Beauty and the Mustache Read Online Free PDF Page B

I know what a PhD is,”
Cletus mumbled.
    “ Fine, you know what a PhD
is,” Billy said to Cletus, but his stare was affixed to me. “What’s
wrong with you, Ash? Are you sick? Did you see Momma?”
    I looked from Billy to
Cletus to Jethro, and the events of the day— Get Well Soon balloons, the
compassionate nurse at the hospital, rocky road ice cream, speaking
with the social worker—crashed over me. I felt like I was being
sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The world was eating me and screaming
in my ears at the same time. I gasped, closed my eyes against the
onslaught, and pressed my hand to my forehead.
    “ Crap…”
    “ What is it?” Jethro’s
voice was closer. “What happened at the hospital?”
    I gathered a deep breath,
held it within my lungs. When I was sure I wouldn’t cry, I released
it and opened my eyes. They found Drew’s first. Inexplicably, maybe
because he wasn’t family and my dislike for him still lingered, I
discovered that the words didn’t strangle me as I spoke.
    “ I saw Momma,” I said,
“and I spoke to her doctor. She has cancer. It’s real
bad.”
    A stunned quiet fell over
the room like fluttering snowflakes blanketing a field. It was a
soft silence, reverent, and the air felt cold and hollow. I didn’t
see my brothers’ reactions because my attention was still fixed on
the stranger hovering above me.
    Drew’s hand on my wrist
gripped tighter, and his eyes flared with some emotion I didn’t
have enough energy to decipher.
    I ignored all this and
continued to address him as though he were the only person in the
room. “The doctor is sending her home tomorrow with hospice. He
says she’s got six weeks…or so.”
    “ Six weeks….?” Jethro’s
voice broke through my self-imposed trance, and my attention
flickered to him. He turned away and walked to the recliner at the
end of the couch. He sat down heavily, his elbows on his knees, his
head in his hands. “Six weeks.”
    I glanced at the other
five Winston boys. They appeared to be equally shocked and
dismayed, and my gaze snagged on my youngest brother, Roscoe. The
last time I’d seen him in person he was twelve. He was now
twenty.
    “ This doesn’t make any
sense,” he said, glancing around the room as if it would give him
answers. “How can she have cancer? She wasn’t even
sick.”
    I had no words to offer,
so I stared at the ceiling making a mental list of all the things I
needed to do before she arrived the next day.
    “ What can I do to help?”
Drew’s voice, now gentle and solicitous, pulled me out of my head
and back to the scene of quiet chaos in the living room.
    I shrugged and my vision blurred again with
tears. They leaked from the corners of my eyes.
    “ Pray,” I said, because it
was the only thing anyone could do.
    I recognized the
frustration etched in his features; it betrayed the helplessness he
so obviously felt. However, the last thing I expected him to do was
lean forward, hold my cheeks in his palms, and place a soft,
lingering kiss on my forehead while his unwieldy beard tickled my
nose.
    Therefore, when that was what Drew did, I
was so astonished that I stopped crying.
    He retreated, his hands
still cupping my face, and his thumbs wiping away my tears. Drew
threaded the fingers of one hand through the hair at my temple and
brushed it away from my shoulders. Then, bringing his palm back to
my cheek, he said softly, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    I stared at him bemused
and not so far removed by the insanity of grief and low blood sugar
to recognize that Drew was an odd possum. “Uh, okay.”
    Drew studied me, his gaze
intent and as serious as a thundercloud. I watched him and imagined
my expression mirrored that of a deer frozen in approaching
headlights. His mouth hooked upward, though his eyes remained
solemn.
    “ Ash is short for
Ashley….” I guessed he was speaking to himself, because it emerged
as though he were voicing a secret or a private joke.
    So…still odd.
    My hands