Chapter 16

Lena set an appointment with her doctor for the following week. Then she was referred to a specialist, then another. The news was not good.

The third week of January Lena was diagnosed with cancer of the liver. They found a four inch cryptic tumor, plus it had spread to other organs. She would be dead by March.

Ethan was going nuts through the whole process. Lena’s family was instantly involved and took over and he was pretty much shut out of it. Once Lena was in the hospital his contact was reduced to phone calls and visiting her at odd times when no one else was around, which wasn’t often. Everyone knew what the prognosis was.

One day Claire was sitting next to her mother’s bed in the hospital room and they were talking. For the first time in quite a while she directed their conversation to Lena’s relationship with Ethan. She was trying to apologize.

“Mom, I’m sorry about how I reacted when I found out about you and Ethan. I was out of line. I know now that you really do care about him, that you care about each other. It was just such a shock…I wasn’t ready for it.”

“Well, don’t worry yourself about it. I would have probably reacted the same way if I found out you were screwing some eighteen year-old boy toy!”

“Mother!”

Lena laughed, which soon turned into a fit of coughs. Then: “I hope you’ll apologize to Ethan, too.”

Claire said she would.

“Has Greg cheated on you lately?” Lena asked.

Claire shook her head. “No. Not that I know of.”

“That’s good. But once a cheater, always a cheater! But if you decide to have a fling of your own, I highly recommend Ethan! He’ll knock your socks off!”

“Mother!”

“I mean it. He’s an animal in the sack, and such stamina! I still can’t believe some of the things we did!”

“I can’t believe you’re telling me this!”

“Don’t knock it till you try it!” Lena said, just as a lightning bolt of pain flashed through her.

Shortly after Claire left that day Lena picked up her phone and opened the video of her and Ethan in the hot tub. Her eyes filled with tears as she watched.

She died peacefully in her sleep. It was the second week of March, just about the time she and Ethan would have been shoveling pig shit together in her garden, getting ready for the new season.

—-

There was not a formal funeral or burial or viewings or any of that rigmarole, only a simple memorial service. Lena had said that so many of her friends and relatives were scattered around so far and wide that she didn’t want people to feel obligated or inconvenienced. Lena had also asked that she be cremated and for her ashes to be flung off of Emory Peak at Big Bend National Park in south Texas. Ethan smiled when he found this out; he figured this was one final joke Lena was playing on her family to get back at them for harassing her about their relationship.

Ethan went to the memorial but he kept to himself and sat near the back. He didn’t know hardly anyone and he could feel the many eyes on him throughout. He minded his own business, not wanting to detract from the service. He saw his mother from a distance but didn’t speak to her because he planned to make a fast getaway as soon as it was over.

But he wasn’t fast enough. Claire flagged him down as he was heading out the door.

“Ethan! Ethan, wait!” Claire called as she hurried over to him. “Will you be coming back to the house? We have a nice lunch for everyone.”

“No, sorry, I can’t, thank you. I’m expected back to work, we have a deadline,” he lied. He didn’t want to have to mourn with a bunch of disapproving strangers.

“Oh, I’m sorry you can’t make it. But I wanted to ask you, will you be available at all this weekend? I will be coming back on Friday to start going through some of my mother’s things, and I really would like to talk to you.”

“Do you want me to move out?”

“Oh, no, that’s not it at all! Don’t think about it, please stay! But I would like to talk if you could make the time. There are so many things I want to say to you, to try to explain, to apologize.”

“I’ll be around. There are some things I’d like to say to you too.”