eighteen
Candace closed the door and sunk to the floor. Tears streamed down her face. What had she done? She had never meant to tell him like that. Just to explain. Outside her family and the doctors, there wasn’t a single man who knew. Of her roommates, only Mandy had full knowledge of the extent of the cancer and repercussions. It was too late to call Mandy. Joy had just started sleeping through the night. Zoe—she could call her, but it was an hour later in New York. Candace went to pull out her phone, but it wasn’t in her pocket.
She couldn’t face him again. No way. She would just have to get a new phone. First she needed to get off the floor.
One deep breath was not enough to give her the strength to move.
Neither were two.
There was a tap on the door above her head.
“Candace?”
Colin. She pushed up with her legs, sliding her back up the door, then turned and leaned her head on the door.
Tap. Tap. “Candace, is that you?”
She turned and leaned against the door. “Yes.”
“Will you open the door?”
“I can’t.” Her voice squeaked out.
“Candace, please?”
She could picture him leaning on the door the same way she was. A sob rose from her throat. “I, I—”
The light thump on the door could have been his forehead. “I have your phone and—” There was a long silence. “I’ll leave your things here. Just call me when you are ready.”
Candace tried to answer, but her voice wouldn’t work.
“Are you still there? Tap twice if you hear me.”
She raised her hand. Tap. Tap. Tap. The same three taps her mother had used when she was too weak to talk. One, two, three—I love you.
“Night, Candace.”
She waited until she heard the ping of the elevator. She expected to see a pile of things on the floor or inside a plastic computer-store bag, not a box taped closed with blue electrical tape. Sitting down on the couch, she opened the box. A note lay on top of the tissue paper. Candace set it aside and checked under the tissue. Her wig lay on top of her prosthetics, which had been nestled into opposite corners of the box inside two of his monogrammed handkerchiefs. More tears escaped as she realized he’d treated them with more care than when she tossed them on his table. Her phone was taped to the center of the box. Of course he wasn’t going to let anything happen to her electronics.
The note waited to be read. She unfolded it.
Dearest Candace-
I meant what I said. Call me when you are ready.
Love,
Colin
What had he said? Candace replayed the conversation in her head. Her hair—he thought she had been upset over that. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying to hear the words again.
I love you the way you are.
But that was before he knew she was only part of a woman.
Candace curled up in a ball on her couch.
She’d never be ready to tell him the rest.
For the gazillionth time, Colin asked Sabrina the time. He knew it had to be his imagination, but the AI sounded exasperated. He’d spent the last hour clearing out any glitches in the code, worried he had figured out how to make the AI self-aware. He hadn’t. The hour before that, Colin had surfed the statistics of breast-cancer survivors. Breast cancer in teen girls was rare. However, the genetic component would have been a factor. Colin ran some numbers. A teen girl had almost the same chance of getting breast cancer as Sean Cavanagh discovering he was a billionaire. No wonder she had assumed the doctor was talking about her in ten years.
While looking for blogs from survivors, he found a gallery of black-and-white art photos of women who’d had single or double mastectomies. He wouldn’t lie—during his lifetime he’d wondered what a female breast felt like. There was more than enough locker room talk that even he had heard some of it. But it wasn’t Candace’s silhouette that had drawn him to her. After looking at the photos of the survivors, he saw the scars as badges of courage and honor. She could never nurse their children, which, considering how red he turned every time he realized Mandy was feeding Joy, could be a good thing.
A couple of the medical websites indicated there was a chance the chemo had damaged her ovaries and any children would need to come via adoption. He was okay with that, too. Candace was the only woman he’d ever kissed, the only one he ever wanted to kiss. Her prosthetics, he’d learned that term also, did not need to stand in the way of a relationship.
His alarm went off, followed by Sabrina’s voice. “Wake up. It is Thursday. You have a meeting with your lawyer at nine thirty to discuss options for helping Peter get a house for his family and other wishes. Daniel is expecting you at noon for lunch with the CEO of a software company you are thinking of acquiring. There are four other deadlines or meetings on your agenda today.”
“Sabrina, is Candace still in her apartment?”
“I cannot answer. It is against my privacy protocols.”
Colin wanted to toss his ethics out the window. He could get into the building’s security system and find out for himself in a matter of minutes. But he had learned his lessons from hacking the Department of Defense. Just because one could didn’t mean one should.
He texted instead.
Good morning. I know we need to talk. Can I see you tonight?
He didn’t expect an answer right away.
But as the day went on and he still hadn’t heard from her, the silence grew more painful.
It was afternoon before Candace dragged herself into the shower. She’d woken up earlier only long enough to text Rick that she was taking a sick day.
Over the last ten years she had gotten good at ignoring the scars. Today she couldn’t. Her fingers traced them over and over as her tears mingled with the water from the shower. The agonizing choices she’d made a decade ago came rushing back now. It was possible she could have survived with a lumpectomy of the right breast, but the genetic component of her cancer and the belief that she only had ten years to live had prompted her to take the more radical route—the one her mother had joined her in, although for her mother it was already too late for the mastectomies to prevent further damage. Her cancer had spread to her lymph nodes, bones, and left lung before it was discovered. A discovery that had saved Candace’s life as Mom had insisted both her daughters be checked for cancer.
The second mastectomy had been voluntary. At the time it hadn’t seemed important to save one of them for future use. It hadn’t mattered with the guys she had kissed to fill her bucket list either. Now that she dared to start planning a future that wasn’t so finite, she found it mattered after all. She’d read enough books and seen enough movies to know that to most men, breasts were an essential part of relations. She’d never worried about it. She was never going to get married. Never wanted more than a few kisses and a week or two of fun.
The shower grew cold. Candace had questions. As she pulled on her robe and reached for her phone to call Mandy, her eye fell on Crystal’s number. Perhaps her sister would be a better choice for this talk.
“Hey, what are you doing, sis?”
“Laundry. It never ends.”
“Do you have time for a few questions?”
There was a pause before her sister answered. “Sure. Let me put on some earphones so I can keep folding this stuff.”
Candace waited for the click indicating the switch before continuing. “If you don’t want to answer anything, that is okay. My first question is, do you think a guy could ever love me?”
“Of course. What isn’t to love?”
“Double mastectomy.”
“Oh, that. You mean you have never found out?”
“Um, no. You know how Mom felt about premarital relations. I must have gotten that lecture a million times.”
“That was probably my fault.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a long silence. “I wasn’t exactly chaste in high school. Haven’t you ever done the math? Your nephew wasn’t a preemie.”
“I didn’t think about it at the time. I was just so jealous you were planning a future with a husband who loved you.”
“I was jealous of you getting to finish college and going to exotic places while I was stuck changing diapers and worried that Grant would leave me when he saw the stretch marks.”
Candace curled up in her favorite chair. “Did he still love you with stretch marks?”
“We had three miscarriages and another baby, so they didn’t stop him.
“You had miscarriages?”
“Yes, but that isn’t why you called. We can save that conversation. My answer is I think the right man will probably love you even more because of your scars. There is more to relations than just the physical. There are emotional and spiritual components. When you have the emotional/spiritual link, it is so much better. I think for a man who loved you with your scars, that emotional part would be even stronger. Are you saying there is someone?”
“There was, but I might have blown it.”
“Have you talked to him? Grant and I went to a marriage therapist. You would be surprised how much talking helps.”
“I don’t know if I am ready to talk.”
Candace could hear little voices in the background.
“The kids just got home from school. I need to run. Don’t wait too long.”
“Bye, sis.”
“Bye. I love you.”
“Love you too.” Candace disconnected the call.
She read the text Colin had sent this morning.
She wasn’t ready to talk. A yawn escaped. Having called in sick after a sleepless night, a nap seemed like an excellent idea. She slipped into bed and thought about all the moments she had missed with her sister. Next time she saw the reverend, she would have to thank him.
Hours later, she woke to the ringing of her phone. Mandy.
“Hey, friend. What is going on? Colin is worried, but he isn’t talking. Says you aren’t answering.”
Candace slid out of bed, still in her robe. Her stomach rumbled, protesting its lack of lunch and dinner. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Why don’t you try?”
Candace’s phone vibrated. Probably a text from Colin. She ignored it. “Last night things got, well, a bit—” Heavy, embarrassing, and out of hand? “Let’s just say I didn’t do a good job of telling Colin it was breast cancer.”
Her phone vibrated again. Then again. Candace looked at her phone. It was Zoe.
—911 call, please.
—NOW!
Mandy started to say something, but Candace cut her off. “Zoe is trying to reach me. She says it is an emergency.”
Candace hung up and called her cousin. “Zoe, what is wrong?”
“I was attacked, again.”
Once again, the universe reminded Candace that there were bigger problems than just her own. As she listened to the story, she wondered if Abbie could get ahold of the plane and arrange a visit to New York so she could help Zoe as well as give herself more time before she had to face Colin.