Chương 2
At the door, Lena heard the minister addressing the guests.
“Please remain seated.”
The sentence echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling.
The sacristy smelled of furniture polish, candle wax, and the coffee someone had left in a paper cup near a stack of hymnals. Priya shut the door behind them and turned the old brass lock.
Only then did Lena’s knees fail.
Ethan lowered her into a wooden chair. He crouched in front of her, still wearing the expression from the aisle, controlled anger held so tightly that the muscles near his temples had begun to jump.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Lena looked at the folded wig in her lap.
Priya crossed to the small sink. “Water?”
Lena shook her head.
“You need water.”
“I need everyone outside to forget the last sixty seconds.”
Priya filled a plastic cup anyway.
Ethan reached toward Lena’s hand, stopped, then placed his palm on his own knee. “Tell me what you need.”
She gave a short laugh that hurt her throat. “That question has become very popular.”
“Lena.”
“I don’t know.”
From beyond the sacristy door came a low murmur, hundreds of people attempting restraint at the same time. A pew creaked. Somewhere near the organ, a microphone gave a soft burst of static.
Lena touched the bent clip. She had bought the wig in a small shop in Brookline from a woman named Fern who wore purple glasses and refused to call any of her products wigs.
“Hair systems,” Fern had said.
Lena had laughed then, because she was sitting in front of three mirrors with a nylon cap over her newly shaved head and laughing was the only thing keeping her from leaving.
Fern had trimmed the dark-brown hair to Lena’s shoulders, matching it to photographs taken before treatment. She had shown Lena how to secure the front edge and told her not to sleep in it. She had charged fourteen hundred dollars, most of which insurance did not cover. Before Lena left, Fern had placed both hands lightly on Lena’s shoulders and said, “You’re still going to recognize yourself. Maybe not every day. But enough days.”
Lena had worn it to work, to dinner, to Ethan’s family Christmas party, and now to the cathedral where she was supposed to become his wife.
Priya offered the water.
Lena drank because refusing required energy.
A knock came at the door. Three soft taps, then one harder.
“Ethan?” said Daniel Mercer from the hallway. Ethan’s older brother always sounded as though he were standing at the head of a conference table, even when asking someone to pass the salt. “It’s me.”
Ethan remained crouched.
“Go away,” he said.
“There are logistical issues.”
Priya looked toward the door. “Of course there are.”
“People are posting,” Daniel said through the wood. “Someone from the Herald is apparently in the back. Not working, supposedly, but—”
“Daniel,” Ethan said.
“I’m not defending her.”
“Then stop managing this.”
A pause followed.
“I’m trying to keep it from getting worse.”
Lena stared at Ethan.
He heard the change in her breathing and turned back.
“What?” he asked.
She pressed the cup between both hands. “How did your mother know?”
Ethan’s face altered by almost nothing. His eyes moved once toward Priya, then back.
Lena saw it.
“You knew she knew.”
“No.”
“You knew something.”
“I knew she suspected.”
“How?”
Another knock came at the door. This one was lighter.
“Lena?” the minister called. “It’s Reverend Bell. May I come in?”
Priya answered before anyone else could. “Not yet.”
Reverend Bell murmured that he understood, though his voice suggested he did not.
Lena leaned forward. The wig slid in her lap. Ethan caught it before it fell and held it by the lining, careful not to touch the hair.
“How did she suspect?” Lena asked.
Ethan looked older than he had at breakfast.
“She heard part of a phone call months ago.”
“What phone call?”
“With Dr. Baines’s office.”
“You told me no one heard that.”
“I thought no one had.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“I know.”
Priya moved away from the sink and leaned against the counter. She folded her arms.
Ethan exhaled through his nose. “My mother asked me in March if you were sick. I told her it was private and that if you wanted her to know, you would tell her.”
“And then?”
“She let it go.”
Lena looked down at the black coat. “No, she didn’t.”
“No.”
“What did she do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ethan.”
“I don’t know exactly.”
The word exactly stayed in the room.
Lena felt the first clean edge of anger cut through the humiliation. It steadied her more effectively than the chair.
“What do you know approximately?”
He stood, not to dominate her but because crouching had become unbearable. He turned away once, ran a hand over his short dark hair, then faced her again.
“She asked Daniel whether the wedding should be postponed. She asked our family doctor what kinds of conditions cause sudden weight loss. He refused to discuss you. She asked the wedding planner why you changed the dress fitting schedule.”
Priya’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s not suspicion. That’s an investigation.”
“I told her to stop.”
“When?” Lena asked.
“April.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“You were starting the second cycle. You were barely sleeping.”
“That was my decision to make.”
“I didn’t want her taking over your treatment.”
“She took over my wedding instead.”
He closed his eyes for half a second.
Outside, the guests murmured again. A door opened somewhere in the cathedral. Cold air moved under the sacristy door, carrying the faint scent of roses.
Lena looked at Priya. “How bad is it?”
Priya took out her phone. She had silenced it, but the screen showed so many notifications that they stacked into a solid block.
“Bad in the way the internet is bad,” she said. “Fast and stupid.”
“Show me.”
“No.”
May you like
“Priya.”
“No. You don’t need to watch yourself being humiliated from twelve angles while strangers debate whether cancer patients owe people disclosure.”
