“He’s fine. He’ll probably pass this time.”
“I hope he does,” her dad said. “Kent’s a good kid, and he’s smarter than he thinks. I hope you’ll be able to show him that.”
Becca knew full well that Robbie didn’t care one bit for Kent. But it wouldn’t do either of them any good to argue about that. It was Kent, after all.
“How do you think the fair is going tonight?” her father said.
“Matt’s fine,” Becca said. “He’s with his friends. They won’t let anything bad happen to him.”
“They can’t stop everything,” her dad said. “He’d hate us if he knew we were talking about him like this.”
She didn’t want to get sidetracked with the conversation topics that her father was bringing up. There was something else at the core of his uneasiness, and Becca wanted to know what it was.
“How was work?” she said.
“Fine,” he said in a face that was not fine. “They rejected animal trials.”
Robbie had been hoping to get to the animal trials by the end of the week, at the latest. Who the hell would care about a few mice having nanite clusters injected into them? People fed mice to African bullfrogs or snakes for fun, so who the hell would really care about scientific trials on them?
“But they rejected it,” Robbie McCarthy said, his words sounding deflated.
“Why?”
“Said I needed more research, more time to think things through . . . time.”
He laughed at that, watching his hand shake beneath him. “Funny for them to talk about time, as though I have a lot of it left. And your mother . . ..”
Becca walked over and put her hand on his shoulder.
“She doesn’t have a lot of time,” Robbie said, his words coming out in chokes.
Her mother had been ill a lot of the last couple of years, and Becca had gotten used to it. She didn’t want to be, but she was all the same. Life didn’t exactly ask for your permission.
“Oh God, what am I saying?” Robbie said. He dropped the cigarette. “You don’t need to worry about any of that. Go back upstairs and teach Kent algebra.”
A car drove onto their gravel driveway.
“They’re back,” Robbie said.
But only one car door slammed shut, and it was much too loud to be any of Matt’s gang. Becca’s heart started to flutter in her chest.
“Why is he here now?” Robbie said, walking past her and back into the house. Becca didn’t follow. Nigel was never happy whenever he came unannounced. And besides, seeing Becca was always something that could drive Nigel up a wall. So she walked in, turned the corner, and went up the stairs. She got to the top and waited. Kent was waiting for her, but whenever Nigel came, Becca liked to overhear.
****
“Where is he?” Nigel said, walking into the house. Back before the Parkinson’s, her dad would have been able to put a hand up and stop the man from entering. Not anymore, though, and Becca hated it as much as she was sure her father did as well.
Becca heard the man’s loud footsteps as he walked into the living room.
“He’s at the fair?” Robbie said.
“By himself!” Nigel said.
“No, he’s with his friends.”
“Friends, right,” Nigel said. “I would never let Matt hang out with them. They probably left him in the car the entire time . . . do I smell cigarette smoke?”
Robbie stayed silent.
“Jesus Christ, Robbie,” Nigel said. “Your wife’s got cancer, and you’re off smoking. Probably smoking right in front of her, aren’t you? Probably wishing that—”
Becca rolled her eyes. Nigel had a habit of talking like this whenever he came over. She hoped that Matt and his friends wouldn’t get home until after Nigel left. Much easier to diffuse a situation when there weren’t bombs everywhere.
I’m running out of time. Her father had said, and Becca believed him.
You don’t need any more time, she thought. She wanted to see her mom but going down there and seeing her, would set Nigel into a whole fit of rage. While it wouldn’t be justified, it would still be hurtful, and Becca didn’t feel like dealing with that at the moment.
Her mother was sitting/creeping in a hospital bed in their living room. The woman had stage four cancer of the throat and brain. She could no longer speak, but Becca hoped dearly that the woman could still think.
There had been a time before all of this, before the sickness and the fighting. It was a good time, and she wished she could go back to it.
But the future was ahead of them, and the past was weighing them down at the moment.
Her father wouldn’t react well to Carol’s secret. Not well, not well at all, but that would only be natural. He most likely wouldn’t believe her. How could he?
Who would want to believe that their wife wants to die?
Or rather wanted to die, much earlier, before cancer had taken away her ability to speak coherently. Becca had no idea what her mother was thinking about at the moment, and she almost didn’t want to.
Deep down, both Robbie and Nigel knew that Carol was a lost cause, no matter what miracle cure Robbie was trying to come up with. Even without animal testing, it wouldn’t work. Becca didn’t understand the science of it, and she didn’t want to. She knew that she didn’t want those things to move around in her mother’s body.
Becca hadn’t accepted that for certain until her mother told her what she wanted.
“Not now, of course,” her mother had said, the machines around her buzzing. It had been almost a year before this night. Robbie was off somewhere else at the time, one of the few times that Becca was actually alone with her mother for a stretch of time. Matt had been off with his friends.
Becca felt the words she wanted to say get caught in her throat and choke her slightly. Was she hallucinating? Did she have a tumor in her brain like her mother, and this was how it was going to manifest itself, through
