I bite my lip with an idea that’s Cytha probably planted in my brain. She’s the one who wants a visual. I slide my screen to camera and snap a picture of Finn. His hands lay at his side and his head is back against the couch. He’s still pretty handsome, despite the oxygen tubing and the laid up position, but it’s kind of a game changer when Finn has his eyes opened. I stare at my phone screen, at the oxygen tubing around Finn’s face. I can’t send this to Cytha. I can’t do that to him.
“Why so serious?” Finn’s voice catches me off guard and I juggle my phone, trying to catch it before it falls to the hard wooden floor—but mostly trying to catch it before the thing falls, screen upward, and exposes my photo.
I keep it off the floor and press the device to my chest, thankful the screen presses into me. I click it off and slide it into my pocket. “Hmm?”
A humorous half smile stretches across his face.
“Nothing. I mean, I was just reading emails and stuff.” There’s a seat between us on the couch and I slide one leg beneath me so that I face him. “What was that? Marley will—”
“No one’s telling Marley,” he says, but he’s too weak to make his words as stern as he’d like to. “She’ll only worry. She’ll end fire night, and I need fire night.”
“Okay…” I shake my head, irritation burning a hole in my gut again. “So, because you like to play with your friends, we aren’t going to tell your mom that you about died for some crazy reason?”
He sits up, his head in his hands, his fingers combing through his sandy waves. “She already knows the reason, Esther.” His voice is too melancholy for me to be annoyed with him.
My breath tremors when I exhale. “Oh.” That takes me off guard. But I press— “What’s the reason?”
He breathes out a sigh and meets my gaze, his eyes like the clearest, bluest, tropical spring. “Cardiomyopathy.”
“Cardi—what does that mean?”
“That means,” he deflates, his weariness taking the fight out of him, “my heart is broken.”
I’m anxious to get to work. I want to see Marley. I have questions that I think she’ll welcome and I’m afraid to ask Finn. If I don’t ask her today, my head will drive me crazy because after today I’m off for a couple days.
Cytha’s text rings through. She doesn’t beat around the bush.
I told you so.
I stuff my phone back into my pocket. I told her I went to the fire last night and I had a dreamless night’s sleep. In fact, I slept so late that Rodrick left for work before I got up and the only person I have to face is Summer—and the crew of course. But I’m hoping Brayden will keep her busy while I slip out.
“Esther,” Summer’s voice ends my hope and stops my hand already turning the door knob.
I turn and force a smile for her. “Hi.”
“You kind of kept to your room this morning.” She adjusts the baby from her left to her right. His eyes are open and he stares up at his mother. For some reason, the sight is like someone has tied a band around my heart.
I lick my lips. “I do that sometimes. I guess I’ve been alone a lot and now I kind of like it.”
She nods, a kind, peaceful expression on her face. “I’m sorry about last night. Angelo, well he—”
“It’s fine,” I cut her off, ready to leave, ready to escape this conversation.
“It’s not.” Her eyes crease downward, pitying.
I open the door. “He’s a kid. He didn’t mean anything by it. It’s fine.” My tone is clipped and sounds not fine in the least, but I can’t change it.
Her jaw tenses and she holds out the pink cooler bag.
I don’t know why, but I can’t take it today. I can’t take her packed lunch, in her pretty pink bag, with her motherly love. I just can’t. “Actually, I’m grabbing lunch today. But thanks.” And then I’m out the door.
“Well, you’re extra early.” Marley eyes her wristwatch the minute I walk into the store. She doesn’t normally mention my thirty minutes of punctuality. But I’m two hours early today.
“Yeah, well, before you leave for work, I was hoping we could talk.”
“You bet. What’s up.” She bites her pink lip and eyes me warily. “You can’t quit—you’re my dependable Taurus.”
I can’t help my titter and grin. “It’s not that.”
“Whew.” She runs a dramatic hand over her forehead. “Finn said you went to Dominic’s last night.”
“Yeah.” I swallow. “That’s kind of where my question is coming from.”
“Oh yeah?” She pushes up her round glasses with the back of her hand and struts toward the window. “Follow me. I’m thinking we need a new window display.”
I didn’t realize we already had a display—it’s just a bunch of books piled on the wide bench.
“Finn says you’re artistic. Will you help me?”
Finn said that? What else did Finn say? Did he tell her about last night? “Um, yeah. Of course.”
There’s no rhyme or reason to the books stacked up through the window. I’m not sure how she considered this a display. We start to remove everything that’s in front of the large pane. “So, last night,” I see Finn in my mind, his red face and his coughing fit, the way his breath came out in that awful haggard way. He asked me not to tell Marley what happened—so I won’t.
“Yes?” she says with my pause.
I hold a book to my chest. “Finn told me about his heart.”
“Finn told you about his cardiomyopathy?”
“Sort of.”
“Really?” She sets the books she’s just lifted from the bench right back where she got them and sits in the one spot we’ve opened up. “I can’t believe he told you. I mean his close friends know, but he doesn’t talk about it with anyone.”
“I’m sorry—” I say the words like a question. Maybe this is too private.
“No, no. Don’t be.” Her glasses slide to the tip of her nose and she pushes them up as her eyes meet mine. “I’m glad he told someone. He needs someone he can talk to.” She studies me until I feel like her eyes are peeling away layers of my skin. “I got so much more than a dependable worker when I hired you, Esther.”
“I don’t know about that. I mean, he mentioned it. I don’t really know much about it.”
She stands and picks up the few books she’d set down, moving them to the floor. We’re pretty much just moving the mess to a new spot. “When Finn was a toddler he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. We found it quick and it was snuffed out with only a few rounds of chemotherapy, which made us feel as if the stars had aligned just for us. It was truly a miracle. He got better and he started to grow just like any other kid. What we couldn’t see was that the chemo had damaged Finn’s heart. He developed this heart disease, cardiomyopathy.”
“He—he said his heart is broken.”
She squints and clears her throat before saying, “Basically.” Marley takes a tissue from her skirt pocket and dabs at her filling eyes and running nose. “There are different severities of cardiomyopathy. Finn is kind of in the middle. Some people are able to live long lives without the disease progressing too badly. That hasn’t been the case for Finn. He has the need for oxygen at night and at times during the day. If he exerts himself or gets hurt, his heart begins to sprint. He’s living normally, now. But the disease has already progressed.”