The Great Alone

Dr. Prasher went on, using ordinary words in an extraordinary, impossible-to-grasp context. Bronchoscopy, tumor, aggressive.

“How long do I have?” Cora asked, realizing belatedly that she’d interrupted the doctor in the middle of something.

“No one can tell you that, Ms. Grant. But your cancer appears to be aggressive. Stage-four lung cancer that has already metastasized. I know that’s a hard thing to hear.”

“How long do I have?”

“You’re a relatively young woman. We will treat it aggressively.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s always hope, Ms. Grant.”

“Is there?” Cora said. “There’s also karma.”

“Karma?”

“There was a poison in him,” Cora said to herself, “and I drank it up.”

Dr. Prasher frowned, leaned forward. “Evelyn, this is a disease, not retribution or payback for sin. Those are Dark Ages thoughts.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well.” Dr. Prasher stood, frowning. “I want to schedule a bronchoscopy for this afternoon. It should confirm the diagnosis. Is there someone you’d like to call?”

Cora got to her feet, feeling unsteady enough that she had to grasp the back of the chair. The pain at the base of her spine leaped out again, worse now that she knew what it was.

Cancer.

I have cancer.

She couldn’t imagine saying it out loud.

She closed her eyes, exhaled. Imagined—remembered—a little girl with wild red hair and chubby little hands and freckles like cinnamon flakes, reaching out for her, saying, Mama, I love you.

Cora had gone through so much. Lived when she could have died. She’d imagined her life a hundred different ways, practiced a thousand ways to atone. She’d imagined growing old, growing senile, laughing when she was supposed to cry, using salt instead of sugar. In her dreams, she’d seen Leni fall in love again and get married and have another baby.

Dreams.

In a breathtaking instant, Cora’s life crashed into focus, became small. All of her fears and regrets and disappointments fell away. There was just one thing that mattered; how could she not have known it from the beginning? Why had she spent so much time searching for who she was? She should have known. Always. From the very beginning.

She was a mother. A mother. And now …

My Leni.

How would she ever say goodbye?

* * *

LENI STOOD OUTSIDE the closed door to her mother’s hospital room, trying to calm her breathing. She heard noises all around her, up and down the hall, people hurrying on rubber-soled shoes, carts being rolled from room to room, announcements coming over the loudspeakers.

Leni reached for the silver metal door handle, gave it a twist.

She walked into a large room, separated into two smaller spaces by curtains that hung from metal runners on the ceiling.

Mama was sitting up in bed, leaning back into a pile of white pillows. She looked like an antique doll, with eggshell skin stretched too tightly across her delicately crafted face. Her collarbone peered out above the neckline of her oversized hospital gown, the skin on either side hollowed out.

“Hey,” Leni said. She leaned down, kissed her mother’s soft cheek. “You could have told me you were going to the doctor’s. I would have come with you.” She pushed the feathery gray-blond hair out of her mother’s eyes. “Do you have pneumonia?”