What is your favorite pastime?
Spending a day at the beach
Cooking gourmet meals
Shopping
Reviewing those articles I cut out of magazines and put into plastic sleeves for future reference
(Definitely not tanning. I’m a fake-bake girl myself.)
What do you consider your personal fashion statement?
Black. I only wear black
Those catchy little designer purses that cost an arm and a leg but are definitely worth it
I’m still using my 1999 fashion statement. The clothing hasn’t worn out yet.
I threw the paper down on my desk and snarled. So what if I haven’t had a new wardrobe for a while? I love the clothes I bought in ’99. What’s so bad about that? Still, for some reason the dumb thing was a little unsettling.
CHAPTER 4
October 16
“Whitney, Whit!” Kim’s voice was low and urgent. She looked into my office with eyes the size of saucers. “Can we have lunch?”
“Of course. Don’t we always?” Her color resembled the ream of copy paper on my desk—whiter than white. “What’s wrong?”
She glanced around before answering. “We’ll talk then.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Someplace private. Emilio’s, maybe. Or the steak house across the street.”
I knew immediately that something was seriously wrong. Kim never spends big money on lunch. She prefers to buy toys and clothing for Wesley with her disposable income. To suggest the dark, private booths of Emilio’s or the steak house, which has a very small lunch crowd and a very hefty price list, told me that whatever it was Kim had to say, it needed to be said in private.
We waited until one o’clock when the lunch crowd was ebbing. There were plenty of booths and Kim requested the most secluded. Initially, she’d babbled nonstop about Wesley’s latest venture. Not only has he discovered he’s a boy but he’s taken to checking every so often to make sure that his status hadn’t changed. It’s becoming embarrassing to Kim and Kurt. I told her it was only a phase, but thought to myself that there was no way I’d want to take that child out in public until he discovered something else to play with—like Tonka trucks or Matchbox cars.
She was decidedly not herself. When she talked, her voice bordered on the hysterical. Then she lapsed into deep dense silences that nothing I said would penetrate. I was beginning to feel a bit panicked myself by the time we’d ordered and we were alone in our little corner of Emilio’s.
“Okay, what’s up?”
“Something happened this morning.”
“You and Kurt?” I prepared myself to be shocked. Kim rarely complains about her husband other than that perhaps he’s too laid-back. To think of them fighting blew my mind. Kurt is as faithful to Kim as the day is long, so it couldn’t be lipstick on his collar. He’s also very meticulous, so I doubted she’d discovered that the trash hadn’t been taken out on collection day.
“No, he’d already gone to work when I found it.”
“Found what?”
“A lump in my breast.” Her voice was a strangled whisper.
I opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. Perhaps that was fortunate, as anything I might have said would have sounded trite or placating. A cold sweat washed over me and I stammered, “A doctor…have you…”
“I’m getting a mammogram after work. They squeezed me in.”
Squeezed. My irrepressible and unruly sense of humor jumped in the driver’s seat of my brain. How appropriate to be squeezed in for that particular test. Shock and denial do strange things to one’s mind.
“I’ll see the doctor in the morning. Someone Kurt knew years ago.”
“That’s quick,” I managed to say, searching for words that would comfort Kim even though I knew there were none. She’d have to see this through and take it one day at a time.
“He said he didn’t want me to have to wait and worry over the results.”
“I didn’t know doctors worked like that anymore.”
“He’s special. Kurt knew him in high school and says he’s always been thoughtful and caring. Besides, he said it would save me a lot of stress if everything is fine, and if it isn’t—” I saw her choke back her panic “—then we should be getting into action anyway.”
Kim looked at me bravely, and then, in slow motion, I saw the bravery dissolve into something more elemental. “Oh, Whitney, what about Wesley? He’s just a baby. I want to see him grow up.”
“Wait a minute. You’ve gone from finding a lump in your breast to making Wesley grow up without a mother, and completely leaped over the fact that it might be nothing or, if it is something, that it can be treated. Wouldn’t it be better not to assume the worst?”
She scrubbed at her eyes and took a breath. At that moment the waiter appeared with our sandwiches…er…sandwich. The plan was for me to eat half the sandwich. Kim was to have the other half and the fries. Being a stress eater, I had five fries in my mouth before I remembered the arrangement.
“You’re right, of course.” She dumped ketchup on a plate between us. “You keep me sane. That’s why you have to go with me for my appointment and my mammogram.”
Huh?
“I’ve already told Betty that I’d be gone and that it was important for you to be with me. My appointment is at ten. We’ll be back at work by noon.”
“We will?”
“Betty wanted to know what it was about, but I told her that I wasn’t free to discuss it yet. Paranoid as she is, I think she believes we’re going on some sort of covert mission for Harry. I don’t want to go into it until I know something. I’m hoping tomorrow to tell her I had a false alarm.”
“What about Kurt? Don’t you want him to go with you?”
“He has class—a big test that he can’t miss. Besides, the nurse had to help him twice in my room during labor. By the time Wesley was actually born, Kurt was sitting in a chair breathing into a paper bag. Having him with me wouldn’t be much of a comfort.”
A comfort. “Kim, we’ve got to pray.”
“I haven’t stopped since I found this thing. I was in the shower. I usually do my exam on the first of the month, but somehow it just slipped by me this time….”
I’d never seen her so upset. Kim is often my strength, the one who reminds me that everything works out, that no matter how bleak things might look, God is still in control. Now it’s my turn.
I took her hands in mine and felt her fingers trembling. We prayed silently, knowing God could hear us no matter what the volume.
As we escaped the dark walls of the restaurant, it was as though I’d stepped into an alternate universe. Granted, it had been dim inside Emilio’s, but it wasn’t the light that made me blink, it was the color. Everything seemed so much brighter than when we’d gone inside. A glossy golden retriever wearing a vivid blue collar and leash walked by carrying a bright red ball in his teeth. His master, a college-age man, did a little shuffling dance step to the music on his headphones. I could hear snippets of music as he passed. The sky was cerulean blue and a woman in a lime-green jacket and a black skirt almost bumped into me in the crosswalk. What was going on?
Then it hit me. Leaving Emilio’s had been like