CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST TO KNOW
Vince cocked his head toward the living room and sat down, taking a moment to examine the country décor all around him. Jenna followed suit, sitting across from him, the fear already breaking her down. Vince hadn’t cried in front of her since Kate’s funeral, but now he started in earnest. He lowered his chin to his chest as he sat forward, hoping he could hide some of himself from her.
“Remember when you asked me why I was losing so much weight?”
“Yes…”
“A while ago, I started having some abdominal cramping. I was throwing up, too, for no discernible reason. I went and saw my doctor and he ordered some scans and lab tests.”
“Vince, just spit it out.”
“I saw an oncologist today. I have stage four pancreatic cancer.” Vince didn’t hang on for a reaction from Jenna, instead deciding it was best to get it out all at once. Now he knew how the oncologist must have felt, at least to some extent. Vince had been the bearer of bad news many more times than he cared to count thanks to his job. But telling someone that a loved one had died seemed, right now, a much more pleasant alternative to telling someone that a loved one had a short life left to live and would be on a steady decline the entire time. He wished with all his heart—at this moment in time, anyway—that he had instead died in an accident on the way to Jenna’s. Just like Kate.
As much as another sudden tragedy might break Charlie, it had to be better than watching his father’s destruction over months and months. Preparing his loved ones for the end sounded crueler than leaving them unexpectedly.
“Vince…”
“The cancer’s spread to my lymph nodes and liver. The doctor said it’s impossible to remove all of it and get any better of an outcome than I would with chemo. He said it usually gets caught too late—apparently way too late, in my case. I’ll get a second opinion, but he told me I shouldn’t expect to hear anything different from anyone else.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” Jenna asked shakily, her voice sounding from right next to Vince. Sometime during his explanation, unbeknownst to him, she had moved to sit next to him.
“Four months without treatment, six to eight with treatment if I’m lucky.”
“You’re—” Jenna’s chest heaved, taking in one giant breath. She covered her mouth and looked at Vince, waiting for him to meet her eyes. He still stared down at the carpet. “You’re dying?”
Vince nodded so minutely that Jenna wouldn’t have been able to tell if she hadn’t been expecting him to.
“There’s—there’s nothing else they can do?”
“Just chemo and radiation to hold it off for a little while, buy me some time…” After a few silent moments, Vince suddenly snapped his head back and stood, walking toward the back of the house. He peeked through the blinds at Charlie, who was trying to pack a lopsided mess of snow for the first segment of his snowman’s body. “I’m probably going to need more of your help than usual,” he said calmly, letting go of the blinds with his finger, not able to look at Charlie.
“Are you staying at work?” she asked incredulously, approaching from behind.
“No, I’ll be resigning as soon as I can. There’s no way I could take time off for scheduled treatments. The chemo regimen is too intense. The cases at work come when they come. I want to be around as long as I can for Charlie’s sake.” Vince knew that his momentary wish to die sooner rather than later was selfishness disguised poorly as altruism or good parenting. “It wouldn’t make sense to keep working.”
“Good,” Jenna said through her already overwhelming congestion. “I can’t believe this is happening…”
“You’re still in my will to take Charlie. I take it you’d like to keep it that way?” Vince asked, not turning around to offer comfort, as he had not a sliver to give.
“Of course. Do we really need to talk about that kind of thing now, though? Tell me about how you’re feeling instead. Don’t get bogged down in more details. We can work those out later.” Jenna tried unsuccessfully to hold back the hiccups that preceded her quiet but draining sobbing. Even if the two of them weren’t very close, they still saw themselves as family. Vince supposed Jenna’s reaction was a toned-down preview of what was to come when he broke the news to others closer to him.
“I need to know that Charlie will be safe and eventually happy again once I’m gone. That’s my main concern,” Vince said.
“What about until then? Are you going to tell him? What are you going to tell him?”
“Come on, Jen, I’ve known for all of a half hour,” Vince snapped, turning sharply on his heel and heading to the half bathroom down the hall. He turned on the cold water and splashed his face. “I don’t know everything yet,” he murmured as he patted his face dry with a towel. He finally looked up at Jenna and saw the agony. He wondered how much of it he’d caused by treating her like her only care was for Charlie, like she wasn’t permitted to think about the dying man, too. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay.” She sniffled and walked up to him for a hug. “We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, and we don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to talk about. It’s okay.”
Vince absently hugged Jenna, slipping back into his Charlie-oriented mindset again and feeling guilty for it. For the last months of his life, he knew the adults would probably suffer more of a direct hit. A six-year-old couldn’t understand these types of things—the idea of what would happen half a year down the road, the permanence of death, how much it pained a father to leave his son behind.
“Have you let your brother know yet?” Jenna asked as she pulled away and crossed her arms. She gazed into the tiny home office just down the hall where she made a living as a medical and legal transcriptionist. Vince knew she didn’t get much done when Charlie was around. Hopefully that would change once this became Charlie’s permanent home.
“Not yet. You’re the first,” he said. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about Jenna being the first to know. His fondness for her was of course in part due to her caring and sometimes witty personality. But he sometimes felt as if her biggest purpose in his life was taking care of Charlie, and that if it weren’t for Charlie needing her, Vince and Jenna would have lost touch not long after Kate’s death. He couldn’t help but think these things, and he supposed that in the coming months, he’d be living through a lot of guilt, digging through a lot of old memories, dissecting his decisions and feelings. He suspected it was part of the dying process for anyone given some sort of warning. And it was one of the accompaniments to dying that he thought, as Jenna muttered that she was going to start a pot of coffee, was much more of a curse than a blessing.
What good things, really, did he have to say for himself? Charlie’s doing great, but it’s despite me, not because of me, Vince thought. That was the way he’d seen things ever since Kate had died and he’d decided to stick with his job. A job that involved long hours and frequent, last-minute traveling to every corner of the country.
His legacy was nothing he wanted to bother mulling over at the moment. The people he’d saved in his years in criminal justice didn’t penetrate his thoughts at all. He couldn’t take credit for that anyway, he figured. Every life saved had been a team effort. The people who were close to him were the ones who mattered. He’d already failed Charlie in so many ways, had failed Kate in the worst way, and was failing Jenna right this very moment.
Vince was still leaning slightly against the hallway wall when he heard the back door open. Luckily for him, he’d been able to stop the waterworks once he’d dried his face. He hoped he looked composed enough for Charlie to remain oblivious until it was time to have a conversation.
“Daddy, come help me now!” Charlie shouted before slamming the door shut. Vince felt the nippy winter air slither down the hall and burn his nostrils.
“I’m going outside,” he said to Jenna, poking his head into the kitchen.
“There’s coffee in here when
you want it.”
“Thanks.” Vince hadn’t even shed his jacket yet, so he stepped out back into the crunchy snow.
“The snow won’t stick,” Charlie grumbled, stomping on another failed attempt at a middle portion for his snowman. His chubby cheeks reddened further than they had from the cold. “There’s not enough.”
“There’s enough. It’s just probably not very wet.” Vince took his leather driving gloves out of his pockets and tugged them on, picking up a handful of snow. “We’ll make do, though.”
“What’s that mean?” Charlie asked, walking up to his father and watching him try to make something of the dry snow.
“To make do? It means you take what you have and do what you can with it. Sometimes things don’t go the way you want, but you can make it all work somehow.” Vince worked some more with the snow until he, like Charlie, discovered it was useless. “Okay, making do is easier said than done. How about we save the snowman for another day?”
“Okay. What are we gonna do now?”
“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” He crouched down and met his son at eye level.
Charlie look surprised to be asked. “I just wanna be with you, Daddy. I’m glad you got to leave work early.”
“So am I.” Vince grabbed on to Charlie before his eyes watered again. He collected himself quickly and led Charlie back inside.
“Can we go home?” Charlie asked.
These words came just as Jenna appeared down the hall, towel-drying a plate.
“You don’t want to stay here?” Vince asked, wanting to go home just as much as Charlie did, but not wanting to hurt Jenna any further. He was afraid to look at her.
“No, I wanna go home.”
“I think that’s a good idea. Your daddy took the afternoon off to be with you. You should spend some time together,” Jenna said to Charlie.
“See, Daddy? Auntie Jen says I’m right. Let’s go!” Charlie tracked the snow on his boots through the house and to the front door.
—
“Just a little bit longer?” Charlie pleaded when Vince jerked open one of Charlie’s sticky dresser drawers. The two of them had watched cartoons and indulged on pizza for the evening. Vince knew he’d probably be losing the pizza sooner or later. His stomach was already furious with him.
“Sorry, buddy. You have school in the morning. We have to go to bed now, just like every school night. But I tell you what,” Vince said, tossing the boy a set of mismatched pajamas.
“What?”
“You can sleep in my room tonight if you want.”
Charlie’s eyes grew large at the possibility. Such a treat was usually reserved for illness or persistent nightmares. “Can you tell me a story, too?” he asked.
“Sure. How about we read a book, though? You know I’m not very good at making up my own stories.”
Vince knew, regrettably, that he’d need to find a balance with Charlie, and soon. It wouldn’t do Charlie much good to shake up his routine, to spoil him with sleepovers and junk food.
“Guess How Much I Love You, huh?” Vince asked when Charlie hopped up onto the foot of the bed, toting a worn copy of one of his favorites. They had long ago moved on to more challenging fare, but went back to this book often.
“Yup.”
Vince smiled softly and held up the heavy brown covers so Charlie could climb underneath them. Vince hadn’t read the book a fraction of the times Jenna or Kate had read it, but he still knew it by heart. He let Charlie cuddle up close and opened the book anyway, supposing that the familiarity of the pictures, maybe even the smell of old paper, was what sent Charlie to sleep after a bedtime story.
Vince read the first page, cleared his throat and turned to the second, feeling Charlie settle further into him. His eyes squinted in a smile when Charlie burst out of his arms, holding his own open as wide as he could in response to a young fictional hare doing the very same thing to quantify his love for his dear father.
“I love you this much, Daddy,” Charlie said excitedly. It had been too long since they had read this book together, clearly, as Charlie’s very scripted performance threw Vince for a loop.
Vince put the book down on his knees and stretched out his own arms. “But I love you this much.” He chuckled softly when Charlie dove in.
“Okay, back to the book,” Charlie demanded.
Vince felt a sudden fatigue coming on, so he read through the middle of the book rather quickly and ended in a tone hushed by tiredness, not lack of feeling.
“Daddy, you read too fast.”
“I’m pretty tired, buddy. Maybe you can read it to me, instead.”
Charlie took to this idea. Father let son take the book and listened to his little boy’s chirping. Charlie gave Vince a toothy grin and closed the book. “Is it time to go to sleep now?”
“Indeed, it is.” Vince turned off the bedside lamp and scooted down under the covers.
“Goodnight, Daddy,” Charlie said.
“Goodnight. I love you. Very, very much.” Vince lay on his side and put a protective arm over his son, giving his belly a squeeze.
“How much?”
The tears were returning, and Vince knew he had only a few good moments left in him for the night.
Hoping that the coming months would see him become a little more resilient than he was now, Vince placed a kiss on Charlie’s temple. “More than anything.”