Chapter 5: The Same Kind of Sick
I sat down on the edge of the bathtub.
I don't remember deciding to sit.
My legs just stopped working the way they were supposed to.
"How long have you known?" I said.
"Fourteen months."
"Fourteen months." I repeated it because I needed to hear it again.
"And you didn't—"
"I didn't know how to come back after being gone so long," he said.
"That's not an excuse.
It's just what happened.
I kept thinking I needed more time, and then the diagnosis came, and suddenly there wasn't more time."
"What is it?"
"Pancreatic." A pause.
"Stage three, when they found it.
It's stage four now."
I pressed my free hand against my mouth.
The same gesture I'd made in the hospital when Sophie's doctor had spoken.
The same instinct — to hold something in, or to hold something out.
"Does my father know?" I asked.
"Yes.
I told him when I called him back to arrange the trip.
I made him promise not to tell you.
I wanted to tell you myself."
"You had eight months."
"I know."
"You could have called me eight months ago."
"I could have," he said.
"I was afraid you'd say no.
And if you said no, that would have been it.
I couldn't risk it."
I stood up.
I needed to be standing.
"So instead you arranged a trip behind my back, got my father to lie to me, sent a box to a hotel, and called yourself from a note." My voice was shaking.
"That's what you chose."
"Yes." He didn't defend it.
"That's what I chose.
Because I didn't know another way in."
"There are other ways in, Daniel.
You knock on the door.
You call.
You show up."
"I know."
"She's your daughter."
"I know, Anna."
"She is running out of time and you spent fourteen months being afraid of a phone call."
He didn't answer that.
There was nothing to answer.
I walked to the bathroom door and leaned my forehead against it.
On the other side I could hear Sophie moving around the room, the soft sound of the television coming on low.
"Are you near here?" I asked.
A pause.
"I'm in the same town."
I closed my eyes.
"Of course you are."
"I booked a room down the road.
I wasn't going to come unless you called.
I meant that."
"But you're here."
"I'm here," he said.
"In case you called."
I opened the bathroom door.
Sophie looked up from the bed.
She had the sealed envelope in her lap again.
She hadn't opened it.
She was just holding it, the way she held things she wasn't sure about — carefully, with both hands.
She looked at my face.
"Mama," she said quietly.
"Is everything okay?"
I walked over and sat beside her on the bed.
I put my arm around her.
She leaned into me the way she always did, easy and automatic, her head against my shoulder.
"I need to ask you something," I said.
"And I need you to answer honestly."
"Okay."
"If your father wanted to meet you — if he was here, close by, and he wanted to see you — would you want that?"
Sophie was quiet for a moment.
"Is he nice?" she asked.
"I think so.
I think he's trying to be."
She thought about it seriously, the way she thought about most things.
Then she looked down at the envelope in her hands.
"He wrote me a letter," she said.
"People who write letters are usually nice."
I didn't trust my voice.
I pressed my lips to the top of her head.
"Okay," I said, into her hair.
"Okay."
I picked up the phone again.
May you like
"Come to the hotel," I said.
"Room fourteen."
