“Tides are about to turn, Mrs. Whitmore.”
She chuckles.
Two days ago, she told me that she’d be missing her weekly canasta night with “the girls.”
When people receive a cancer diagnosis, the fear comes from the unknown. Will the treatments work? Will I die? As a nurse, I don’t have the answers to those questions.
But canasta? I can learn to play canasta. That’s why I always tell families to maintain every bit of normalcy they can. Because the day-to-day anxieties arise from the disruption of the known. Bring a favorite blanket, a familiar terry cloth robe. Keep your routines.
Mrs. Whitmore discards a four. I draw two and discard a four of my own. She picks up the deck, showing me the two hidden fours in her hand. The smallest of pleased smiles turns her lips.
I raise an eyebrow at her. “Oh, you are clever.”
“I’ve just been playing too long.” She uses her little pencil and scrap paper, tallying up her canastas from the spoils of the deck. There will be no comeback.
“That’s a lovely bouquet,” I say of the flowers on her bedside table.
“Isn’t it? It’s from the ladies on the pageant board. They’re trying to butter me up.” She laughs.
Mrs. Whitmore has been a member of that board for as long as I can remember. She was the very first to win the title of Miss Lone Star Princess fifty years ago.
“Well, who wouldn’t want to stay on your good side?” I rearrange the cards in my hand. “My oldest is entering this year.”
Hannah blindsided me with the news last night. I love my daughter to pieces, and I think she’s beautiful, inside and out, but Hannah is not your typical pageant girl.
When she was little, we called Hannah “The Ham.” A wild mass of curls, a Jack Nicholson brow, and a smile that spread her chipmunk cheeks wide. She’d go to church in July, wearing Christmas pajamas with a pink tutu, Peppa Pig rain boots, and seven plastic bracelets.
For heaven’s sake,my mother would sigh.What happened to all those cute dresses I bought her?Mama was always pushing the pinks and sparkles, the patent Mary Janes. I’d shrug and say,She dresses herself, feeling a secret bloom of pride. It was the one time I’d allow myself to disappoint my mother, to disappoint anyone, because I was preserving Hannah.
When Hannah started kindergarten, she became best friends with a boy named Samuel. They were inseparable, holding hands on the playground and sharing snacks. One morning, Hannah tried on a frilly pink dress from Mama. Waylon whistled when she walked in, told her Samuel wouldhave hearts in his eyes. I know my husband meant well, but in that moment, I could have killed him. Hannah wore the dress to school, and everyone—Waylon, Mama, the teachers—told her how pretty she was.
After that, she refused to wear any of her old favorites. I’d hold up her blueT. rexshirt, reminding her how much she loved dinosaurs, but she’d stamp her foot.I don’t want to be cute. I want to be pretty.
Waylon yelled from the couch.Since when do you care what she wears?
I didn’t care what she wore. I cared about the why. I didn’t like that she looked at her closet, looked at her reflection, and thought about what someone else might think.
So I don’t like the idea now of her getting up on a stage to be picked at and judged. And, to be honest, I don’t like that she’s getting dragged into this whole thing by the likes of Sarah Lynn Preston. Hannah insists the two of them are friends, but I can’t help my suspicions. I know from experience the way pretty, popular girls can find a target in a chubby girl who doesn’t fit their mold.
“They want me to do the crowning,” Mrs. Whitmore says. “I’ll have to get my hair done.” She touches the top of her head gently with the tips of her fingers. “That’ll be nice, I suppose. Getting my hair done. While I still have it.”
My eyes go to hers, and she looks away. She blinks, and I see the glitter of tears on her lashes.
“You must think I’m so silly,” she says, pressing her fingertips into the corners of her eyes. “Crying over hair.”
I pull a tissue from the packet I keep in my pocket, hand it to her. “Mrs. Whitmore, you get to feel however you feel.”
She dabs at her eyes and nose. “I don’t want people to look at me and just see a sick person. I’m still me. I don’t want to remind people of death.”
I pick up my cards just as the door opens behind me, and we both turn.
The blood drains from my face, leaving me lightheaded and cold. The cards slip from my grip, fall to the tile floor like a tumble of leaves.
I don’t bend to pick them up. I can’t take my eyes off the woman in the doorway, Mrs. Whitmore’s daughter, the one who didn’t disappear.
If there is anyone who makes people think of death, it is Ingrid Whitmore.
CHAPTER SIXSARAH LYNN