“But, why?” he said with simple curiosity.
“I thought I saw something attached to it, so I figured it was a letter and that’s why I thought I should get it down.” Please don’t see through the holes in that explanation.
“So you just had to tug on it and it came down then?” He cocked his head to one side.
I looked at his deep-set, hazel eyes for a moment and then quickly looked away. “No, I… I had to climb the tree.”
“You climbed the tree to get the balloon out?” Pure shock was in his voice.
Casually, I sipped my coffee, burnt tongue be warned. “Yeah, it was no big deal.”
He started scanning my face, and when his eyes caught mine, I quickly looked to the table. “I don’t understand your motivation,” he said.
“Ha!” An overt, loud laugh escaped me. “It was no big deal.”
“And then you tracked me down to return the letter to me. That’s not something most people would do.” He crossed his arms.
“Well, that was with help from my best friend Zoe. It was pretty easy. Her boyfriend Darren knows you. So, you know, I just wanted to make sure the little boy got his letter back.” I wished I had a muffin or something to pick at.
He sat quietly, contemplating me, and my story. “It seems like an extraordinary act of kindness.”
“Oh!” I waved my hand at him. “Not extraordinary. Not at all.”
“You don’t think it’s extraordinary? How would you describe it?” He raised one eyebrow at me.
I bit my bottom lip. “Nice, I guess.”
He nodded his head. “Nice. Hmm. You scaled a tree to get a balloon down, you researched who the balloon belonged to, and then you returned this letter to a family member — all for no other reason than to be nice?”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “Don’t people do nice things anymore?” I repeatedly sipped my coffee.
His face looked similar to Marc’s when he would attempt to solve a difficult puzzle. “Not that nice.” He sipped his coffee and then took my hand. “Honestly? It was just to be nice?”
His words hung in the air around me. The heat from his fingers sent a jolt through me. I wanted to pull away, but I didn’t. I wanted to be nonchalant, but I felt he’d see right through me. I wanted to run. I didn’t want to answer any more questions. He was getting too close to the truth.
“Just to be nice.” The words came out quick and insistent, and I looked back down at my coffee before I could reveal anything further. But it wasn’t just to be nice. Not at all, because if I hadn’t made sure that little boy got his letter to Heaven, the same way my brother made sure I got my own letter to Heaven, I would’ve been devastated. As I looked at Brandon, his eyes looked so inviting. He looked so genuine, like he wouldn’t judge me or my family. “Also…” Pain surged in my heart as the word slipped out, and I realized I couldn’t say any more. I thought of Eric Hunter and that pity kiss he had given me to try to cheer me up after my mom had died. My family’s secrets needed to stay locked safely within me.
“Also what?” he asked.
I pulled my hand away from his, and the spot where he had touched immediately went cold. “Also, I’m just awesome, I guess.” A grandiose smile adorned my face, and it made him laugh. Thank goodness it made him laugh.
Chapter Eight
It wasn’t like I didn’t know what cancer was, but when your mom gets it at forty-two years old, it’s pretty intense. You would never have known she was sick. To look at her, she looked the same as always. She was blindingly beautiful. It was just a routine checkup, one of those things that as an adult woman you have to do yearly. See your dentist. Get a physical. Once you’re over forty, you need a mammogram. But this was the first time my mom had gotten one. I guess she figured forty-two was close enough to forty. The fact was that if she had gone at forty, they might have caught it sooner. Her breast cancer was already at Stage IV.
****
When she came home from her appointment that day, I was struck at how frail she looked. It was as if someone had removed all of the bones from her body and left her in this limp shell of flesh and organs. She plopped herself down on the couch and deflated, letting a huge exhale escape her body.
“Wow, what’d they do to you?” I was sitting in the recliner eating a vanilla yogurt. For a moment all I could think of was if I was going to get in trouble for having food in the living room. So, I carefully placed the cup on the floor out of her eyeline so I could retrieve it later and toss it out.
“I don’t know how I just drove home.” My mother’s words were heavy, and her face was pale.
I started to get that feeling in my gut, the one that turns your insides into a big triple knot. The one that lets you know something bad is coming. “Mom, what’s wrong?” I moved from the recliner to sit next to her on the couch. She didn’t look at me; she just kept staring off into the nothingness in front of her.
I watched her try to speak, but she was just mouthing something, and I couldn’t hear any sound. “Mom, you’re kinda scaring me. What’s going on?” The quiver in my voice hurt my throat.
She looked at me. I had never seen her eyes look the way they did that day. Her normally bright, sparkling, blue eyes now looked like tidal pools of blue dread staring at me. “Oh Marissa,” she squeaked out. “I have… c… I have… c…” She couldn’t get more
