Currant Creek Valley(72)
Caroline didn’t answer, only tangled her fingers in the fringe of the cashmere pashmina Katherine Thorne had recently brought her back from one of her frequent travels, this one to New Delhi.
“You just sit there and I’m going to heat you up some of this delicious soup. It’s mushroom and rice, your favorite.”
“You don’t have to...do that. It sounds good but...I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.”
“I’ll warm it up anyway and you can try a spoonful or two.”
Maybe once Caroline had a taste, she would rediscover her appetite and want more. At this rate, she was going to waste away before the cancer took her.
Alex made a mental note to talk to the hospice nurse who had been coming in for the past few weeks about some recipes she thought might tempt Caroline.
While the soup heated, she spent a moment cursing the vagaries of life out in Caroline’s beautiful garden, now wild and overgrown. One moment a person could be hale and hardy, out-gardening the rest of the town on her worst day, the next she became a shadow of herself while her life slipped away ounce by ounce.
She cut some flowers she thought might make Caroline smile—spiky lavender that smelled divine; a burst of elegant yellow irises; plump, showy pink peonies and some humble, early-blooming daisies.
She wasn’t much of a floral arranger but she found a pretty jar in one of Caroline’s cupboards and did a passable job, then dished the warm soup in her fanciest bowl and set it on a tray along with some gourmet crackers she had brought along in hopes of tempting that capricious appetite.
Caroline was dozing in her comfortable recliner by the front window but she blinked away when Alex came back.
“Oh, thank you, my dear. And...thank you for the earrings. They’re all so beautiful, I couldn’t decide. I ended up doing...eeny meeny miny moe.”
“Good choice.”
Caroline wore the pair she had made out of translucent pink heart-shaped crystals. They reminded Alex of the delicate, draping bleeding hearts that were among the first flowers to bloom in that splendid garden.
She sat with her and coaxed her to swallow a spoonful and then another. All told, Caroline probably ate about a half cup of soup and two of the crackers, which was more than Alex had hoped.
“Thank you. That was so delicious.”
“You’re welcome, darling. There is plenty more in the refrigerator. You can share some with Helen when she comes again,” she said, referring to the hospice nurse.
“I’ll do that.”
She left the flowers in the living room where Caroline could enjoy them but carried the tray back to the kitchen, where she loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and then spent a moment washing down the cabinets and countertops, dusty from nonuse.
“I guess that’s all,” Alex said. “Is there anything else I can get you before I go?”
“I wish...you didn’t have to go, my dear. I love...your company.”
She studied her friend for a moment, frail and ill and living alone here in the house, and thought of her date with a man she had met once and would likely never see again. She could barely remember his name. Brent something. Or was it Trent?
What was she doing, wasting precious moments of a life that would be gone entirely too soon?
“Will you excuse me for a moment?” she said, and walked back into the kitchen, reaching for her cell phone.
She was glad she had backed out of the date, she thought a few moments later as she hung up. If a guy could get so pissy about a little disappointment, he wasn’t worth even a minute of her time.
“There,” she said to Caroline when she returned to the living room. “Looks like my evening just freed up.”
“What about your date?”
“I would much rather spend my night with you,” she said honestly. “You know, Claire was looking for something to do tonight, too. Why don’t I call her and we can have a girls’ night, just the three of us? I can have her pick up a movie and pop some of my gourmet popcorn.”
“Not...a chick flick,” Caroline insisted. “Action-adventure. Something that has...hot guys...with muscles.”
Alex laughed and kissed Caroline on the top of her gray hair. “You got it. Hot guys with muscles coming up,” she said, feeling better about life than she had in a week.
* * *
THE EVENING WAS A BLAST, even if Caroline fell asleep during the second half of the movie, just when the action was ramping up to full throttle.
She and Claire enjoyed it anyway and then helped Caroline with her medications and into bed. Claire was endlessly patient, a much better person than Alex could ever be.
She didn’t complain when Caroline sent her out to the kitchen on the third errand, this one to find the reading glasses she had left out there.