Dad purses his lips and his straight brow knits together. I’ve seen this look on him before. It makes an appearance when he’s searching for the right words to say—the perfect delivery for a speech he’s already prepared. He had the same face nine years ago when he told us Mom wasn’t coming home.
“Mikey is down the hall, Maggie.” He doesn’t add anything to the statement, but the words weigh down on me like a stack of heavy books, only I don’t know the information that’s held within their pages. “He’s fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” I stare straight into his gray eyes and the red veins that web through them indicate nothing about this is fine. People don’t cry when things are fine. Forty-year-old men don’t hide their tears behind clenched eyelids when everything is fine. “What the hell happened yesterday, Dad? I got your text, and now both Mikey and I are laid up in hospital beds. What’s going on?”
Dad closes his eyes completely—an even worse sign than when he merely tightened them—and I know I don’t want to hear the words he’s about to say. Like when you’re a kid and you thrust your fingers in your ears and stick out your tongue, trying to avoid the very real confrontation that is bound to take place. I want to do that now. If I wasn’t so sore, I just might attempt it.
“Maggie Girl,” he sighs. That’s another indicator of bad things to come. He’s pulling out the childhood nicknames. Not a good sign. “Mikey had an accident during the game yesterday.”
I recall the text. “Yeah, I know,” I say, nodding. “A concussion. Stupid linebackers. And seriously, Mikey’s got to be ready for them next time. That’s his fourth sack this season. He’s going lax on us, Dad.”
Dad’s eyes well and his front teeth sink into the flesh of his bottom lip. “Mags.” In one swoop, he draws me into his shoulders and presses his lips to my forehead. I wrench back from the sudden action, but feel the spill of his fresh tears across my cheek and my breathing cuts off as the room spins around me.
“Oh no…no, no, no. Dad—please tell me Mikey is okay.” My heart has catapulted into my throat; I can feel the beats echoing loudly in my ears like the kick of a bass drum. “He’s not…he’s not—”
“Oh goodness no, he’s not dead, Mags.” Dad pulls back and breathes a relieving sigh, but the tears continue to run streaks down his cheekbones, sliding across jaw without letting up. “But he didn’t have a concussion like we thought.”
I shake my head. “No?”
“He blacked out.”
“Oh yeah? Well, tell him he’s not such hot stuff—I blacked out too, you know. Multiple times. And I might have even told a random guy he had a nice face. Tell Mikey he doesn’t get all the limelight, mm-kay?”
“Maggie.” Dad’s voice remains chillingly monotone. The walls in the room feel much closer than they did moments ago. “They’ve found a tumor, Mags.” His voice catches. “Mikey has a brain tumor.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Will you stop that?” He groans and chucks his pillow at me. I catch it easily in my lap since I’m seated in a wheelchair, and I lob it back at him with all my upper body strength, which honestly isn’t much. The pillow hits him upside the skull—probably not the best choice in landings based on the information we’ve just received.
“Stop what, dork?”
He folds the pillow behind his back and settles in, his thick neck craning upward and his broad shoulders relaxing slightly. He looks way too massive for the tiny hospital bed, like those circus clowns crammed into tiny cars. “Stop looking at me like I have some kind of disease or something.”
I cock my head to the side. “Well, you sorta do. You know, cancer and all.”
“Shut up, stupid.” He groans again. “They’re not even 100 percent sure it’s cancer. It could just be a tumor. A lot of times that’s all it is.”
“It’s not a toomah,” I imitate, channeling my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice possible.
Mikey cocks a brow. “Kindergarten Cop?”
I nod, fingering the edge of the bed sheet in front of me. There’s a loose thread that I wrap around my finger until it breaks off and creates a threadlike ring around my index knuckle. “Yep, that one’s a classic.”
“You realize that came out before we were born, right?” Mike seals his eyelids shut. I don’t think he’s slept at all in