“Yes.” My voice had dropped back to a whisper again. “They were up on the trails in the Appalachian Mountains, doing a training exercise. One of the hummers went off the road, and he was hit on the head by the tree it knocked down. Fluke accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
I shrugged. So many people said that during his funeral. I was never really sure what it was supposed to mean. The people who said it weren’t responsible for the accident. Lots of them didn’t even know Dad. They only knew Mom, or they were distant relatives or someone that I had never met before.
“Your mom?” Mayra whispered.
“Osteosarcoma.” I felt a shudder run through me, and my skin went cold.
“Cancer, right?”
“Yes,” I whispered. I gripped my legs with my fingers and tried to stop the shaking. I couldn’t think straight—I couldn’t even count. I tried to breathe deeply, but everything was coming out fast, and I was starting to get dizzy.
Mayra’s hand was still on my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say any more.”
“It was a month after Dad died,” I said quickly. It was the only way I was going to get through it. Now that I’d started the tale, I had to get it all out. “She went in for something routine, and they said they saw a shadow on an x-ray. They thought she might have a slipped disc or something in her back. It was giving her a little pain, but it wasn’t a disc—it was bone cancer. It had already spread. She asked them how long she would have if they did nothing—no treatment. My grandfather had cancer, too, and the treatments were worse than the sickness, Mom thought.”
“What did they tell her?”
“If she did nothing, she would have eight weeks.”
“Eight weeks?” Mayra gasped. I nodded.
“She started treatment right away—I wasn’t even eighteen then. She thought if she did radiation and chemo and all that, she would at least live to see me graduate. She died six weeks later, twelve days after my eighteenth birthday. The cancer was in her blood, too.”
I closed my eyes and tried to breathe normally again. My limbs felt icy and lethargic, and I wondered if I overdid it with the heavy bag. I did that sometimes. I would lose track of how long I had been down there. It wasn’t just the physical feeling in my muscles though. My head felt numb and worn out, too.
“Matthew?”
I wondered how long I had been sitting there without saying anything or how long she’d been trying to get my attention.
“Yes?”
Mayra turned sideways and got up on her knees on the couch next to me. She started reaching toward me and leaning in at the same time.
“I just want to try something,” she said. “Would that be all right?”
“Okay,” I said. I wasn’t so sure that it was, especially not when she reached out and ran her fingers through the hair on one side of my head. My hands started to shake a little, but then she ran her other fingers over the other side of my head, and it was okay again.
“I’m going to give you a hug,” she said quietly as she leaned in more.
“Okay,” I whispered back.
Mayra’s hands moved down to my shoulders, and she was very, very close to me. I was suddenly quite aware of the fact that I was still not wearing a shirt or shoes or anything. I swallowed hard.
“Don’t worry,” Mayra murmured. She wrapped her arms around me and pulled my head to her shoulder. “You aren’t alone.”
As soon as my head touched her shoulder, my entire body gave out. I nearly fell against her as she held me tightly, and the burning sensation behind my eyes gave way to tears. I slowly wrapped my arms around her waist, inhaled her scent, and began to sob.
Letting go was an unexpected win.
Chapter 4—Ask Me No Questions
Though there was still plenty of natural light coming through the windows and lighting the room, I was groggy. I was also sore everywhere and keenly aware that I was lying in Mayra Trevino’s arms. My body ached and my eyes burned. I was pretty sure I had bruised a couple of knuckles, but I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so good.
At some point, Mayra and I had lain down on the couch and fallen asleep. I wasn’t even exactly sure when or how long I had been crying earlier, but we were still lying together. Even before I opened my eyes, I could feel her arm around my shoulders and the other around my head, holding me against the spot on top of her arm and next to her neck. I had one arm beneath her body, around her shoulders, and the other was resting just underneath the tank-top she wore with my fingers splayed across the skin of her lower back.