Page 39 of Hell Bent

“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. Itis 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. Ifeltit.

“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. Whywould 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 gonenow.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 coulddo 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.”

17

REPERCUSSIONS

Alix

It was weird at work on Tuesday. First, I’d had about five hours’ sleep, and what I’d got had been broken up by dreams. Erotic ones. Why, though? You didn’t get sex-starved in a few weeks, and all I’d done waskissthe man!

Second, I got questions. More specifically, LouAnn asked me, about eight minutes into our shift, “So did you go out with that guy yet?”

“Yes,” I said. Reluctantly, but I wasn’t going to lie.

“Ooh,” she said. “So he jumped right on that, huh? He looked like that kind of guy.”

Royce said, “Real classy, LouAnn, talking about him jumping her.”