The Last Letter

Letter #2

Chaos,

I’m so glad you wrote back! First off, happy birthday, even though I know you’re getting this weeks later. Looking at the dates on your envelopes, it’s taking about four or five days for mail to reach me, which is crazy fast. I remember when it used to take six weeks.

Second, how about this? Let’s always write in pen. Never erase, just say whatever’s honest and comes to mind. It’s not like we have a lot on the line, or need to put up a front.

It’s okay that you’re not good with people. In my experience, there are very few people worth making the effort for. I try to give everything I have to those closest to me, and keep that circle small. I’d rather be great for a few people than be mediocre for a bunch.

So let me ask you a question that won’t get censored out—by the way, it’s creepy to think that people read our letters, but I get it.

What’s the scariest choice you’ve ever made? Why did you make it? Any regrets?

Most people would think that I would say it’s having the twins, or raising them, but I’ve never been so sure about anything in my life as I am about my kids. It’s not even Jeff—my ex-husband. I was too starry-eyed to be scared when he proposed, and I can’t regret everything that happened, because of my kids. Besides, regret doesn’t really get us anywhere, does it? There’s no point rehashing things that have happened when we need to move forward.

My scariest choice was actually made just last year. I mortgaged Solitude, which isn’t just a B&B, but a sprawling two-hundred-acre property. My grandma had kept it free and clear, and I wanted more than anything to keep that legacy, except we were run-down on every level. I couldn’t bring myself to sell off any more land, so I made the terrifying choice to mortgage the property and throw everything into improvements, hoping to launch us as a luxury retreat of sorts. I’ve got my fingers crossed that it will work. Between the capital I took out for improvements to the cabins and properties and the construction loans on the new cabins to start in the summer, I’m this crazy mix of hopeful and scared. Not going to lie, it’s kind of exhilarating. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Off to take on my next scary choice…volunteering with the judgy ladies on the PTA.

~ Ella

…

Wedging Maisie’s binder under my arm, I checked my phone for the room number just as the elevator dinged on the pediatric oncology floor.

It was almost eleven p.m.; those moments with Colt had cost me some time, but I’d had a pretty smooth drive.

“May I help you?” a nurse wearing a kind smile and Donald Duck scrubs asked at the desk. She looked to be about midforties and really alert for how late it was.

“I’m headed to room seven fourteen for Maisie MacKenzie,” I told her. One thing I’d learned in my decade serving in our unit was that if you acted like you belonged somewhere, most people believed you did.

“It’s past visiting hours. Are you family?”

“Yes, ma’am.” According to Colt, I was, so in a really convoluted way, I wasn’t lying.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh! You must be her daddy. We’ve all been waiting to see what you’d look like!”

Okay, that one I wasn’t going to lie about. It was one thing to throw the broad generalization out there, and another to claim the honor of being Maisie’s dad. As I opened my mouth to speak, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“You made it,” Ella said with a soft smile.

“I made it,” I echoed. “So did the binder.” I handed it over, and she hugged it to her chest in an all-too-familiar gesture that made my chest ache. She should have someone to hold her during times like this, not some inanimate object.

“I’m going to take him back,” Ella told the nurse.

“You go right on ahead.”

I walked down the hallway with Ella, taking in the bear murals. “They weren’t kidding about the bear floor label, huh?”

“Nope. It helps the kids remember,” she answered. “Want to meet Maisie? She’s still awake, despite my every effort otherwise.”

“Yes,” I answered without pause. “I would very much like that.” Understatement of the century. Next to the pictures of mountains Colt had drawn for me, Maisie’s pictures of animals were my favorites. But those belonged to Chaos. Just like with Ella and Colt, I was starting from scratch with Maisie.

Our steps were the only sounds as we walked down the long hallway.

“This wing is for inpatient,” Ella told me, filling the silence. “The other two are for outpatient and transplants.”

“Gotcha,” I said, my eyes scanning the details out of habit. “Look, you need to know that nurse thinks—”

“That you’re Maisie’s dad,” Ella finished. “I heard. Don’t worry, she’s not going to force adoption papers on you or anything. I left all the dad info blank because like hell were they going to call Jeff in case of emergency. He’s never so much as seen her.”

“I wish I could say that I don’t understand how someone can do that, but it happens all too often where I’m from.”

She paused just outside the room labeled with Maisie’s name. “And where is that?”

“I grew up in foster care. My mom dropped me at a bus station in New York when I was four years old. Syracuse to be exact. The last time I saw her was when she had her rights terminated in court a year later. I’ve seen some horrible parents in my life, but also some great ones.” I pointed to her. “And if your ex is so pathetic that he’s never seen his daughter, then he didn’t deserve her. Or you. Or Colt.”

There were a million questions swimming in those eyes of hers, but I was saved by Maisie.

“Mom?” The tiny voice called from inside the room.

Ella opened the door, and I followed her in.

The room was a good size, with a couch, a single bed, a padded rocking chair, and the giant hospital bed that held a small Maisie.

“Hey, sugar. Not sleeping yet?” Ella asked, depositing the binder on a table behind the door and moving to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Not…tired,” Maisie said, pausing in the middle for a giant yawn. She wiggled around her mom to peek at me. “Hello?”

Those crystal-blue Ella eyes took in every inch of me in cursory judgment. She was thin, but not too frail. Her head was perfectly shaped, and the lack of hair only made her eyes seem that much bigger.

“Hey, Maisie, I’m Beckett. I live in the cabin next to yours,” I told her as I came to the foot of her bed, using the softest tone I had.

“You have Havoc.” She tilted her head slightly, just like Ella.

“I do. But she’s not with me. I actually left her with Colt to keep him company while I came to see you. I hope that’s okay. It seemed like he could use a friend to talk to.”

“Dogs don’t talk.”

“Funny, that’s what your brother and I talked about, too. But sometimes you don’t need someone to talk back to you. Sometimes we just need a friend to listen, and she’s really good at that.”

Her eyes narrowed for a moment before gifting me with a brilliant smile. “I like you, Mr. Beckett. You let my best friend borrow yours.”

And just like that, I was a goner.

“I like you, too, Maisie,” I said softly, scared my voice would break if I raised it any further than that.

Maisie was everything I knew she’d be and more. She had the same sweet, determined soul her mom did, but brighter and undimmed by time. And at the same moment that I felt overwhelming gratitude that she’d accepted me, I was swamped with the irrational anger that she had to go through this.

“We’re going to watch Aladdin. Wanna watch, too?” she asked.

“We were not going to watch Aladdin. You were going to sleep,” Ella said with a stern nod.

“I’m nervous,” Maisie whispered to Ella.

If my heart wasn’t hurting already, it was screaming now. She was so little to have a surgery like this tomorrow. To have cancer. What kind of God did this to little kids?

“Me, too,” Ella admitted. “How about this. We’ll start the movie, and I’ll curl up with you? We’ll see if we can’t get you to sleep.”

“Deal.” Maisie nodded.

Ella cued up the movie, and I moved toward the door. “I’ll leave you girls to your evening.”

“No, you have to stay!” Maisie shouted, stopping me in my tracks.

I turned to see her eyes wide and panicked. Yeah, I wasn’t going to be the cause of that look on her face ever again.

“Ella?”

She looked from Maisie back to me. “Maisie, it’s really late, and I’m sure Mr. Gentry would rather have a nice big bed—”

“There’s a bed here.”

Ella sighed, shutting her eyes. I saw the battle she’d written about—the need to parent Maisie as if there wasn’t an overwhelming chance that she was dying warring with the knowledge that she most likely was.

But that pleading in Maisie’s eyes wasn’t an issue of being spoiled; there was a stark need there. I crossed to her bed and sat on the edge. “Can you give me a reason?” I whispered so Ella couldn’t hear us.

Maisie glanced back at Ella, and I looked over my shoulder to see her busying herself with inserting the DVD.

“You have to tell me, Maisie. Because I don’t want to weird out your mom, but if it’s a good reason, I’ll go to bat for you.”

She glanced up again and then at me. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

Her whisper ripped through me louder than an air raid siren. “Tomorrow?” I asked.

She nodded quickly. “If you leave, she’ll be alone.”

“Okay. Let’s see what I can do.”

Her little hand gripped the edge of my jacket. “Promise.”

There was something solemn in the way she was asking that reminded me of Mac, of the letter. It was almost as if she knew things she shouldn’t…couldn’t.

“Promise me you won’t leave her alone,” she repeated, her whisper soft.

I covered her small hand with my own. “I promise.”

She searched my eyes, passing judgment again. Then she nodded and lay back against the raised bed, relaxed.

I crossed the darkened room to Ella as she slipped off her shoes. “I’ll absolutely leave if you want me to, but she’s pretty adamant.”

“What’s her reasoning? I’ve never seen her demand something like that.”

“That’s between us. But trust me, it’s pretty sound. What do you want me to do?”

“There’s just the couch and that little bed.” Ella bit her lower lip, but it wasn’t intended to be a sexy gesture. Mac had the same tell when he was worried. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

“I’ve slept in far worse conditions, trust me. It’s not a problem. What do you want me to do, Ella?” I’d do whatever she wanted, but God, I hoped she wanted me, any part of me. Knowing how scared she was of this moment, of what was coming for Maisie tomorrow, and not being able to comfort her in the way she needed was killing me.

She released her lip with a sigh, her entire posture softening.

“Stay. I want you to stay.”

My chest constricted in a way that made taking a deep breath impossible. So I sucked in a shallow one and ditched my jacket on the back of the rocking chair. “Then I’ll stay.”

…

The procession in front of me was solemn, almost reverent. The nurses pushed Maisie, in her bed, down the hallway toward the thick blue line that marked where the surgical wing became doctors-and-patients-only.

Ella walked by her side, Maisie’s hand in her own, leaning over her daughter. Their steps were slow, like the nurses knew Ella needed every single second she had left. They probably do know. After all, this was just a normal day to them. Another surgery on another kid with another type of cancer. But to Ella, this was the day she feared and longed for with equal ferocity.

They paused just before the blue line, and I hung back, giving them the space she needed. With her hair pulled back, I could see the faint, forced smile on her face as she ran her fingers over Maisie’s scalp, where her hair would have been. Ella’s lips moved as she spoke to Maisie, the strain visible in the tense muscles of her face, the periodic flex of her neck.

She was holding it together, but the string was thin and fraying by the second. I’d watched her unravel since six a.m., when the first nurses came in to begin Maisie’s prep. Watched her bite her lip and nod her head as she signed the papers acknowledging the risk of removing a tumor this size in a girl this small. Watched her put on a brave face and smile to keep Maisie comfortable, joking about how Colt would be so jealous of her new scar.

Then I watched the FaceTime conversation between Maisie and Colt, and my heart broke for them. Those two weren’t just siblings, or friends. They were two halves of a whole, speaking in half sentences and interpreting one-word answers like they had their own language.

Though Ella was terrified, I knew it was Colt who had the most to lose when it came to Maisie, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

I pushed my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep from going to her. That need pulsing through me was selfish, because holding Ella would help me but not her. There was nothing I could do for her besides stand and witness what I knew she feared would be her last moments with her daughter.

Powerless.

I was so damn powerless. Just like I’d been when we’d finally found Ryan’s body, three days after the op had imploded. There was nothing I could do to bring back his heartbeat, to erase what had to have been the worst hours of his life, or miraculously heal the bullet wound that had entered at the base of his skull and exited…

Havoc. Sunset on the mountains. Ella’s smile. I mentally repeated my three as I let out a shaky breath, blocking out the thoughts. The memories. They didn’t belong here. I couldn’t help Ella now if I was trapped then with Ryan.

One of the nurses spoke to Ella, and my throat squeezed shut momentarily when Ella leaned forward to kiss Maisie’s forehead. Maisie’s hand appeared over the rails of the bed, handing over a worn pink teddy bear. Ella nodded and took the bear. They wheeled Maisie down the hallway and through a set of swinging double doors.

Ella stumbled backward until her back landed against the wall. I lurched forward, thinking she might hit the floor, but I should have known better. She held herself against the wall, the bear clutched to her chest like a lifeline as she raised her head toward the ceiling, taking gulping breaths.

She didn’t turn to me, or the nurses who walked past, just drew inward as if she knew her only source of solace was going to come from somewhere deep within herself. My composure deserted me as I realized that she didn’t look for comfort because she wasn’t used to getting any, that this scene would be identical if I wasn’t here.

But I was here.

Knowing it was an intrusion, and beyond caring, I walked forward until I stood in front of her. Her eyes were closed, her throat working as she battled for control. Everything in me ached to hold her, to carry as much of the burden as she’d let me.

“Ella.”

Her eyes fluttered open, shining with unshed tears.

“Come on, it’s going to be a long day. Let’s get you some food and some coffee.” If I couldn’t care for her heart, I could at least sustain her body.

“I…I don’t know if I can move.” Her head rolled slightly as she looked toward the doors. “I’ve fought every day for the last five months. I’ve taken her to treatments, argued with the insurance companies, fought with her over capfuls of water when the chemo made her so sick she dehydrated. Everything we’ve fought for has been for this moment, and now that it’s here, I don’t know what to do.”

I got a firm grip on my volatile emotions and reached for her face, only to stop myself and lightly grasp her shoulders.

“You’ve done everything you can. And what you’ve accomplished, how far you’ve brought her is astounding. You’ve done your job, Ella. Now you have to let the doctors do theirs.”

Her eyes found their way back to mine, and I felt her torture like it was a physical pain through my stomach, the ceaseless cut from a dull knife tearing me in two. “I don’t know how to give that control over to someone else. She’s my little girl, Beckett.”

“I know. But the hard part is already over. You signed the papers, no matter how difficult it was, and all we can do now is wait. Now, please. Let me feed you.”

She pushed off the wall, and I retreated a step, putting a respectable amount of distance between us. “You don’t have to stay. They said it’s going to be hours, and not just a few.”

“I know. Her tumor is on the left adrenal gland, and though it’s shrunk, there’s still some very real danger that she’ll lose that kidney. A longer surgery means they’re doing everything they can to save it, and that they’re being thorough to get every scrap of that tumor out. I was listening when they prepped you this morning.”

A sad half smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “You do that a lot. Listen. Pay attention.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No. Just surprising.”

“I don’t care how many hours it takes. I’m here. I’m not leaving you.”

An eternity passed as she made her choice, not just to get food but to believe me. To trust that I meant what I said. I knew the moment she’d decided, when her shoulders dipped, a tiny bit of the tension draining from her frame.

“Okay. Then we’re most definitely going to need some coffee.”

Relief was a sweet taste in my mouth, a gentle, full feeling in my heart. Unable to find the right words, I simply nodded.

…

“So the bear?” I asked two hours later as we sat in the waiting room, side by side on the couch, our feet propped up on the coffee table.

“Aah, this is Colt,” Ella explained, lovingly stroking the face of the fuzzy, well-loved bear.

“Colt is…a girl.”

“Maybe Colt just likes pink. You know, only real men can pull off wearing pink.” She shot me a sideways glance.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

After a light breakfast—her stomach was too queasy for more—we’d fallen into an easy rhythm of conversation. Effortless, even.

“The bears were a gift to the twins from my grandma. One pink, one blue, just like everything back then. But Colt fell in love with the pink one. Had to have it with him all the time, so the blue one became Maisie’s. When they were three, Ryan came in and took Colt camping overnight. Maisie was always more of an indoor girl, and she begged to stay home, so I let her. But Colt almost refused to go. Maisie knew it was because they couldn’t stand being separated. So she grabbed the blue bear, told him it was Maisie, and sent him on his way.”

“So that’s actually Colt’s bear?”

Ella nodded. “He sends it with her every time she’s hospitalized so they can be together, and he has the blue one at home.”

Yeah, that gnawing pain had moved to my heart.

“You have incredible children.”

Her smile was genuine, and I nearly lost my breath when she turned slightly, sharing it with me. “I’m blessed. I wasn’t sure how I would do it when Jeff walked out, but they were always so…they were everything. I mean, sure, they were exhausting, and loud, and messy, but they brought out the color in life. I can’t remember what the world looked like before I held them, but I know it wasn’t half this vibrant.”

“You’re a great mother.”

She made a motion to shrug off my compliment.

“No. You are,” I repeated, needing her to hear me, to understand my awe of her.

“I just want to be enough.” Her gaze darted to the clock, like it had every five minutes since Maisie had disappeared past those swinging doors.

“You are. You are enough.” She blinked at me, and I cursed my tongue. I was going to give myself away if I wasn’t careful.

“Thank you,” she whispered, but I knew from the way she looked away that she wasn’t sure.

“So what’s next? Monopoly? Life?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood and distract her.

She pointed to the wooden box at the opposite end of the table. “Scrabble. And you’d better be careful. I have no qualms about kicking your butt, even if you are nice enough to sit with me all day.”

I wasn’t nice. I was a lying, manipulative asshole who didn’t deserve to sit in the same room with her. But I couldn’t say that. So instead I grabbed the box and prepared to get schooled.

…

“So you grew up in foster homes?” Ella asked me as we made our sixty-fourth loop of the floor.

Maisie had been in surgery for six hours, and we’d had an update from the surgical team about fifteen minutes ago that all was going well and they were trying their hardest to save her kidney.

“I did.”

“How many?”

“I honestly can’t remember. I got moved a lot. Probably because I was a horrible kid. I fought everyone who tried to help, pushed every rule, and did my best to get kicked out of my placement, hoping that would somehow make my mom come back.”

I didn’t expect her to understand. Most people who grew up in normal houses with a quasi-normal family couldn’t get it.

“Ah, the sweet, illogical logic of a child,” Ella said.

Of course she got it. That was what drew me to her in the first place. Her simple acceptance of me through our letters. But from what I’d seen, she was like that—accepting.

“Pretty much.”

“Which was the best home?” she asked, again surprising me. Most people wanted to know the worst, like my life was fodder for gossip to feed their salacious need for the tragedy of others.

“Uh, my last one. I was with Stella for almost two years, starting around my fifteenth birthday. She was the only person I’d ever wanted to stay with.” Memories hit me, some painful, some sweet, but all glossed over with the kind of filter only time could give.

“Why didn’t you?” We reached the end of another hallway and turned around, walking back.

“She died.” Ella paused, and I had to turn around. “What?”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her hand squeezing my biceps. “To finally find someone just to lose them…”

My instinct was to rub my hands over my face, shake it off, and keep walking, but I wasn’t going to move a muscle with her hand on me, no matter how innocent the touch was. “Yeah. There are really no words for it.”

“Like someone picks up your life and shakes it like a snow globe,” Ella offered. “It seems to take forever for the pieces to settle, and then they’re never in the same place.”

“Exactly.”

She’d captured the feeling with the precision of someone who knew. How was it I’d never found anyone who understood what my life had been like, and yet this woman defined it without blinking an eye?

“Come on, we haven’t quite worn a path through the linoleum yet,” she said, and started our sixty-fifth lap.

I followed.

…

“This is taking too long. Why is it taking them so long? What’s going wrong?” Ella paced back and forth in the surgical waiting room.

“They just haven’t updated us in a little while. Maybe they’re finishing up.” I watched her from where I leaned against the windowsill. She’d been calm, collected even, until we reached the hour when they’d estimated the surgery would be done.

As soon as that hour passed, something flipped inside her.

“It’s been eleven hours!” she shouted, pausing with her hands on her head. She’d long ago pulled so many strands of her hair loose that it floated around her, as disheveled as she was.

“It has.”

“It was supposed to take ten!” Her eyes were wide and panicked, and I couldn’t blame her. Hell, she was only giving voice to the same thoughts in my head.

“Is everything okay? Mr. and Mrs. MacKenzie?” A nurse popped her head in. “Anything I can do for you?”

“I’m not—”

“Yes, you can find out exactly what’s going on with my daughter. She was supposed to be out of surgery over an hour ago, and there’s been no word. None. Is she okay?”

The woman’s face softened in sympathy. Ella wasn’t the first mom to panic in the waiting room, and she wasn’t going to be the last. “How about I go check for you? I’ll come right back with an update.”

“Please. Thank you.” Some of the wild left Ella’s eyes.

“Of course.” She gave Ella a reassuring smile and left in search of information.

“God, I’m going insane.” Ella’s voice was barely a whisper.

She shook her head as she fought off a lower-lip tremble. I pushed away from the sill and was to her in four long strides, not halting to think about who I was or who she knew me to be. I simply wrapped my arms around her and pulled her to my chest like I’d wanted to since the first moment I saw her.

“You wouldn’t be the mom you are if you weren’t going a little out of your mind,” I reassured her as she relaxed against me.

“I think I’ve blown right by little and straight to asylum-ville,” she mumbled into my chest before turning her head and resting it just under my collarbone.

Damn, she fit against me exactly like I knew she would—perfectly. In another life, this is how we would have faced every challenge together. But in that life, Maisie was healthy and Mac was alive. In this world…well, she wasn’t exactly hugging me back. Right. Because I had her arms pinned between us. Was she pushing me away? Was I that oblivious?

That realization hit me like a fire hose, and I loosened my arms immediately. What the hell had I been thinking? Just because she wanted me to stay with her didn’t mean she wanted me to touch her. I was her default, and lucky to be that, but I sure as hell wasn’t her choice or preference.

“Don’t let go,” she whispered. Her hands were still between us, but she wasn’t pushing me away, they were simply resting on my pecs. If anything, she leaned in. “I’d forgotten what this felt like.”

“Being hugged?” My voice was sandpaper-rough.

“Being held together.”

Never before had a single phrase brought me to my emotional knees.

“I’ve got you.” I tightened my hold, splaying one hand wide just beneath her shoulder blades and cupping the back of her head with the other. Using my body the best I could, I surrounded her, imagining I was some kind of wall—that I could keep away whatever heartache was coming for her. My chin rested on the top of her head, and second by second, I felt her melt and give.

Although I couldn’t tell her, I loved this woman. I would take on armies for her, kill for her, or die for her. There was no truth greater than that, and no other truth that I could give her. Because where she was honest and strong and kind, I was a liar who had already hurt her in the worst way possible. I had no right to hold her like this, but even worse—I wasn’t going to move a muscle.

“Mrs. MacKenzie?” The nurse came back in, accompanied by Maisie’s surgeon. “I just caught them as they were coming out of surgery.”

“Yes?” Ella turned in my arms, and I let her free, but she took my hand, squeezing so hard I had a momentary concern for the blood flow to my fingers.

The surgeon smiled, and I felt a rush of relief more powerful than any time I’d escaped battle unscathed.

“We got it all. It was touch and go there for a while with her left kidney, but we managed to save it. You’ve got quite a stubborn little girl on your hands. She’s in recovery right now, resting. As soon as she wakes up, we’ll bring you back to see her, but don’t expect her to stay awake for long, okay?”

“Thank you.” Ella’s voice broke, but those two words carried the kind of meaning that usually took hours to convey.

“You’re welcome.” The surgeon smiled again, exhaustion written on every line of her face, before leaving us alone in the waiting room.

“She’s okay.” Ella’s eyes closed.

“She’s okay.”

“She’s…she’s really okay,” she repeated. Then, as if someone peeled back whatever had been keeping her upright, she collapsed, her knees giving out under her. I caught her before she hit the ground and hauled her up against my side. “She’s okay. She’s okay.” Ella said the phrase over and over again until the words came on heaving cries, the sobs rough and raw.

I hooked one arm under her knees and one behind her back, picking her up as she buried her face in my neck, hot tears streaking down my skin to soak my shirt. Then I settled onto the couch, holding her across my lap as her gut-wrenching cries shook her small frame.

She cried in a way that reminded me of the valve being released on a pressure cooker—the result of too much confined for way too long. And even though the relief was still sweet from the successful surgery, I knew there was so much more ahead for her—for them. This was simply a pause in the fight that allowed her a precious second to catch her breath.

“I’ve got you. She’s okay,” I told her, smoothing my hand over her hair. “You’re both okay.” I spoke in the present tense because that was all I could promise her.

And for right now, with Havoc safe with Colt, and Maisie tumor-free, and Ella curled in my arms, it was enough.