“OK,” Caroline said, bursting through the door not five minutes later. “Kimmy is going to cater, and Kyle is going to provide beverages.” She paused. “And muscle.”
“Muscle?” I asked.
“For the tables and chairs.”
She looked at me like I was dense.
“Car,” Sloane said. “You’re the only woman in the known world who could put together an entire party at nine o’clock at night.”
She looked down at her phone and typed, rapid fire. “Mom, I’m going to need a bunch of those blue-and-white-striped paper straws from your store. Hippie Hal is going to set up tents with Kyle.”
She typed some more. “Emerson,” she said, without looking up from her phone, “I’m going to need you to go over there and string the lights in the tent.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look at any of us.
“Caroline,” Sloane said. “Is this a bit over the top? She just wants a day on the beach.”
Caroline glared at Sloane. “Her last day on the beach, Sloane. Her last one. Ever. It’s going to be the best damn beach day in history. Understand? Plus, it’s her birthday.”
Sloane put her hands up in defense. Then we were all quiet. Caroline’s chin quivered. Caroline never cries, so, of course, that set us all off.
“How long do you think she has, realistically?” she asked.
I shrugged and pulled her close to me. “You know, honey, I’d say maybe a couple weeks. Tops.”
Emerson sobbed.
She and Sloane wrapped their arms around each other. Watching Mom die was going to be terrible, but in so many ways, it would be better than watching her endure treatments we all knew, at this stage, would probably have very little effect.
Jack appeared at the gate and walked through the white picket fence. As he approached, I saw he was carrying two bottles of wine. He set them on the glass coffee table, which, I noticed, really needed to be wiped down.
I stood to greet him, and he wrapped me in a hug. Usually, hugs made me cry harder when I was upset, but this one soothed me. There was something in Jack’s nature, his steady, easy way and the strength that exuded from him, that made me feel better. Everything inside of me was screaming that I needed him, that he was what was missing in my life. But it wasn’t time. Not yet.
He followed me inside and smiled sadly. “I remember this part,” he said.
I nodded, swallowing my tears. It made me sad that I hadn’t been there for Jack the way he was for me now. Sometimes I worried the draw I felt toward him was nothing more than a glorified memory. But it was times like these when I realized what I was drawn to wasn’t the kid I had fallen in love with all those summers ago. It was the man he was now.
“How do you get through it?” I asked. “I want to be strong for her, Jack, but it’s tearing me apart to watch her die.”
“I don’t think this is much consolation,” he said, “but this just has to happen. It’s the natural order of things. Whether it’s today or six months from now or ten years from now, this is pain you have to feel. It will hurt like hell. But then it gets a little better. And a little better. And, one day, you wake up and you smile and you think of them fondly without feeling the need to sob about it.”
I nodded. “I should be better at this. I did it with my father. I should know how to handle it.”
He took my hand and squeezed it. “But it’s your mom,” he said. “And once she’s gone, you’re parentless.”
The tears really came now, because Jack had vocalized what I had been feeling all this time but couldn’t quite reconcile. I was going to be an orphan. A fifty-eight-year-old orphan. But an orphan all the same.
He hugged me to him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “If I could take this pain away from you I absolutely would.”
What kind of woman wouldn’t want to be with a man like that? But I couldn’t lie to my daughters. I just couldn’t.
Jack and I walked back out the front door. “Mom!” I exclaimed. My tiny mother was curled up on the couch between Caroline and Sloane, a pale pink pashmina wrapped around her long-sleeved nightgown, a pair of fuzzy slippers Caroline had gotten her on her feet.
“I couldn’t bear to miss the action, darling,” she said.
I smiled at her. “You never could, Mom.” I was bolstered by the fact that she felt like being awake and out here with us.
“Oh my God!” Caroline exclaimed. “I need to go get Vivi from camp. She needs to be here for this.”
Mom shook her head and said, “Absolutely not. That sweet girl is not coming home from one of the best parts of her life to watch me shrivel up.”
“But Grammy—” Caroline started to protest.
“No,” Grammy interrupted. “Life is for the living, darling. Don’t you ever forget it.”
I cleared my throat, trying to swallow my tears and turned to see Hippie Hal walking through the gate, Kimmy on his heels. I laughed. “It’s almost ten o’clock at night, you crazies.”
“We come bearing gifts,” Hal said.
I pointed to Jack’s wine. “I guess everyone thought we needed gifts tonight.”
“Oh, we can do better than wine,” Kimmy said, winking at me.
I raised my eyebrows. Hal reached into his backpack and pulled out a Tupperware container, and I was no longer confused.
Emerson burst out laughing, and Caroline said, “Those better be gluten free.”
“Obviously,” Kimmy said. “I would never leave you out.”
“No,” I said, trying to put
