The One That I Want Read Online Free PDF Page B

complete.
    Darcy, though, never forgot. Never let time get the better of her. She marked my mom’s milestones and dates like they were her own, boomeranging back to Westlake seemingly at random, though it was never actually at random, because it was always for an anniversary of Mom’s death or her diagnosis or her wedding date or, like today, her birthday, and then fleeing as soon as the town started to infest her psyche, as it inevitably would.
    The crickets, who must not mind the heat, have taken up residence on the lawn, playing their night music that serves as our only background noise. The cemetery is deserted: everyone is still at the carnival or at the minor league game at the stadium in Tarryville or settling in for a night of
Deal or No Deal
. I wish my mother the happiest of birthdays and run my hand lovingly over the smooth stone of her resting place, and wish, as I always do when I actually take the time to visit, that somehow things had been different, that someone had told us way back when that herintestinal cramps and her bloating and her general malaise hadn’t merely been what she figured as simply a weak stomach. That someone had had the foresight, a map of the future, to intuit that no, it wasn’t a genetically lousy digestive tract. That, in fact, it was ovarian cancer, and that by the time she was diagnosed, there was really no time left at all. Four months, two of which were spent mostly sleeping, borderline unconscious.
Why didn’t someone have that map?
I think.
Why couldn’t someone have seen it coming?
    I consider it briefly, as my fingers run themselves over the etchings of her headstone, MARGARET EVERETT , in and out of the
M
, and then the
A
, and then the
R
, how different all of our lives might have been if someone had known better, if someone could have seen the future.
    But then I come back into myself and remember how much I love my life, how much I love my husband, how elated I am at my own shot to be a mother, and how grateful I am that we all, mostly, came through it as well as could be hoped. My father is sober. Luanne has coasted as if it never happened. Darcy, well, maybe not Darcy.
    “Dad obviously didn’t come today,” Darcy says as we head toward the parking lot. “The only flowers were Lulu’s.”
    “He’s in Mexico,” I answer, before realizing my mistake.
    “He went to Mexico during Mom’s birthday? God, he’s an asshole.”
    “Darce, to be fair, it was a long time ago.”
Shit, shut up, Tilly!
    She stops abruptly, just before the parking lot, and turns toward me, that look—
Ugh, do not give me that look, baby sister
—of righteous indignation, of over-the-top roiled anger that explodes from her like a speeding tornado.
    “You
do not
get to imply that this shouldn’t be important!” She wiggles a finger toward me, her words echoing in the emptied lot. “This is
Mom!
This is her
birthday
, for God’s sake! Dad shouldbe here. We should
all
fucking be here. Together. As a family. Not in Mexico lounging on the beach like an eff-ing whale!”
    “Darcy, I was only trying to say that Dad’s moved on. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love her or remember her! It just means that we all have our lives to live.”
    “Mom doesn’t!” she cries, a needling way to shame me into conceding to her.
    “Oh, come on,” I say, instantly angry. “Like I don’t know that! Like I really don’t know that she’s gone! For God’s sake, Darcy, if anyone knows that, it’s me!”
    “Oh, here we go,” she says, disdain dripping from her edges. “Oh, I forgot. You won the prize on martyrdom.”
    She brushes past me across the lot, flipping her cell to her ear, then remembers it’s dead. But because she is Darcy, because she will not relinquish even a moment of weakness, she just shoves the phone in her pocket and keeps walking, without even a glance behind.
    “Darcy, come on,” I shout to her fading figure. “You’re not going to walk back to Dante’s! It’s at