Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,56
the house since he wasn’t going to be around anymore. He said that if I let Mom know I was scared that she would be scared and then so would Lucy so I needed to find my courage and not show fear.”
That was heavy. “How old were you?”
“Eleven.”
“And you listened?”
Sawyer rubs the back of his head, but keeps his gaze trained straight ahead. “I had to. My mom was working her way up the sales force with the company and the company told her she had to move here to cover this sales route. Mom’s parents died a long time ago, and while she knew people here, she didn’t know anyone well enough that they’d help us. After Mom worked all day, she had to come home and take care of us. Lucy was a baby, and while I always struggled in school, I had yet to be diagnosed with dyslexia. Mom lost her temper a lot and would cry as soon as she put us to bed.
“I felt bad for her and figured Dad was right. Watching Mom be scared and hearing her cry made me feel terrible. I figured my fear was making her worse so I decided to be brave.”
Brave. People use the word all the time, but I’m not a fan of it. “When my mom was first diagnosed with cancer, all sorts of people came out of the woodwork. Old friends and family members. Mostly people who felt guilty for things they had done and wanted forgiveness to feel good about themselves before she died. Most of them would show up and then leave just as quick, but my mom had this sister who had completely disowned her when she married my dad because who would marry a truck driver, right? Like that’s the most scandalous thing.
“Anyhow, my aunt stuck around and I hated this lady. She would try to talk to me as if she had the right to tell me what to do, and she’d come into our house and rearrange things because she said it would make our life easier, but she didn’t know anything. She used to tell me all the time to be brave and to not cry in front of Mom.”
I pause as my throat burns with the memory of standing in the hallway of the hospital. Of how I hated the sanitized smell, how small I felt as doctors and nurses passed by and how I hated the thought of seeing my shrunken mother in a bed hooked to all sorts of machines.
But then Mom called my name, my heart leaped and as I began to run into the room, my aunt had grabbed my arm, squeezing my bicep so tightly that it left a bruise. Don’t you dare cry in front of her. She has enough to worry about. You’re old enough to be brave.
Yet that’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to throw myself onto the bed, I wanted to be cuddled in my mother’s arms and I wanted to cry until I couldn’t cry anymore.
Moisture in my eyes and I rub at them, hoping Sawyer doesn’t see.
“Being brave didn’t save her and neither did all the poison they pumped into her. She died in a hospital bed, too weak to even turn her head. All Mom ever talked about was wanting to see sunflowers again, but her treatments were so intense that she couldn’t leave the hospital.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “About your mom. I didn’t know.”
“Most people don’t. I’m barely an afterthought so why would they care about my mom?”
Sawyer is nice enough for guilt to flicker over his expression. “What type of cancer did she have?”
I nibble on my bottom lip and it’s tough to tell him the truth. “Brain cancer.”
There’s silence on his end and I hate it. “Of course there can be inherited genetic factors that causes people to have the same type of tumors and cancers, but Dad thinks it’s because we used to live near this industrial plant. A lot of people in our neighborhood got sick. Quite a few died of cancer. Lawyers visit Dad, but I don’t want to know what’s happening so he keeps the class action lawsuit to himself. But that’s why we moved here—to be away from the city.”
“Are you scared the same thing is going to happen to you?”
Daily. “Mom fought for every second of her life. She went through every course of treatment available. Even when the doctors told her that doing