“Well? I’m still asking the question.”
“If I loved someone, I would never, ever walk out on them while they were suffering. I wouldn’t even consider it. I wouldn’t even know how,” Everett stated heatedly. “Just because I’ve never been close to anyone who’s battled cancer doesn’t mean I’m incapable of compassion and loyalty.”
“You have been close to someone.”
Everett blinked. “What?” he asked, not sure he’d understood Seth.
“Joy.”
A whip-poor-will called in the distance. It was like a heavy, dark cloth was being draped over him slowly from head to toe. He blinked away the dark spots that appeared before his eyes.
“Joy has cancer?” he asked hollowly.
“She’s in remission. At least I hope she is.”
Everett sat heavily on the thick branch, making it creak loudly with their combined weight. It held, however, which was good. He suddenly wasn’t certain his legs would have.
“What does that mean, at least you hope she’s in remission?” he asked Seth hoarsely.
“She’s been doing well since her treatment, which ended last winter. Chances are, she’s still doing well. But with this fever and the swol
len glands, the doctors want her to have a biopsy, just to make sure everything is all right.”
“When will she have the biopsy done?” he asked tensely.
“Tuesday morning, at Northwestern Memorial in Chicago.”
Everett sprang up from the branch as a surge of adrenaline went through him.
“Why didn’t she tell me?”
Seth shook his head, and Everett paused in his pacing in the weeds.
“She didn’t tell anyone about her cancer. None of her friends. If she and I weren’t so close and she could have avoided it, she probably wouldn’t have told me. After her chemotherapy and radiation were finished, she made plans to move to Chicago. I couldn’t talk her out of it,” Seth said, sounding desolate.
Everett stared at the ground sightlessly. Seth was usually so controlled in how he expressed emotion. He typically gave the impression of being a very powerful man. Even though there had hardly been any inflection in his tone as he spoke just now, Everett sensed his profound desperation and helplessness when it came to Joy.
“Why?” Everett asked. “Why is she withdrawing so much?”
“At first, I thought it was just because she felt guilty for forcing me to watch her suffer. I assumed she felt wretched that I had to endure the whole thing with Alice, and then had to re-experience it over again, this time with her.”
“That makes sense,” Everett said, his mind a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions. He began pacing again. “Not that I’m agreeing with her logic, but I can understand her emotional need to protect you. What sort of cancer was she diagnosed with?”
“Lymphoma.”
Everett grimaced and came to a halt in the weeds. “Isn’t that the type of cancer her mom had?”
“They were both lymphomas, but Alice’s was Hodgkin’s. Joy’s type actually has a much better prognosis and treatment success than Alice’s did.”
His heart leapt. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
He wished Seth’s nod were a little more reassuring.
“When was she diagnosed?”
“Last summer. I remember it was while we were working on Maritime.”
Everett stared out at the sun-dappled lake. Pieces of memory barraged his consciousness like sharp fragments. Joy’s panic after their sexual experience in the studio, her large, tear-filled eyes looking up at him as he’d told her everything was going to be all right. No. No, it’s not, she’d said, her frantic tone slicing him to the quick. He’d be willing to bet she’d known about her diagnosis on that day. Maybe that’s why she’d behaved so uncharacteristically in regard to their sexual encounter. He should have recognized the depth of her desperation. He heard himself teasing her lightly—cluelessly—about all her pill bottles and how she must be a health nut, and then her solemn stare back at him in the mirror.