The Last Letter(93)

The thought of losing Beckett stuttered my heart, and I reached across the console of the truck to take his hand as he drove us along the familiar roads to Montrose. He lifted my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist, a habit I happened to love, without taking his eyes off the road. Snow rose on either side of us, but at least the roads were clear. February was always an unpredictable month.

“You good back there?” I asked Maisie as she played on the iPad Beckett had gotten her for Christmas. It matched Colt’s almost identically except for the case.

“Yep, just working on a spelling game Ms. Steen gave me for homework.” She didn’t look up, just kept swiping away.

“Did you bring Colt?” I asked, spotting the pink bear wedged into the seat next to her.

“Yeah. He was mad that he couldn’t come, so I promised him Colt would come.” She met my eyes in the mirror and forced a little smile.

“You’re nervous.”

“I’m okay.”

Beckett and I shared a sideways glance, and we both let it go. She’d been through thirty-three days of hell a month ago. The mega-chemo had been the most vicious part of her treatment.

She’d thrown up. Her skin had peeled. She’d had sores down her GI tract and had a feeding tube placed because she couldn’t keep anything down. But as soon as she’d finished that course of treatment and the stem cells had been transplanted, she bounced right back. She was astonishing on every level that a little girl could be.

I couldn’t say I was happy, not with Maisie still fighting for her life, but we’d passed the year mark in November, and she was still here. She’d had another birthday, another Christmas. Colt was taking snowboarding lessons. Solitude was booked solid through the ski season and summer, and Hailey had moved out a few months ago, knowing I could depend on Beckett, who had taken shifts between Telluride and Denver, to be wherever he was needed most.

Everything came back to Beckett. He took the worst days and made them bearable. Took the good days and made them exquisite. He picked up the kids, took Colt to school, took Maisie to local appointments, made dinner on nights I couldn’t get away from the main house—there was nothing he wouldn’t do.

So maybe I couldn’t say that I was happy, but I was content, and that was more than enough.

Chaos would have been proud.

It had been almost fourteen months since I’d lost him and Ryan, and I still had no clue why. That was part of Beckett’s past I had a nearly impossible time accepting. Only nearly, because I heard him scream Ryan’s name in the middle of a nightmare a few months ago. That scream told me he wasn’t anywhere near ready to talk.

Ryan and Chaos were gone.

Beckett was alive and in my arms, and that meant I had all the time in the world to wait until he was ready.

We pulled into the hospital parking lot, and Beckett carried Maisie through the slush-filled lot as I followed in his footsteps, thankful I’d worn boots.

Maisie was quiet through check-in and vitals, and dead silent as she had her blood drawn and went through the CT scan.

By the time we were put into an exam room to wait for Dr. Hughes, she was almost a statue.

“What are you thinking about?” Beckett asked her as he sat on the exam table.

She shrugged, kicking her feet under the chair. They’d made a deal after the second MIBG treatment—she wasn’t sitting on exam tables any more than necessary. She said they made her feel like she was a sick kid, and she wanted to believe that she was getting better. So Beckett would sit on the table until the doc came in, and then they would trade places.

“Me, too,” he said, mirroring her shrug.

“Me, three,” I added.

That earned us a little smile.

Dr. Hughes knocked and opened the door. “Hi there, Maisie!” she said to Beckett.

“Busted,” he stage-whispered.

Maisie grinned and jumped up to take his spot as he took her chair and then my hand.

“How are you feeling?” Dr. Hughes asked, doing the usual physical checks.

“Good. Strong.” She nodded to emphasize her point.

“I believe you. You know why?”

My hand tightened on Beckett’s. As steady as I tried to appear to Maisie, I was terrified of what she was going to say. It seemed so unfair to put a little girl through so much and not have it work.

“Why?” Maisie whispered, her arms crushing Colt’s teddy bear.

“Because your tests look great, just like you. Good and strong.” She tapped Maisie on the nose with her finger. “You are a rock star, Maisie.”

Maisie looked back over her shoulder at us, a smile as wide as the state of Colorado.

“What exactly does that mean?” I asked.

“We’re looking at less than 5 percent on her bone marrow. No change since you left the hospital last month. And no new tumors. Your girl is stable, and in partial remission.”

That word tripped something in my brain, and it short-circuited just like it had the first time they’d said cancer, except this time it was in the joy end of disbelief.

“Say it again,” I begged.

Dr. Hughes smiled. “She’s in partial remission. It means no new treatments for the time being. I’ll probably want to do a session of radiation in a couple months to mop up any of the microscopic cells, but as long as her scans are coming back clean, I think we can give her a little break.”