too much for him. He said he was leaving me. He was packing when we left. He’s a broken man. And right now I have to worry about Bethanie. I can’t take care of him too. Maybe he was right to go. I didn’t want him to, but I can’t fix what they did to him. When he feels too much, he runs.”
“Oh my God, Coco. What else?”
“This is enough. It’s just about Bethanie right now. I’ll worry about me later. And Ian, if he comes back. But I don’t think he will.” She felt as though he had died, and a part of her with him, but he had died a long time ago. He was just a shell with a beating heart that was still bleeding twenty-eight years later. Right now she needed every ounce of her energy for her daughter. “Everything okay with you?”
“We’re fine. I think Tamar is depressed this time. She’s been very quiet since the delivery. It happened last time too.” He knew more about childbirth and the aftermath than most men.
“I never had that, but I’m a one-time mom, so what do I know?”
“You’re twenty-eight years old. You don’t know what could happen in the future. You might meet someone and have more kids.”
“Yes, I do know. Either Ian will come back, or some other dazzling guy will come along, someone broken or different or exotic or famous or brilliant and unusual and knock me right on my ass, and it’ll turn out like this again. Guys like Ian don’t go the distance. They can’t. And that seems to be my specialty, as you said a long time ago. Four years was a good run.” She seemed ready to let him go, which surprised Sam. But she knew from everything he’d said that she couldn’t hang on to him. The falling stars had turned to dust in her hands the night before.
“I hope he comes back,” Sam said in a low voice.
“So do I, but I’m pretty sure he won’t. Bethanie will take it hard. She loves him, and he loves her. It almost killed him to see us go. He wanted to come with us, but he didn’t have it in him. Now we need to focus on what’s going to happen here.” She was determined. Every fiber of her being was focused on Bethanie.
Sam left a little while later, and picked them up at nine-thirty the next morning to go to Sloan Kettering. He had taken the day off from work to be with them.
Bethanie came bounding out of Coco’s old childhood room to greet him, and she looked better after a night’s sleep. Coco didn’t. She hadn’t been able to stop herself. She had called Ian, and he didn’t pick up. She had no idea where he was or if she’d ever see him again. She thought she wouldn’t, but she still hoped.
* * *
—
The news at Sloan Kettering, after Dr. Jeff Armstrong reviewed the bloodwork and examined Bethanie, was somewhat encouraging. He concurred with the diagnosis they’d gotten in London. Bethanie had AML. They had caught it early and he thought the odds were good, but she was a very sick little girl. He recommended their standard protocol for the disease, which was six weeks of intense chemotherapy, which would make her feel awful and she’d lose her hair. He wanted to start the next day. Ideally, they hoped she would go into remission after the first intense round of chemotherapy. She had a ninety-five percent chance of remission, and even cure. The length of treatment would be about six months, depending on how she responded. And he felt that a full cure was entirely possible. He recommended that she be treated in Boston, Paris, or at Sloan Kettering, rather than go back to London, and he would treat her himself if they stayed. He was impressive in every way. Coco could tell he was brilliant.
“I want to get her treated here,” Coco confirmed. He nodded agreement and looked at her intensely. He was a tall, powerfully built man with sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes. He was very serious, and rarely smiled, except when speaking to his patients. He described the protocol to her. Bethanie would be in the hospital for six weeks, for chemo and to protect her from infection, and then she could go home for some of the time, and Coco could stay at the hospital with her as much as she