Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes #1)(34)

Emma sat up. “Are you serious?” A mix of tentative excitement and suspicion leaked into her voice.

Trisha nodded. “All I ask is that you monitor your temperature and your blood pressure, and if anything changes—any blurring of vision, any severe pain—you come straight to the ER and call me. Once your results come in, we’ll lay all your options out and if you still want to switch to an oncologist for treatment, then . . .”—Trisha had to swallow to get the rest out—“then I’ll refer you to one myself.”

“Did you say today?” For all the fierceness from a minute ago, Emma looked suddenly scared.

But the sooner they got past this, the better. “As long as you have someone making sure you’re watched twenty-four seven, you’ll be fine.” For some reason, Trisha felt sure DJ Caine would be up to the task.

That seemed to relieve Emma. “And I can paint?”

“Of course.” Trisha thought about what would happen if someone told her she could never operate again. She couldn’t imagine it. Not even for a moment.

Emma studied her wordlessly for a few seconds, some of that lost respect returning. “Okay. But there’s something you should know. I never change my mind once I make a decision. I don’t plan to start now. I won’t have the surgery. So if this is some sort of strategic maneuver, it won’t work.”

Trisha nodded and made the effort not to show her relief. One step at a time. That’s how you changed the world.





Chapter Ten


DJ was six years old when Emma was born, but he remembered everything about the day he went to see her at the hospital for the first time. He especially remembered how that day had felt. It was the same feeling that sparkled to life at the edges of his consciousness every time something good happened to him. It was the magnet that the homing device for happiness inside him hungrily sought.

Dad had cooked him breakfast—bacon, eggs, and porridge. It was what his father always made when he wanted a day to feel special. Then he had helped DJ get dressed in his best sweater vest and checkered shirt.

“You have to look your spiffiest and eat well on important days,” Dad had said, “and this is the most important day of our life.”

Dad had also worn his sweater vest, the one he wore to play cricket at the neighborhood pitch every Sunday. They had gone to the hospital like that, all matched up. The reason DJ remembered it in such stark detail was that when they reached the hospital one of the nurses had pinned an “I’m a big brother” button on DJ’s vest, and then taken a Polaroid shot of him in his dad’s arms as he leaned down to look at Emma, a little cloth-wrapped sausage that smelled like Dad’s milky porridge, pressed into Mum’s chest.

Funny how photographs become the form your memories take. Of all his worldly possessions, that faded Polaroid was possibly DJ’s most cherished one. Everything that meant anything to him, everything he wanted out of life, it all seemed to be trapped in that picture.

Leaning back in the ergonomic chair in the hospital waiting area, he stared at the happy faces tucked into the plastic sleeve of his wallet.

It had been eighteen years since Dad died, twelve since Mum had followed him. There had been some dark lonely times in there. But the reason he’d pushed past them was the person sitting on a bed somewhere above him with a mass growing in her brain. After Mum died, Emma had been his reason to survive, to wake up in the morning.

At twelve, she should have been the one lost, but it had been he who had fallen to bits. His guilt had felled him, paralyzed him. It had felt humongous, uncontainable inside him, unforgivable. But Emma’s unhesitating forgiveness had gathered him back up, strapped him back in place. Her faith in his being worthy of redemption was what had forced him to accept Ammaji’s help that last time.

Emma and Ammaji, those two had punched holes into the darkness he’d been drowning in until he could see again. Ammaji had died just a year after Mum. The idea of Emma not being around made his future seem like a road disappearing into that same darkness again.

He’d been sitting here in the waiting area for a half hour. He knew he had to go back to Emma’s room. He’d left her alone all day, mostly because she was being an idiot and he needed to figure out a way to screw her head on straight. But also because he couldn’t face her. He didn’t know how.

Truth was, he understood exactly why she was acting the way she was. Whenever life made his sister feel powerless, she got doubly powerful. After Dad died, they’d been homeless for two days, sleeping on park benches. Emma was the one who had dragged Mum and DJ to the church. At six, she’d known to do that and not cared that the nuns would judge them. It’s how Father Batista had gotten Mum her job at Heathrow, and from there everything had fallen into place.

When Emma had forced him to apply to culinary school after Mum died, she hadn’t expected him to leave her behind in England. But she’d dealt with that by challenging every teacher at her art school by being more and more preposterous with art until she’d broken down every expectation they’d had of her.

Now she was doing this. It made her feel in control. But it was stupid. Suicide.

The word made acid rise up his gullet, made his skin feel too tight.

In one thing she was right: he had to listen to her. If she needed to feel powerful, he couldn’t steamroll her. No matter what else happened, they had always listened to each other. That’s why they felt heard no matter who else shut them out.