“What’s going on?” he asks, letting the gear bag he’s holding drop to the floor. His gaze flits from me to his mom.
She smiles at him, wan and fatigued. “Your dad’s having a bad day. I asked Calliope to come by and check on him.”
Rafe’s eyes snap to me, locking on hard. “And?”
“He’s having a hard time breathing—”
“Why?” he demands, his brows furrowing deeply. “I mean...I don’t understand a goddamn thing about any of this.”
“The cancer has spread to his lungs and his liver—”
“No,” Rafe barks at me, looking wildly between his mother and me. “I don’t understand how this happened. How did it get this bad, this fast?”
There’s a world of recrimination in that statement, and he immediately flushes, a guilty expression on his face.
“Sorry,” he mutters and spins on his heel, walking right out of the kitchen and trotting down the stairs.
Brenda starts to rise from the table to go after him, but I beat her to it, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Let me. I think he needs a rational explanation, and I can give that to him without too much emotion.”
Because really...we’re nothing to each other, so I’m perfect for the job.
Brenda nods, and I follow Rafe out of the house, expecting to find him in his mom’s car. I assume his vehicle might be coming via freight carrier from Arizona at some point, or hell...maybe he’s just going to buy a new one now that he’s relocated. It’s not like he can’t afford it.
Instead, I find Rafe sitting on the top step of the porch, arms crossed over his knees and staring out at the street. He glances up at me and says, “I wasn’t blaming anyone.”
“I know that,” I reply softly and take a seat beside him. “And I think that maybe you really don’t have all the information you need to understand what’s going on. So what can I do to clear things up?”
His expression morphs into relief. “Just explain the disease to me. How come he’s so bad off? How come there’s no hope?”
“Pancreatic cancer is very aggressive,” I tell him bluntly. “There’s no telling exactly how long your dad was having symptoms before they were even noticeable to your mom. But eventually, they got to the point where they couldn’t be ignored. I know there was some back pain, which was at first discounted as aging. Then he lost his appetite, which caused him to lose weight. We thought that might be a bit of depression because he had to cut back on his work from the back pain. Your mom tried to get him to go to the doctor, but you know your dad...he didn’t even go get a physical each year. He hated going to the doctor.”
“What made him finally go?” he asks me. “These are all details that were kept from me, I’m assuming because my mom didn’t want to worry me or because my dad and I just didn’t have a close enough relationship for him to confide.“
“His skin started turning yellow, so I think that ultimately scared him enough to go get checked out.”
“And by then, it was too late?” he guesses.
“It had already spread to his liver and lungs,” I explain to him. I went with Brenda and Jim—at their request—to meet with the oncologist. “He was offered chemo, but it wasn’t going to buy him much time, and he didn’t want to deal with the side effects.”
Rafe lets out a gust of frustrated breath. I believe all family members struggle with the choice to undergo chemo or not. Knowing it couldn’t fix Jim’s problem but merely buy him precious moments, the trade-off was the side effects for him.
“Your dad really considered the options,” I tell Rafe, who twists his neck to finally give me his attention. “He weighed the pros and the cons and, ultimately, he decided not to do the chemo.”
“I was never involved in that conversation,” he replies bitterly, thus revealing the source of his discontent: the fact that his opinion didn’t matter.
I reach out and touch my hand to his arm. “It wouldn’t have mattered. Your mom tried to talk him into the chemo. It’s what she wanted, but not what he wanted.”
Rafe stares at me for a long moment, clearly at war with his emotions. Finally, his expression smooths into one of acceptance, and he nods.
It’s neither awkward nor unsettling that we simply stare at each other, neither of us needing to say anything. I wait to see if he has more questions, but the sound of tires rasping on cement nabs our attention, and we turn to see a black Corvette pulling into my parents’ driveway.
My spine stiffens as the car comes to a stop, and the driver’s door opens. “Shit,” I mutter.
Rafe stands, and I do the same as I see my ex-boyfriend unfurl his big body from the little sports car. I always thought he looked ridiculous crammed into that sardine can.