They toasted the gallery—it had been far and away their most successful year ever—and settled into easy conversation for another hour. Toward the end, Luanne offered Maggie a card.
“There’s a gift inside,” Luanne said. “Open it after I’m gone.”
“I haven’t had a chance to get yours yet.”
“That’s fine,” Luanne said. “Seeing you back to your old self these past few months has been more than enough gift for me. Just make sure you open it well before Christmas, though.”
After Maggie assured her that she would, Luanne stepped toward the platter and grabbed a couple of strawberries. A few feet away, Trinity was speaking to Mark. Because he visited the gallery even less frequently than Maggie did, she heard Trinity asking the same kinds of personal questions that she had over the last few months.
“I didn’t know you played hockey,” Trinity offered. “I’m a huge Islanders fan, even if they haven’t won the Stanley Cup in what seems like forever.”
“It’s a great sport. I played every year until I got to Northwestern.”
“Don’t they have a team?”
“I wasn’t good enough to play at the collegiate level,” Mark admitted. “Not that it seemed to matter to my parents. I don’t think either of them ever missed a game.”
“Will they come out to see you for Christmas?”
“No,” Mark said. “My dad set up a tour of the Holy Land with a couple dozen members of our church for the holidays. Nazareth, Bethlehem, the whole works.”
“And you didn’t want to go?”
“It’s their dream, not mine. Besides, I have to be here.”
Maggie saw Trinity glance in her direction before he turned his attention back to Mark. He leaned in, whispering something, and though Maggie couldn’t hear him, she knew exactly what Trinity had said, because he’d expressed his own concerns to her a few minutes earlier.
“Make sure you keep an eye on Maggie while Luanne and I are gone. We’re both a little worried about her.”
In response, Mark simply nodded.
*
Trinity was more prescient than he probably realized, but then again, both Trinity and Luanne had known that Maggie had another appointment with Dr. Brodigan scheduled on December 10. And sure enough, at that appointment, Dr. Brodigan had urged Maggie to focus on her quality of life.
Now it was December 18. More than a week had passed since that awful day and Maggie still felt almost numb. Nor had she told anyone about her prognosis. Her parents had always believed that if they prayed hard enough, God would somehow heal her, and telling them the truth would take more energy than she could summon. Same thing in a different way with her sister; long story short, she didn’t have the energy. Mark had texted a couple of times to check in on her, but saying anything about her situation via text struck her as absurd and she hadn’t been ready to face anyone just yet. As for Luanne or even Trinity, she supposed she could call them, but what would be the point? Luanne deserved to enjoy the time she was spending with her own family without worrying about Maggie, and Trinity had his own life as well. Besides, there was nothing that either of them could really do.
Instead, dazed by her new reality, she’d spent much of the last eight days either in her apartment or on short, slow walks through her neighborhood. Sometimes she simply stared out the window, absently fondling the small pendant on the necklace she always wore; other times, she found herself people-watching. When she’d first moved to New York, she had been enthralled by the ceaseless activity around her, by seeing people rushing down into the subway or peering up into office towers at midnight with the knowledge that people were still at their desks. Following the hectic movements of pedestrians below her window brought back memories of her early adulthood in the city and the younger, healthier woman she once had been. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since then; it also felt as though the years had passed in the blink of an eye, and her inability to grasp that contradiction made her more self-reflective than usual. Time, she thought, would always be elusive.
She hadn’t expected the miraculous—deep down, she’d always known a cure was out of the question—but wouldn’t it have been great to learn that the chemotherapy had slowed the cancer a little and bought her an extra year or two? Or that some experimental treatment had become available? Would that have been too much to ask? To have been given one last intermission before the final act began?
That was the thing about battling cancer. The waiting. So much of the last few years had been about waiting. Waiting for the appointment with the doctor, waiting for treatment, waiting to feel better after the treatment, waiting to see whether the treatment had worked, waiting until she was well enough to try something new. Until her diagnosis, she’d viewed waiting for anything as an irritation, but waiting had slowly but surely become the defining reality of her life.