Hannah interrupted. “Lemonade. It’s not that simple.”
“I know that. That’s why I had no intention of saying lemonade. I like to think I’m better than clichés. I was going to say limoncello. Sweet, but intoxicating. The way I see it, Adelaide created for herself a limoncello life.”
Hannah sniffed.
Boone added, “She was strong, Hannah. Just like you are.”
He could tell in that instant that he’d said the wrong thing. Her spine snapped straight. Her mouth set in a grim line.
“Strength is exhausting,” she said. “I might be ready to live again, but I’m done with being strong. I intend to embrace my inner wuss and emote whenever the hell I want to emote and fold like an origami figure if the spirit moves me. From here on out, I will live life in all my wussified glory.”
“Whoa,” Boone said. “Where did that come from?”
For a long moment, she didn’t respond, and a momentous tension hovered in the air. Boone wasn’t at all sure he wanted to hear the answer to his question, but he knew she needed to tell him. This was the journal kismet at work.
Finally, he pressed a kiss against her hair and surrendered to the inevitable by softly encouraging, “Tell me.”
She exhaled a shuddering sigh. “Yes, I think I need to do that. I think it’s time. But let’s walk. I can’t do this standing still.”
She bent and picked a trio of Indian paintbrush wildflowers before continuing along the path. They walked half a minute more before she plucked an orange petal from one of the flowers and tossed it. “Adelaide’s story struck a nerve because I too had a sick child I was unable to save. Only, my house fire was my husband. Andrew was brilliant, a chemical engineer. He loved his work. He loved our children, and he loved me.”
Boone told himself he wanted to hear this. Nevertheless, jealousy stirred in his blood, which only made him feel stupid. Andrew was dead. Boone was here, walking beside Hannah. Loving Hannah.
“Andrew was a good man.” She plucked another petal off of the flower. “We had a good marriage and a happy, comfortable life. We were thrilled to find out we were expecting. I closed my practice when Sophia came along. I loved being a stay-at-home mom. Two years later, we got pregnant with Zoe, and life was even better.”
Practice? What practice? What sort of work had she been doing?
“When we went in for the anatomy scan at twenty weeks, we didn’t anticipate any problems. Oh, you always worry, but we already had one healthy child.” She denuded the Indian paintbrush of its remaining petals and tossed the stem away. “They saw a blockage in Zoe’s intestines, which led to further testing and eventually a diagnosis. Zoe was born with cystic fibrosis.”
Boone winced. He was familiar with the genetic disease, having assisted in local fundraising efforts for the CF Foundation in Fort Worth. Though cystic fibrosis remained a serious, life-threatening disease, recent medical advancements had taken the word fatal out of the diagnosis. Progress in ongoing research offered real hope that a cure would come in the not-too-distant future.
Nevertheless, learning that your child would carry that burden had to have been a blow. “That must have been scary.”
“It was terrifying.” Hannah twirled a second wildflower stem between her thumb and index finger. “We couldn’t do anything but power on. We were careful with Zoe. Followed the guidelines our doctors gave us to a T. For the first year, things went fairly smoothly. Still, every little hiccup in her health put Andrew, especially, on edge. Being an engineer, he approached everything with logic and reasoning. He wanted to find a ‘fix.’ But you can’t do that with this disease. Medicine is headed there, but it isn’t there yet. Zoe was eighteen months old the first time she was hospitalized. That was the first time her father fell to pieces. He didn’t deal.”
“So you had to,” Boone said.
She shrugged. “Having to be the strong one all the time gets tiresome.”
“I imagine so.”
They walked on for another full minute before Hannah resumed her tale. “Zoe was a tiny little thing. Getting her to eat was always a battle. She was stubborn. Oh, the girl was hardheaded. I always thought that was a good thing, though, because she needed to be a fighter. She was going to face many challenges. We tried to give her as normal a life as was possible, but certain things weren’t safe for her to do. She didn’t understand. She was still too young.”
Boone ached to take Hannah into his arms. She had a fragile air about her now, a brittle note to her voice. He wanted to touch her, hold her, rock her in his arms, and murmur words of comfort against her ear. But because the story was not yet completed, he settled for resting his hand at the small of her back.
Hannah briefly leaned her head against his shoulder before saying, “Sophia, on the other hand, was the most biddable girl. Sweet as sugar and had a heart as big as the sun. She was a little mother who sang lullabies to her baby dolls every night while rocking them to sleep. She’d tuck them into their bed with a kiss. When Zoe had coughing fits, Sophia would go sit beside her and pat her foot.”
“What a sweetheart,” Boone said.
“She was. When she wasn’t comforting her sister, she was comforting her dad. The year Zoe turned four was tough. As careful as we were, we made three trips to the hospital in the first six months. The third time, Andrew quit coming along to the ER. He didn’t even visit once she was admitted. He just couldn’t do it. Seeing her lying in a hospital bed hooked up to machines was more than he could manage.”
Prick, Boone thought.
Hannah started tugging petals from the third flower. “He, um, pulled away from us. From me. He took on a new research project and all but lived in his lab. Not that he disappeared from the girls. He didn’t. He was still a good daddy who read bedtime stories and played hide-and-go-seek with the girls in the backyard. But every time Zoe had a setback, he fell apart. It was up to me to put him back together each time. But that was just a Band-Aid, and he was hemorrhaging.”
Boone didn’t think he’d ever felt as much animosity toward a dead person in his life. Andrew Dupree had left Hannah to do all the dirty work by herself.
“Shortly before Zoe’s fifth birthday, we had a particularly scary incident. She had RSV, which is a serious viral respiratory infection. For two days, it was touch and go. I seriously thought we might lose her. But like I said, she was a fighter. She pulled through, and I brought her home. Andrew was there, waiting with ice cream.”
Isn’t that special.
“It’s the days and weeks that followed that haunt me still today. I knew something was wrong with Andrew. I thought he was having an affair. I thought he’d needed someone to lean on, and I hadn’t been there for him, so he found someone else.”
Yep. Definitely a prick.
“I didn’t call him on it. I didn’t have the energy. I had my hands full trying to help Zoe. She was weak as a kitten, and she desperately needed to put some weight back on. Also, Sophia was extra needy during that time. I think she sensed things weren’t right between her dad and me.”
Boone was pissed and trying not to show it. Who was there for you to lean on, Hannah? Damn Andrew Dupree.
“I let it ride. I was exhausted, and I didn’t have the energy to confront what I thought was wrong in my marriage.” Hannah dropped the wildflower remnant and clasped her hands. Her knuckles went white. “Then I caught the flu. It knocked me flat. I checked into a hotel to quarantine myself from the girls, and Andrew stayed home with them.”