Page 88

BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

Lizzie

MARCH 3, 2000

E VERYTHING WAS BACK .

My mother’s cancer.

My sister’s boyfriend.

My father’s bad mood.

The scary lady’s voice in my head.

The monster in my nightmares.

The urge to slit my wrists.

Everything .

Mam came home from hospital two weeks after her heart attack with another surgery under her belt and a new battle to fight.

My parents sat both me and Caoimhe down and explained where the cancer was this time and how the doctors were optimistic that she would beat it again, but I tuned it out.

I didn’t want to know.

I couldn’t hear another word about it.

The word alone made my skin crawl.

Home didn’t feel like it used to. There was a sadness in the air that hadn’t been there last summer. I knew my parents were trying to do their best to ease the pressure on me and Caoimhe. They had let Mark practically move in to support my sister, who wasn’t taking Mam’s latest diagnosis well, and they never stopped me from having my friends over or spending my weekends at Avoca Greystones.

None of that helped.

I wanted to be anywhere but home, and that made me feel even worse because I knew I should want to spend as much time with my mother as I could—because if the cancer overtook her this time, I wouldn’t have another chance.

I wouldn’t have a mother.

I wouldn’t have a home.

My one light in the darkness was the boy with whiskey eyes and a smile that healed parts of me the medicine couldn’t.

Unlike me, Hugh wasn’t afraid to spend time at my house or be around my mother. Instead, he threw himself into the mix, on hand to help and unfazed by Mam’s skeletal frame as she went through treatment.

On the days I couldn’t go to his house, he came to mine and always brought a present for my mother. Be it a book he took out on loan from the library or a flower he stole from Old Murphy’s garden, he never came empty-handed.

After a while, I thought Mam looked forward to his visits almost as much as I did. Especially on the days she couldn’t get out of bed. Hugh would coax me into her room, where we would both sit at the end of her bed and fill Mam in on everything going on in our lives.

When they discovered Mam had developed diabetes, Hugh was the one who sat with her as the home health nurse showed her how to inject herself with insulin.

When Hugh was around, everything in my life stabilized. It was as if he held my world in his hands and forced it to stop spinning, giving me time to catch my breath and get back up on my feet.

School nights were the worst, when I had to sleep in my own bed, without him there to keep the darkness away. To stop the nightmares .

Every weeknight, I prayed for the weekend to come, so I could have a temporary reprieve from the relentless torture I suffered in my dreams.

“You’re very quiet today,” Hugh told me on the bus home from school on Friday. “What’s on your mind?”

“Hmm?” I turned to look at his pretty face and smiled. “You’re handsome.”

My words caused his cheeks to flush bright red.

It was so adorable.

Smiling, I reached up and traced his cheek with my thumb. “I’m so glad it’s the weekend.”

“Me too,” he replied, brown eyes locked on mine. “What were you thinking about earlier?”

“When?”

“Liz, you spaced out for like twenty minutes,” he chuckled, capturing my hand from his cheek and placing it on his lap. “What’s on your mind?”

“America,” I filled in with a sigh, thinking back to the conversation I’d had with my family last night. “We have to go.”

“Go?” Confusion filled his eyes, and he frowned. “To America? When?”

“April,” I replied, shivering when he entwined his fingers with mine. “They’re trialing a new drug or treatment that Mam’s a candidate for,” I told him, trying to remember what I’d been told. “Caoimhe said it’s crazy expensive, but Mam has more than enough money to cover the cost a thousand times over.” Shrugging, I added, “The success rates are decent, too.”

“That’s fantastic,” Hugh replied, looking genuinely thrilled at the prospect of my mother recovering. Meanwhile, I was terrified to get my hopes up.

“They want Mam to start treatment right away, so she’s flying out with Dad next week,” I continued to tell him. “I’ll stay home with Caoimhe, and we’ll fly out the next month. On April sixth.”

“How long are you going to be gone?”

“Three and a half weeks, I think,” I told him, feeling a wave of devastation at the thought of being away from him for that long. “Because of Easter break, we’ll only miss two weeks of school instead of four. I’ll be back on the first of May.”

“Will Catherine be finished with her treatment by then?”

I shrugged. “Who knows?”

“I’m going to miss you,” Hugh told me, and hearing him say those words made my heart crack.

Because I didn’t want to go.

If I had the choice, I’d remain right here in Ballylaggin with Hugh. Not go halfway around the world with Caoimhe and Mark. I knew that’s exactly what would happen. Dad would spend all his time at the hospital with Mam, and I would be left with them .