The Last Letter(22)

I might have a few issues, but I always knew that I was enough.

But this? I don’t know how to be enough for this.

It’s like the doctors are speaking a foreign language, throwing around letters and numbers like I’m supposed to understand. Labs and scans and treatment possibilities and the decisions. God, the decisions I have to make.

I’ve never felt more alone in my life.

Maisie has cancer.

And I don’t know if I’m enough to get her through it, and she has to get through it. I can’t imagine a world where my daughter isn’t here. How can I be everything she’s going to need and give Colt any sense of normalcy?

And Colt…when the genetics came back, they told me Colt and I had to be tested for the gene mutation. He’s okay, thank God. We both are, and neither of us carry it. But those moments waiting to hear if losing them both was a possibility? I could barely breathe at the thought.

But I have to be enough, right? I don’t have a choice. It’s like the moment I saw those two heartbeats on the monitor. There was no option to fail. And there’s no way I’m going to fail now, either.

Maisie has cancer, and I’m all she has.

So I guess it’s down the rabbit hole I go.

~ Ella

…

I stepped onto the dock that reached into the small lake just behind my cabin, testing my weight. Yeah, this thing was going to need to be rebuilt. No wonder they’d kept the gate locked.

The sun stretched just overhead, cutting through the brisk morning. I’d been in Colorado for almost two weeks, and I’d learned the key to the weather here was layers, because it might be snowing in the morning, but it was almost seventy by dinner. Mother Nature had some serious mood swings around here.

A light fog rolled off the lake, lingering around the shores of the small island that rested about a hundred yards away in the center of the lake. I knew eventually I’d have to use the little rowboat that was tied up at the end of the dock and row myself over.

Mac was buried there.

It had nearly killed me when I wasn’t allowed leave to come back and bury him, and yet there was an overwhelming relief that I wouldn’t have to face Ella, to see her expression when she realized what I’d done—why I was alive and her brother wasn’t.

Havoc bounded over and shook the water from her coat and dropped the Kong at my feet, ready to take off into the water for the twentieth time or so. She was restless lying around all day these last couple of weeks, and I was, too.

I dropped down to my haunches, rubbing her behind her ears in her favorite spot. “Okay, girl. What do you say we get you dried off and go find a job? Because I’m going to go stir crazy if we stay here much longer like a pair of dead weights. And honestly, I’m kind of expecting you to start talking back at any moment, so some human contact might be needed.”

“It’s okay that you talk to your dog,” a small voice came from behind me. “It doesn’t make you crazy or anything.” His tone suggested otherwise.

I looked over my shoulder and saw a boy standing on the other side of the gate, dressed in jeans and a Broncos tee. His hair was shorn to the scalp, or rather, had been, and was growing back in a slight sheen of blond fuzz. His full eyebrows were drawn together over crystal-blue eyes, as he gave me a thorough once-over.

Ella’s eyes.

This was Colt. I knew it in the very marrow of my bones.

I did my best to soften my tone, well aware that I didn’t know the first thing about talking to kids. I assumed not scaring him was a good place to start. “I always talk to Havoc.”

She wagged her tail as if in answer.

“She’s a dog.” His words were at odds with the yearning in his voice and the way his eyes locked onto Havoc like she was the best thing he’d ever seen.

I stood to face him, and he straightened his spine and stared me down. Kid didn’t scare easily, which meant I had half a chance here.

“It’s not when you talk to them that you have to worry about insanity,” I told him. “It’s when they start answering you back.”

His lips puckered for a second, and he stepped forward, peeking over the half gate to look at Havoc. “So are you crazy?”

“Are you?”

“No. But you have one of our cabins for six months. No one does that. Except crazy people.” His expression flickered back and forth between judging me and coveting Havoc.

He’d begged Ella for a dog, and she’d nearly relented—then Maisie’s diagnosis came down. But I wasn’t supposed to know that. Wasn’t supposed to know that he wanted to play football, but Ella was too worried about concussions and pushed him toward soccer. I shouldn’t have known that he was supposed to take snowboarding lessons this year, or that he’d shaved off all that hair on his birthday because his sister had lost hers.

I wasn’t supposed to know him, but I did.

And it was hell to not be able to tell him that.

“Actually, I rented it for seven months. And you look a little short to be judging people.” I crossed my arms.

He mirrored my pose without hesitation. “That makes you even crazier. And I don’t let crazy people around my mama or my sister.”

“Aah, you’re the man of the house.”

“I’m not a man. I’m six, but I’ll be seven soon.”