Page 17 of Tear Me Apart

“Better get back in there. That’s a heavy burden for her to carry alone, even if she is our superstar. Page me when Jasper arrives. And you’ll want to get your sister here, too.”

“I will. Thank you.”

His clogs squeak as he walks away, and Lauren feels like every eye is on her, all the children, the nurses, the other doctors strolling around. Another storm is brewing; the winter has been hard this year, as if in mourning for its lost playmate, and the sun disappears, leaving her in shadow.

Her worst fears have come to pass. Oh, God.

She realizes she is running her thumbnail over the skin of her forearm, hard enough to leave a long, deep red scratch.

Stop that. For heaven’s sake, stop.

She pulls down her sleeve and licks her lips, takes a deep breath in through her nose, then goes back to her daughter’s side. As she walks the long hallway, she calls Juliet.

* * *

Mindy watches her mother come back in the room, eyes red and frightened, and something clicks.

Liesel.

L.

Lauren.

The Sound of Musichas always been their thing. Liesel is the name of the eldest daughter, the one who is having a secret affair with the young soldier who is her unknown enemy.

Perhaps there was a reason why her mother has the letter, after all.

7

CBI LAB

DENVER, COLORADO

Juliet is deep into a DNA run, the lab clicking and whirring around her, when her assistant, Bai, shouts that her sister is on the phone. Without missing a step, she tells him to transfer the call to the lab and put it on Speaker. She doesn’t want to contaminate herself and have to start from scratch; she is in a delicate portion of her process.

Lauren is breathless, and Juliet can tell she’s been crying. Her voice is thick and she sounds stuffy.

She halts her machine. “Lauren? What’s wrong?”

“How quickly can you get here?”

“What’s happened?”

“The cancer is getting worse. The doctor just came to see us. They have to move forward with a stem cell transplant right away. He asked for you to come. They want to get as close a match as they can.”

“Do you or Jasper match?”

“I don’t know yet. Insurance wouldn’t let them test us until it was necessary. Dr. Oliver’s been optimistic, and she’s been responding, but the latest tests aren’t good. They’re moving so quickly. A specialist is flying in from Boston—thank goodness for Dr. Oliver, he’s a skier too, and such a fan, I think if we didn’t have him we wouldn’t have had a chance to—”

“Slow down. Take a breath.”

A ragged, tear-filled sigh. “Please, Juliet.”

The longing, the fear, in her sister’s voice about kills her. Lauren has never shown an ounce of vulnerability to Juliet. Even when they were children, Lauren was always together. The strong one. The focused one. The perfect one. The private one. For her to be asking for help, allowing those walls to come down, to let her sister hear the anguish she is feeling, is huge.

Juliet puts down her pipette. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’re supposed to get another foot of snow tonight. If I get going now, hopefully I can beat the storm.”

“Thank you,” Lauren breathes, and hangs up the phone.