Catch a Falling Star (17 page)

“I can’t do this again, Bree,” she said, and she sounded hysterical even to herself.

“I know,” Brianna said. “I wish — ”

“Five years,” Natalie said. “I was halfway there.”

“I know,” Brianna said. “It’s not like I haven’t been counting, too. You want me to call Matthias?”

Natalie had the damned awful gown on now. She wanted to shred it to pieces with her fingernails. She slumped against the bed. “No,” she said. “I’m not ready for Matthias. He expects me to be brave and beautiful. He’s not going to find me so brave and beautiful when all my hair falls out and I’m cursing everyone in sight.”

“Day at a time, Natalie,” Brianna said and she could just go to hell. “You’ve still got all your hair.”

“I want you to call Joe,” Natalie said, ignoring her.

Brianna looked a little surprised but she said, “His number’s in your phone?”

Natalie nodded. “I kinda thought it’d be nice if he never had to know. But I’m going to need his help to get through school.”

“You’re going to be doing induction therapy,” Brianna said. “And then consolidation therapy. I don’t think you’re going back to class this semester.”

Don’t say that!
Natalie wanted to scream. She wanted it back, every annoying part of that stupid normal life, she wanted it back
right now
.

“There are going to be bills, Bree,” she said. “Christ. How are we going to pay the bills if I don’t finish college and get a job?”

“You worry about getting well, Nat,” Brianna said. She sat down on the bed and took Natalie’s hands in hers. “You need to listen to me, Nat. You can’t spend your energy on worrying about money, okay? You have got to get well. You do that and I’ll deal with the money, right? Same as always.”

Natalie leaned into her, like the way Jasmine leaned into Natalie. “I’m so scared,” she whispered.

“I don’t blame you,” Brianna said, stroking her hair.

“I really thought if I just wanted it bad enough … ”

“We all do that, Nat. Magical thinking.”

“You don’t do it. You never do it.”

Brianna was silent. Then she said, “The cost was always too high,” she said. “To want what was out of my reach? Someone would have to pay. I couldn’t take the risk.”

“You mean me,” Natalie said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“I used up all of your dreams,” Natalie said. “I am so sorry, Brianna.”

• • •

What Joe wanted to know was why she hadn’t told him in the first place that she’d been so sick as a kid. They’d talked about everything on earth, including their favorite bands and their most embarrassing moments, you’d think she might have mentioned it.

“She wanted to be normal with you, Joe,” Brianna said, and that made him feel like crap, and he said, “Can I come see her?”

“Sure,” Brianna said. “Bring her a teddy bear.”

“A what?”

“She doesn’t like being alone at night.”

“I would stay there all night if they’d let me,” Joe said fiercely, and Brianna said, “They won’t, so bring the teddy bear.”

• • •

“She’s not ready to see you, Matthias,” Brianna said and Matthias felt his stomach turn over.

“Why?” he said, gripping the receiver tight. What had he done, or not done? She was his girlfriend —

“It’s really hard, and she has to handle it her own way, okay? Send her some flowers, and call her. And I’ll talk to her.”

Matthias asked for the room number and phone number of Natalie’s hospital room in order to follow directions.

“The induction phase lasts about a month,” Brianna said, someone who had been through it all before and hadn’t found it getting any easier. “It’s intense, and we just hope like hell it works. Then consolidation lasts a couple months. Then maintenance lasts a couple of years. No one’s talking about a bone marrow transplant at this point, but they may. So you will have plenty of time to hold her hand when she’s ready, okay?”

“She’s an adult with acute lymphoblastic leukemia,” Matthias said tensely. “So, no, I may not have plenty of time to hold her hand.”

“Brianna, I know you have responsibilities, but your work has suffered so significantly over these last few weeks that I have no choice but to let you go.”

The first shock of the statement made Brianna freeze. Then she felt her face flush as emotion surged through her: embarrassment, anger, fear, she wasn’t sure what, maybe all of them. She gripped the arms of the chair she was sitting in to ground herself.

Brianna had known that Mrs. Curtin was frustrated with the amount of time she needed to take off, but she’d hoped that her boss would be a little more patient under the circumstances. Mrs. Curtin had always been a damned cold-blooded dragon, though, so once the initial impact was over, Brianna realized she’d been expecting it for a while. It was just — the timing couldn’t be more awful.

She didn’t really have anything to say, and anyway her mouth wasn’t working right, so she just made a jerky nod and Mrs. Curtin opened the folder in front of her and placed Brianna’s last paycheck in front of her. “That includes payment through today,” Mrs. Curtin said, glancing at the clock on her desk. “Even though it’s only ten
A.M.
” Like she was doing Brianna a big damned favor.

Brianna took the check with fingers that felt fat and clumsy. Mrs. Curtin asked her to sign something but she just shook her head and got to her feet, her movements stiff and mechanical. She went to her cubicle and picked up her purse, and looked around to see if there was anything she wanted to take home with her. There was nothing but a photo of her and Natalie at the county fair a couple of years ago, and she put that in her bag.

Then she collected her coat and walked over to the reception desk where Heidi was trying to pretend she didn’t know what had just happened.

“Mr. G’s on line one,” she said, like she didn’t know quite what to do. That was so not Brianna’s problem anymore. She nodded and kept going out the door.

• • •

“I’m sorry?” Matthias said, shifting his attention from the brief he was supposed to be working on to the phone in his hand. Heidi’s voice had dropped to a whisper, and he couldn’t have heard correctly.

“I said Ms. Daniels has been let go,” Heidi said, sounding agonized.

“Let me talk to Mrs. Curtin,” Matthias said crisply, and a moment later Mrs. Curtin was on the phone, her cultured tones warm.

“Good morning, Mr. Gustafson,” she said. “How may I help you? You should have received the tax paperwork from our accountant — ”

“I have, thank you,” Matthias said. “Am I to understand that you just fired Brianna Daniels?”

There was a moment’s pause as apparently this was not what she’d been expecting to hear from him.

“You do know her sister is undergoing a grueling chemotherapy regime to combat the recurrence of her leukemia? It seems to me that a temporary period of compassion and understanding might be in order.”

Mrs. Curtin found her voice, sounding less warm now. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to discuss human resources issues.”

“Ah. You
have
fired her. I’m surprised you’d treat someone who has worked for you for so long and so hard in such a cavalier fashion. You do understand that it makes me question your priorities and your judgment in decision-making.”

“Mr. Gustafson!” she said, her anger getting the better of her, but a moment later she had herself back under control. “As I said, I cannot discuss human resources problems but please be assured that I stringently followed the law in this — as in all! — such situations.”

“I’m sure you did, Mrs. Curtin,” Matthias said. “I’m sure you did.”

• • •

Brianna didn’t remember driving home; she must have been entirely numb. She finally came back to the present when she opened the front door and Dakota came bounding across the living room to greet her.

She rubbed Dakota’s head, then patted Jasmine when she moseyed up more slowly. Brianna dropped her bag and keys on the table and sat down, still feeling stunned and not quite knowing what to do about it.

Her mind kept spinning in hamster wheels. What did she do now? What could she do now? She needed to get another job but Mrs. Curtin was never going to give her a good reference. What was she going to do? She needed to get another job, but the idea of trying to figure out resumes and job listings and interviews while taking care of Natalie seemed overwhelming. She didn’t even know where she’d start. She didn’t even know —

Someone knocked on the door. Brianna jerked, startled. She couldn’t imagine who would be coming here at this time of day. Jasmine barked at the door, and Brianna quieted her as she glanced out the peephole.

Matthias. She remembered that he’d been on the phone when she’d walked out of the office, so apparently he’d heard the news. She opened the door.

“Guess you heard,” she said, stepping back to let him in. She kinda wanted to have some alone time to do whatever the hell she was going to do when the shock wore off — burst into noisy sobs, throw things, write nasty emails to Mrs. Curtin that she wouldn’t send. But here he was so she guessed she would just have to control herself.

“I did,” he said. He looked mad, or so she deduced from the tightness of his jaw and the thinness of his lips. He wasn’t a person who got mad very often — she’d never seen it before — so she wasn’t sure.

“Okay. So you’re here because?”

He stared at her. “Because I’m your friend?”

She let out a breath. “For a minute I thought you were going to be mad at me.”

“You? Why would I be mad at you?”

“This is the worst possible time for me to get fired. We need the money — ”

“It’s the worst possible time for Mrs. Curtin to fire you,” Matthias said. “I’m mad at her, not you.” He reached down to scratch between Dakota’s ears, making her tongue loll out of her mouth in ecstasy. “I talked to her and expressed my disapproval.”

Brianna wasn’t sure what to do with that. “Thanks for being on my side.” She went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

“I’d like to do something more significant, but I wanted to talk to you first.”

She turned away from the coffee maker. “I don’t — what do you mean?”

“I mean, I’d like to talk to the chair of the board of directors, or withdraw my support for the museum, or something significant that would make her pay attention. But I didn’t want to do it till I talked to you.”

She was touched, not just that he wanted to intervene, but because he wanted to make sure intervening was okay with her. “That’s really sweet,” she said. “But … I mean, in a way she’s right, I have been taking a lot of time off and my mind isn’t on my work as much as it needs to be.”

“You’re not a robot. She can’t expect you to act like one. She should have the decency to be a little more understanding for a few weeks.”

“She’s the kind of person who can go through a crisis without batting an eye, so she doesn’t see why I can’t either.”

“Maybe I can help her to understand,” Matthias said grimly.

That made Brianna smile for the first time all day. “I appreciate it.” The coffee was done perking, so she poured cups and handed one to Matthias, then sat with him at the table. He got up to add sugar from the bowl on the counter.

“I forgot your insatiable sweet tooth,” she said. “Look, I appreciate your wanting to intervene, but even if she were to, let’s say, come to regret her decision, you know she’d be an even worse dragon than she already is, and she’d apply a thousand terms and conditions that I couldn’t possibly meet, like no more time off for the rest of the year when I need to be flexible for the next few months at least.”

Matthias nodded. “You know what it’s like to work for her better than I do. What are you going to do?”

“I’ve been treating Once in a Lifetime like a part-time gig for months. I’m going to give it more attention. Maybe it’s stupid to think that I can make a go of it as a full-time occupation, but I’d be in charge of my own hours and stuff, and a lot of the work can be done anywhere I can talk on a cell phone or use my laptop.”

“So what can I do?” he said.

“You can tell all your friends how fabulous I am to work with.”

• • •

A gentle knock came at the door, and Natalie sighed. It would almost certainly be Matthias because Joe always gave a sharp rap and called out, “Hey!” and Brianna always just walked in.

“Come in,” she said, and turned off the television. She told Brianna that Matthias would expect her to be brave and beautiful, and she couldn’t deal with that, but that concern wasn’t the real heart of her reluctance to see him. The real heart was just … she’d initially been attracted to him and then dazzled by who he was. But hearing Doc Henderson say, “It’s back” had crystallized things for her. Being with Matthias had been perfect when things were perfect, but it wasn’t real. The fairy tale was pretty but it wasn’t true.

Only now she wasn’t sure what to do about their relationship. Brianna had lost her job — all these years of that nasty old dragon threatening to fire her and she’d finally done it at the worst possible time — and while Natalie had health insurance through the university, the out-of-pocket medical expenses were going to be astronomical. Plus the regular cost of living.

And Brianna didn’t have a college degree. In this economy, it was really hard for someone with only a high school diploma to get a job — at least a job that didn’t involve saying, “Do you want fries with that?” So Natalie was worried.

And not to be a money-grubbing parasite, but Matthias had never worried about money in his life. He seemed to care a lot about her, and maybe she could learn to love him, if she were just a little more patient.

He came in with flowers — more tiger lilies — and kissed her gently on the cheek, as if she were made of china. He squeezed her hand and said, “How are you feeling?”

She didn’t say,
How do you
think
I’m feeling?
She said, “Could be worse.”

“Anything you need? I’d be happy to get a nurse.”

“Everything’s fine,” she said. It wasn’t his fault he was overly solicitous. A lot of people didn’t know how to deal with sickness. Even Brianna had trouble not hovering. Or maybe
especially
Brianna had trouble not hovering.