blood like they did me and Gray the other day?”
“Yes.”
Gemma looks at her mother. “Did it hurt?”
“No, Gemma. It didn’t hurt.”
Gemma frowns, looking down at the spot where the nurse drew her blood. Her finger rubs against the area. “It hurt me.”
“I know, baby.” Molly runs her fingers through Gemma’s hair. “I’m sorry you had to do that.”
“What did the doctor say?” Gray asks, still looking at me.
I take a moment to answer, looking for the best way to tell them in a way they’ll understand.
“He said that Momma is sick.”
“What kind of sick?” he asks.
Gemma looks at Molly, her eyes roaming over her face in concentration. “Momma doesn’t look sick,” she says after a moment.
“The kind of illness she has is making the insides of her sick.”
“Well, we can make her soup in bed, and she’ll get better like you did that one time, right?”
A couple of years ago, I came down with a stomach bug that had me in bed for two days. I’d give anything for this to be something similar.
“What Momma has won’t get better with soup, Gemma,” I tell her gently.
Gray, whose expression is becoming more grim by the minute, asks, “What kind of illness does Mom have? What’s going to happen to her? Is she gonna die?”
“Gray—” Molly starts but stops when it comes out a sob.
He doesn’t look at his mother but keeps looking at me, his eyes imploring. Gemma, hearing the word die, starts crying. Letting go of my hand, Molly pulls her into her lap.
I grip Gray’s shoulder. “What Mom has is a disease that’s in her brain. It makes parts of her body not work right. Those parts will stop working eventually.”
“Is Mom going to die?” he asks again.
My heart fucking shatters into a million pieces when the first tear slides down his cheek. The last thing I want to do is give him hope when there is none, but fuck if this isn’t hard. Gray’s only thirteen years old. How in the hell do I tell a thirteen-year-old his mother is going to die? And it could be less than two years when it happens.
Molly and I discussed only telling the kids she was sick and leaving out the part where she’ll die from her illness. We struggled with what we felt was the right decision. Is there even a right decision? No matter what choice we made, the kids would be hurt. It’s either tell them the truth and have them hurt when they heard the news. Or only tell them she’s sick and leave out the death part. The latter will give them false hope, thinking their mother will get better.
In the end, we felt it was better to prepare them, so it wasn’t sprung on them all of a sudden.
I tighten my hand around Gray’s shoulder. “Yes,” I answer hoarsely.
His face crumbles, and I yank him forward. His face plants against my chest, and it only takes seconds for the material to be soaked with his tears. I glance up and meet Molly’s eyes, her own cheeks wet as she consoles our daughter.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I cry along with my family.
Exhaustion has my movements sluggish as I trudge toward our bedroom. Today has been one of the most emotionally draining days I’ve ever had to face, and I know there’s going to be many more like this one.
It took an hour for Molly and me to calm the kids down enough to explain a bit more about what we’ll all be facing over the next two years. Since we don’t know how much time Molly has left, we felt it better to not give the kids a timeline. We just told them their Mom would eventually go to heaven because of this disease.
Molly held our kids tightly, each of her arms enfolding them so close to her body, she looked like she’d never let them go. The kids did the same with her.
I ordered a pizza for dinner because neither of us felt up to cooking. We sat in the living room, the kids huddled up against Molly’s side, with me on the other side of Gemma, and we ate as we watched a movie. We picked a comedy we knew the kids would like, but none of us laughed during the funny parts.
After the kids showered, Molly and I spent time in each of the kid’s room. Gemma wanted to sleep with Gray, needing her big brother close to her side, and we allowed