She’s looking anywhere except at me—at theChristmas tree, at Silas’s face, at her hands twisted together in her lap. All the places people look when they’re about to deliver news that destroys everything.
But when she finally meets my eyes, tears immediately well up in hers.
“I didn’t want to spoil the holidays,” she whispers, and a single tear crests, rolling down her carefully made-up cheek and cutting a clean line through the foundation she applied so carefully this morning. Foundation meant to hide how sick she is.
I’m shaking my head no, even as I reach up to swipe away her tear with my thumb.
No. No. No. No.
Four times. Even number. Make it not true.
The motion is automatic. Gentle. One swipe across her cheek.
Then another. Make sure I got it all.
Then another. Three swipes. Odd number.
One more. Four swipes total. Even. Balanced.
The same way I used to wipe away her tears when I was twelve and she’d try to hide how much the treatment hurt.
I still can’t speak. All I can do is just keep shaking my head in denial.
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Not again. Not when she’s been five years in the clear. Not when we finally have a real family. Not when everything was supposed to be okay now.
“But tell me,” she says, and her voice goes urgent, almost frantic. Her cold hand squeezes mine with surprising strength. “Where did you see the motorcyclemen? Around your school? Have they been bothering you?”
I just keep shaking my head no, unable to form words. My chest is shaking with a sob I refuse to let out. I can feel it building behind my ribs, clawing at my throat, demanding release.
But I won’t. I can’t.
If I start crying, I won’t stop.
Because it’s back.
The cancer’s back.
The thing I’ve spent five years trying not to think about. The thing that’s lived in the back of my mind like a monster under the bed. The reason I check on her breathing at night when I can’t sleep. The reason I’ve built my entire life around being perfect enough, good enough, successful enough that she’ll have something to be proud of. Something to fight for.
And it didn’t matter.
None of it mattered.
“No,” Harper says from behind me, and her voice sounds small. Scared. Nothing like the Harper who was spitting fire thirty seconds ago. “Z said he saw them around the—Around y’all’s club. He saw Dad talking to someone with a Devil’s cut. Helen, are you okay?”
There’s a pause. I can feel Harper staring at the back of my head, trying to understand what’s happening. Trying to decode why I’m on my knees, why Mom’s crying, and why the entire energy of the room has shifted from anger to something else.
Something worse.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice cracks.
When nobody answers—when I can’t speak and Mom won’t speak and Silas is too busy holding Mom’s other hand—Harper’s voice gets louder. More desperate.
“Dad,what’s wrong?”
I hear Silas take a breath. Steady himself.
“They found something on Helen’s scan when she went in last week,” he says, and even through my haze of panic, I can hear how carefully he’s choosing his words. How gentle he’s trying to be. “Her cancer’s back, honey.”