Lazarus (The Henchmen MC 7)

"Why not? Oh, God," I groaned, my face no doubt looking as pained as my heart felt at the very idea. "Don't tell me I can't have coffee anymore!"

To that, he chuckled, giving me a big white smile that had a strange warm feeling spreading across my belly. "Let's not get too crazy. No, I just think since coffee dehydrates maybe you might want some water first so you don't keep feeling wrung out."

Wrung out was a good way to describe how I felt.

And, seeing his logic, I downed a glass of water before I got some coffee as he cooked.

It was companionably silent for a long time before he broke it. "Tell me about your mom."

There was a gut-punch feeling at that request, so unused to people asking about her. Granted, I had been the one to bring her up after the story about how his mother suffered and succumbed to her illness. I couldn't help it; I understood that pain all to well- the plight of the motherless child. There was no way for someone who didn't go through it to understand.

"How long?" he prompted when I didn't immediately say anything.

"Two years," I supplied, the time making it no less painful.

"It wasn't the catalyst then," he said as he dropped the potatoes into the pan, the sizzle sound filling the almost tensely silent room.

"Not really, no."

"Tell me about her," he urged, half-turning toward me while still mixing the potatoes so they didn't stick.

I felt myself shrug a little. "She was a rock. My father is, and always was, a complete asshole. I think she spent most of her time trying to make up for that. Being a stay-at-home mom, she didn't really have a way to get away from him so she just stuck it out and tried to shield us from him."

"Did he hurt you?" he asked, voice tense.

"No," I said, shaking my head, smiling a little wryly. "That would mean he actually gave a damn enough to even notice we were there. He treated her like shit though. Nothing she ever did was good enough. He didn't even tell us that she was sick even after she was in the hospital for respiratory problems associated with the ALS."

"Sounds like a real fucking prince," he agreed, shaking his head as he reached to grease the second pan and put the heat on under it. "How'd you find out?"

"My older sister came in to visit. She and my mom were planning her wedding. When she found out what was going on, she told me. My mom," I said, shaking my head as I looked at my coffee, "didn't want to 'burden' us with the truth."

It had only been maybe a month since I had last seen her, mostly due to a two week vacation I had taken so I didn't lose the days before the end of that year. Only a month, but when I walked into that hospital room, she had lost so much weight that she was practically a skeleton- just skin draping over bone.

Normal, that was what the doctors said.

Apparently, so was the shaking and the difficulty swallowing and the muscle aches, fatigue, and breathing issues.

They also said things like: not as common in women, and she's a bit young, and two to five years.

Two to five years.

That was how long she had left.

Two to five years to say what she needed to say.

Two to five years for us to try to come to grips with the reality of her eventual death.

But even if I had ten years, it wouldn't have been enough.

She was released when her respiratory infection went away- to the loving care of her husband. Knowing that was a sure death sentence, I had quit my desk job at a dentist's office and all but moved back home to take care of her.

It was a humbling experience to do something like that, especially when she was so young- to brush her teeth and hair, to bathe her, to dress and feed her, to cook and clean up after her.

My father became mostly MIA and I was glad for his absence.

While she got a slight tremor to her voice, she spent as much time as she could before fatiguing to tell me her stories, to impart her wisdom, to tell me her hopes and dreams and fears for me.

Stop pushing the good ones away, Bethy, she told me, knowing that my father had given me some pretty impressive trust issues with the opposite sex, leaving me somewhat unable to believe a man when he was being genuine and good to me. I always ended up breaking up with them before they could, I thought, hurt me.

I know my wedding dress isn't in vogue anymore, she told me another night, motioning to the dresser where there was a picture of her wedding day with her in a lovely A-line gown that had a lace bodice and lace sleeves. I had always thought it was the loveliest dress I had ever seen. But I want you and your sister to take parts of it then for your wedding days. You can have the lace stitched in somewhere.