon, because she loved it. Fancy fruit.

Wagyu steaks. Those nuts-and-cheese-and-dried-fruit packages.

It wasn’t much, but I’d told myself it was what I could do, with my schedule and hers, and she hadn’t seemed like she wanted me visiting anyway.

“So what happened?” I asked. “I thought you were clean.”

“What do you think?” she snapped, then sighed.

“Sorry. I’m foggy. It’s annoying. It came back, that’s what.

I started having headaches a few months ago.

I thought it was migraines from stress, then I started having some blurred vision.

Backaches. Major weight loss. Mood swings.

Irritability. Well, you can probably hear that.

It’s not just my bad personality. It’s because the cancer’s spread to my meninges. ”

“Your what?”

“Tissues surrounding the brain and spinal cord. Can’t exactly operate on those. The cancer’s microscopic, which is why they didn’t pick it up sooner.”

“Well, that sucks,” I said, and she laughed, not very humorously, and said, “Yep. Look, Seb. It’s going to go fast now. I’ve got weeks.”

“Wait, what?” I sat up straighter, and Lexi raised her head and stared at me.

“A couple of months max,” she said. “Probably less. I’m going to be bedridden soon and not thinking great, either.

It is what it is, and I have to make a plan and make it fast. I’m not letting Ben take care of me, and he couldn’t anyway.

He’s fourteen. The problem is, I can’t take care of him anymore, either. ”

Wait, he was fourteen? How was I two years off? I said, “You’d be surprised what a teenager can do.”

“I know what a teenager can do,” she said. “I saw you do it and didn’t do what I should have, which was leave school for a term and help you.”

“I didn’t need you to—” I began, and she said, “Of course you needed me to. And to take you to live with me after Dad died, too. I let you go into foster care instead. I’ve regretted that every day since.

Time to tell you so.” All of it barked out with no emotion, but the emotion was there anyway. I knew it. I felt it.

“You were twenty-two,” I said. “Not in a spot to do it. No blame here. Nothing for you to feel guilty about.”

I heard her exhale. “I never thought forgiveness mattered,” she said. “I’ve just kept charging forward. Always. But now I …” For the first time, her voice wavered. “I need you to forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” I said, my heart twisting hard. “There never has been. Life sucks sometimes, that’s all. I’m just …” My own voice was wavering now, too. “I’m just so sorry.”

“Genetics,” she said, composed again. “Luck of the draw. I told you before to get tested. I’m going to tell you again.

That mutation in the brCA1 gene predisposes you to both pancreatic and breast cancer, and to ovarian cancer, too, if you have a daughter.

Whether you have kids or not, you need to know whether you’ve inherited it.

Fifty percent chance, and you need to know.

At least Ben doesn’t have the gene. At least that. ”

I bypassed all that, because I didn’t want to know.

Why would I want to live with that sword hanging over my head?

“Right,” I said. “What do you need me to do? I’ve got …

” I blanked for a minute. “Uh … two more weeks left in the season, but then there’s the postseason.

At least one game there, it looks like. As soon as I’m done, I can come up there and help, but I can’t give you an exact date. ”

“You aren’t listening,” she said. “I don’t have time for that. I need Ben gone now. I’m going to need real-deal caregivers soon. It’s going to get bad.”

“What about Ben’s dad?” I asked.

“What part of, ‘I got pregnant by my married professor’ didn’t you get?” she asked, sounding exasperated. “He’s not in the picture, and he’s sixty. I wouldn’t ask if there were somebody else. I’m begging here. Don’t make Ben have to see this. Don’t let him?—”

She stopped like she couldn’t go on, and I said, “Right. Right.” My head wanted to float off my neck, and I mentally screwed it back into place. “Tell me what you need. I can’t leave the team, but I can do anything else.”

“Let me send him to you,” she said. “It’s complicated, because he’d be immigrating, but I don’t have much choice.

You need to see an attorney to get all the forms and applications right.

He’ll be on a tourist visa at first, and I’m not sure he can do school in person until you’re named his legal guardian.

I got some names to help you with that, and I’ll help as much as I can to sort it all.

I have a little time, I hope, before my brain stops functioning altogether.

I can’t work anymore. Haven’t worked all month. ”

“I wish you’d told me sooner,” I said, feeling awful. I was leaning forward now, my head in a hand. “I wish I could have helped.”

“I didn’t know sooner. I told you, it was fast. Can I send him to you? Ben?”

I thought, I can’t. But I didn’t say it. I knew that you could do what you had to do, because I’d done it before. So what I said was, “Of course you can. But I’m guessing he won’t want to go.”

“He has no choice,” she said. “Like all of us. OK. I’ll call you with the plan. And Seb?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks,” she said. “I have no right to ask it, but I have no choice. So—thanks. You’re a good brother.”