I was a lying, manipulative asshole who didn’t deserve to sit in the same room with her. But I couldn’t say that. So instead I grabbed the box and prepared to get schooled.
…
“So you grew up in foster homes?” Ella asked me as we made our sixty-fourth loop of the floor.
Maisie had been in surgery for six hours, and we’d had an update from the surgical team about fifteen minutes ago that all was going well and they were trying their hardest to save her kidney.
“I did.”
“How many?”
“I honestly can’t remember. I got moved a lot. Probably because I was a horrible kid. I fought everyone who tried to help, pushed every rule, and did my best to get kicked out of my placement, hoping that would somehow make my mom come back.”
I didn’t expect her to understand. Most people who grew up in normal houses with a quasi-normal family couldn’t get it.
“Ah, the sweet, illogical logic of a child,” Ella said.
Of course she got it. That was what drew me to her in the first place. Her simple acceptance of me through our letters. But from what I’d seen, she was like that—accepting.
“Pretty much.”
“Which was the best home?” she asked, again surprising me. Most people wanted to know the worst, like my life was fodder for gossip to feed their salacious need for the tragedy of others.
“Uh, my last one. I was with Stella for almost two years, starting around my fifteenth birthday. She was the only person I’d ever wanted to stay with.” Memories hit me, some painful, some sweet, but all glossed over with the kind of filter only time could give.
“Why didn’t you?” We reached the end of another hallway and turned around, walking back.
“She died.” Ella paused, and I had to turn around. “What?”
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her hand squeezing my biceps. “To finally find someone just to lose them…”
My instinct was to rub my hands over my face, shake it off, and keep walking, but I wasn’t going to move a muscle with her hand on me, no matter how innocent the touch was. “Yeah. There are really no words for it.”
“Like someone picks up your life and shakes it like a snow globe,” Ella offered. “It seems to take forever for the pieces to settle, and then they’re never in the same place.”
“Exactly.”
She’d captured the feeling with the precision of someone who knew. How was it I’d never found anyone who understood what my life had been like, and yet this woman defined it without blinking an eye?
“Come on, we haven’t quite worn a path through the linoleum yet,” she said, and started our sixty-fifth lap.
I followed.
…
“This is taking too long. Why is it taking them so long? What’s going wrong?” Ella paced back and forth in the surgical waiting room.
“They just haven’t updated us in a little while. Maybe they’re finishing up.” I watched her from where I leaned against the windowsill. She’d been calm, collected even, until we reached the hour when they’d estimated the surgery would be done.
As soon as that hour passed, something flipped inside her.
“It’s been eleven hours!” she shouted, pausing with her hands on her head. She’d long ago pulled so many strands of her hair loose that it floated around her, as disheveled as she was.
“It has.”
“It was supposed to take ten!” Her eyes were wide and panicked, and I couldn’t blame her. Hell, she was only giving voice to the same thoughts in my head.
“Is everything okay? Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie?” A nurse popped her head in. “Anything I can do for you?”
“I’m not—”
“Yes, you can find out exactly what’s going on with my daughter. She was supposed to be out of surgery over an hour ago, and there’s been no word. None. Is she okay?”
The woman’s face softened in sympathy. Ella wasn’t the first mom to panic in the waiting room, and she wasn’t going to be the last. “How about I go check for you? I’ll come right back with an update.”
“Please. Thank you.” Some of the wild left Ella’s eyes.
“Of course.” She gave Ella a reassuring smile and left in search of information.
“God, I’m going insane.” Ella’s voice was barely a whisper.
She shook her head as she fought off a lower-lip tremble. I pushed away from the sill and was to her in four long strides, not halting to think about who I was or who she knew me to be. I simply wrapped my arms around her and pulled her