Her sigh was defeated enough to give Adam a twinge. His mom stood and straightened her dress. “You go ahead and tell him what he needs to know, Matthew. Though you’ll have to excuse me. I don’t need to hear this again.” She walked out of the room with the dignity of a queen, which only made Adam feel even more like an asshole.
He turned to Dr. Jenkins. “I’m sorry for barging in, but she won’t give me a straight answer.”
“Yes, I’m well acquainted with Amelia’s stubbornness.” He gave Adam a look over the top of his glasses. “It’s a family trait, if I remember correctly.” Dr. Jenkins sat back and rubbed a hand over his face. “I won’t mince words with you, Adam. It’s bad. It took her a long time to admit that what she was feeling wasn’t just age, and by that time the cancer had been at work for God alone knows how long.”
Adam had to force the words out. “How bad?”
“She’s got stage-four lung cancer.” Dr. Jenkins’s entire being came across as sympathetic. “She’s refused chemotherapy, and I don’t know that I’d recommend it considering her age and overall health. Unfortunately, the cure for cancer is sometimes worse than the cancer itself, and I believe that would be the case with your mother.”
He heard the words, but he couldn’t process them. He’d known it was bad. Of course he’d known it was bad. But bad and fatal were two different things. He swallowed, the motion doing nothing to help his dry throat. “If she’d come in earlier, would it have made a difference?”
“There’s no way to tell.”
Which wasn’t a no. His chest was so tight, he couldn’t draw a breath. My fault. If I’d been home, I would have known something was wrong. I would have made her come to the doctor. It would have made a difference.
“It’s not your fault.”
Dr. Jenkins had always seen too much of Adam. As a teenager, he hadn’t wanted the man’s sympathy. As an adult, he didn’t deserve it. He pushed to his feet, weaving a little. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Adam—”
“I’ll see you around, Doc.” He sidestepped the older man and walked out of the room. His mama wasn’t there waiting, but he didn’t expect her to be. She was pissed he’d barged in, probably pissed that he’d shone the hard light of day onto her situation and forced her to face it. His mama had always been great at self-denial. She denied that his dad leaving had hurt her, just went on without a hitch in her step. But when he was seventeen he’d caught her holding a faded photograph and crying like her heart was breaking. This wasn’t any different.
Except heartbreak wouldn’t kill her.
Cancer would.
He hit the door to the outside and started walking, bypassing his truck. He wasn’t in a good place to be getting behind the wheel right now, and walking might help him get his head on straight—doubtful, but anything was better than standing still right now. He didn’t have a destination in mind, but he wasn’t particularly surprised to find himself standing in the doorway to Cups and Kittens. Jules was busy with a few other customers, so he took a seat in the corner—the same one Aubry always seemed to be camped out in. Almost immediately, one cat jumped up onto the table in front of him, and a second made itself at home in his lap. Adam stared down at the long-haired orange cat and gave it a tentative pet. When he was rewarded with a purr loud enough to be a jet engine, he did it again. The monstrous feeling inside him didn’t uncoil, but he managed to draw his first full breath since hearing the news.
His thoughts tumbled over themselves as he tried to come up with a solution—any solution—to this impossible situation. This wasn’t something he could just power his way through until the world rearranged itself to suit him. This was his mother’s health. Even if she was willing to do the treatment, Dr. Jenkins hadn’t seemed optimistic that it would be worth the cost.
Which meant there was little they could do.
“Adam?”
He didn’t look up. If he did, she’d see the pain he couldn’t manage to mask on his face, and then she’d ask him if he was okay, and he’d lose it. “I’ve got to go.”
He carefully set the orange cat on the table and walked away.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jules waited all of a heartbeat before she followed Adam out onto the street. He wasn’t exactly a sharer, but she’d have to be blind not to see the pain written over every line of his body. “Adam, wait!”