Slow Burn

Chapter 7

I pushed myself too damn hard this morning. Ran too far at too accelerated a pace, and now my muscles are screaming with fatigue. But I was able to run out the emotion, put it at bay so that I can get through the initial sucker punch to the gut when I walk into the house.

The California sun is warm, beating through my windshield as I shift my sore muscles and stand from the car. I look down the street for a moment, take in the trees lining it and the dogs barking. The sounds of moms calling to their children and life being lived. I try to focus on that, try to block out the thoughts of elevated white blood cell counts and tumor markers. I force myself to remember Lex so brave and strong, saying, “Fuck cancer.” Her fighting like hell to beat, then to prolong, then to steal a few more moments, a few more breaths.

My fingers grip tightly to the top of the car door. Tears burn my eyes, and memories flicker to the unwelcome thoughts I wish I didn’t have. Ones I wish no one would ever have. Ragged gasps and morphine drips. Hushed promises and silent pleas for more time, for less pain. For a miracle.

The memories are still so raw, her touch still so tangible after just six months but so vague at the same time. Holding her hand, watching her slip away, telling her I loved her, promising her Maddie will grow up with her spirit a constant reminder. That it would be my mission in life for her daughter to know her, remember her, live a full life for her. Saying good-bye to her one final time as peace settled over her.

I suck in a deep breath, drowning in the grief when I should be dealing with it, moving on. But every time I come here, it hits me with such force. Walking into her house, seeing the touches of her personality when she’s gone forever.

And then I hear the squeal from the front door—the patter of little feet and cries of excitement—and it all eases some when I look down into my sister’s eyes mimicked in her daughter.

I catch the running bundle of love and life in my arms and squeeze her to me. Breathing her in, in that quick second I get before she starts in on me with the barrage of questions and smiles full of love.

“Whoa!” I nuzzle my nose into her hair and just breathe her in for another moment as she starts wiggling to get down.

“Auntie! I’m so glad you’re here,” she says, the words tumbling out in a burst of excitement as I set her down on the ground. Her hand finds mine immediately, brown eyes fringed with long lashes look up to me, and her heart-shaped mouth spreads in a grin. She begins tugging on my hand toward the front door and her love, her happiness, her ability to thrive are contagious, even if only momentarily.

We clear the foyer, Maddie’s incessant chatter sounding sweet, heartwarming, and overwhelming all at once. Hand in mine, she pulls me into the family room, never breaking stride in making her requests for the day.

“Daddy! She’s here! She’s here!”

I hear Danny’s chuckle before I see him, my eyes slowly taking in the wall across from me, where pictures clutter the area. My heart squeezes at the images, the memories, the lack of new ones, and I force myself to look away and over to my brother-in-law.

I meet Danny’s gaze, the soft smile on his lips, the love for his daughter evident on his face, but when his eyes meet mine, the devastation is there, a reflection of the constant sadness. “Hey, Danny, how’s it going?” I say the words, the simple greeting, but what I’m really asking, what my eyes are saying, is How are you holding up?

“Good. I’m good,” he says as I start the count of how many times he’s going to use that word in the next five minutes. My gauge of how crippling his grief is today. “Good,” he reaffirms with a nod of his head as Maddie releases my hand and jumps up and down in excitement.

“Good,” I say softly, my own anguish weighing heavy on me. Emotions war within, not understanding how he can live day to day in this house full of her and at the same time feeling like I’d never be able to live anywhere else.

He breaks eye contact and looks over at Maddie, who is bouncing with excitement. “So what are you two going to do today?” he asks, enthusiasm forced but sincere.

Maddie looks up at me with sparkling eyes and begging for me to tell her since I usually keep our plans for our special days secret. “Hmm,” I tease her. “I’m thinking a movie, then maybe some ice cream, then the bookstore for Fancy Nancy story time.”

The look on her face makes my heart clench as she squeals with excitement. “Really?” Her voice is so high-pitched—full of emotion—that I cringe at the sound. “Story time?”

And the smile comes easily because her love of books is so my sister that I find a tinge of happiness in the fact that she is so much like her. “Yep … but I need to talk to your daddy for a minute, so why don’t you run upstairs and get your sweater in case it’s cold in the theater, okay?”

Her smile widens and then just as quickly falls, her head angling as she stares at me. “You’re not going to leave me too, are you?”

I have to fight back with every single thing within me to not break down from the pang that just debilitated me from her comment. I hear the choked sob from Danny, turning his back so that Maddie can’t see him fall apart. I steel myself, knowing I need to reassure her without my face reflecting my own heartache.

I squat down on my haunches so that I’m at her eye level, that bottom lip of hers quivering as she tries to be strong. “Oh, sweetheart,” I tell her, my voice breaking. I reach out to smooth my hand over her hair and cheek. “Your daddy and I aren’t going anywhere. I promise you. We’re Haddie Maddie,” I say, calling us the nickname that Lexi used to have for me when we were kids. The same name she chose to name her baby girl in tribute to me. “We’ve got hearts to break and high heels to wear, right?”

She angles her head and stares at me with her big chocolate brown eyes and chin quivering as she fights back the tears, trying to figure out if I’m telling the truth or not. I hold out my pinkie finger. “Promise.”

A soft smile curls up the corner of her lips as her pinkie grips onto mine. “Haddie Maddie promise,” she whispers, her smile growing wider. “Hearts and heels.”

“Always. Okay, then.” She looks at me one last time and then rushes down the hall.

I turn around once she’s gone to meet Danny’s tear-filled eyes. There is nothing I can say to him that I haven’t said before, nothing that can ease the ache in his soul, so I just shake my head and swallow through the tears in my throat. I’m gazing at a picture of Lexi and newborn Maddie when he speaks from behind me.

“You know,” he says, his voice soft and uneven, “when Lex was sick … when she was going through chemo and losing her hair … it used to drive me crazy.” He shakes his head as he remembers, and I’m trying hard to follow his train of thought—give him time to get it out—but I know Maddie will be here soon. I don’t want her to hear him talking about Lex with sadness. She’s had way too much in her short life already.

“I used to tease her that she was shedding hair like a dog. Tried to make a joke about it. Strands of it would be stuck in the couch, balled up on my shirts when they came out of the drier … the seats in the car…. It was just everywhere….” He laughs with a quiet sadness and then falls silent. I turn to face him, listening but not wanting to hear it, not wanting to remember how upset she’d get when hair would fall out clumps at a time.

He sighs, his shoulders shaking as he reins it in. “God, Had … I missed her so much the other day. Her scent’s fading from her clothes in the closet…. I … I was losing it, needing to feel connected to her.” He runs a hand through his hair and presses his fingers beneath his glasses to wipe his eyes. “And I remembered her hair being everywhere…. I was like a lunatic, searching all over this goddamn house for some of her hair. Any of it. A single strand.” He looks up and meets my eyes, disbelief warring with sorrow. “I couldn’t find any, Had.”

I breathe in a slow, measured breath, trying to control the emotional floodgates from breaking. And even if they did, I think I’m all out of tears. I’ve cried enough in the past six months that it shouldn’t be possible for me to shed more.

“For Christ’s sake, I was scraping the lint trap in the dryer to find some.” He shakes his head, tosses his glasses on the couch, and scrubs his hands over his face. The muscle in his jaw tics as I watch him struggle not to break down. “I feel like I’m going crazy here.”

I take a step toward him, a single tear dripping down my cheek, and pain in my heart. He holds his hands up to stop me, knowing damn well if I hug him, we’ll both be blubbering messes in a matter of seconds. “You should have called me. You don’t—”

“And say what, Had?” A sliver of a laugh escapes, but I can hear borderline hysteria in it. “I know you’re dying just as much without her as I am. I can’t call you every time I have a bad day … bring you down.”

The things I want to say are in my head, but I have a hard time getting them out. They choke in my throat, words cutting like razor blades. “Lexi wanted you to keep living, Danny. She wanted you to find someone eventually and move on.” My voice is soft, but I know he heard me because his body stills and his head snaps up, his eyes flash with anger.

“Never,” he says with conviction. “She was my forever, Haddie. You know that. My everything … I—I can’t even imagine anyone else.” He looks down for a minute before meeting my eyes again with absolute clarity. “No one will ever be able to fill this hole in my heart. Ever.”

Maddie’s footsteps shuffle on the floor behind me. Danny’s face and posture transform immediately, a facade of normalcy for his daughter, but the smile on his lips never reaches his eyes.

And as he holds her tight—pulling her into his chest as if he’s afraid he’s going to lose her too—my no strings affirmation is solidified.

I turn around to face the wall of pictures, unable to contain the anger burgeoning inside of me. Mad at Lex, mad at me, mad at fricking everyone.

My mind wanders to the inconclusive BRCA test result sitting on my counter at home and about how the DNA test’s lack of an answer—whether I’m carrying or not carrying the breast cancer gene—is more unsettling than settling. I need to make an appointment for a blood redraw—but the unknown is oddly more comforting than the known to me.

Fuck this. Fuck Lex for leaving me. Just fuck everything.

I suck in a breath and try to calm myself down, get a grip, and rein it all in. But it’s so incredibly hard. And when I turn around and see Maddie standing there, bouncing up and down on her toes, my anger dissipates because I know I can’t control the why or the when, but I can most definitely control the here and now.

“You ready to go have some fun, pretty girl?”

“Yes!” she says, and then pecks Danny on the cheek one more time before bounding out the door.

“Have fun,” he says with a tight smile.

“Always,” I say softly. “Hearts and heels.” I nod at him and then turn to go buckle Maddie in the car.

We head off on our once-a-week adventure, singing silly songs and chatting on the way to the movie theater, and I can’t help but glance in the rearview mirror at her more often than not.

I think of everything I need to tell her about her mommy. I remember sisterly secrets that no one knows to this day, but how I can’t wait to tell her when the time’s right or when she’s old enough. I worry whether I’ll be able to make her mom come to life enough with my words, with experiences, with laughter and love so that she feels her like I do. Like she’s still here. I then realize of course I will. I have no choice.

I’m all she has now.