Love Is More Than Skin Deep (A Hidden Hearts Novel Book 4) (21 page)

I freeze in place as I try not to cry out as Mark’s mom inadvertently tries to rearrange my spine in the process of giving me a hug. I try to cover the expression on my face, but Mark catches my grimace.

“Easy, Mom! Shelby is a little sore, remember?” Mark cautions as he carefully untangles me from his mother’s arms.

“Oh, that’s right. I remember now. Ketki told me all about it. Although, your yoga is so beautiful that I forget how sore you must be,” she comments as she looks me over.

I suck in a breath as I ask, “My yoga? How did you see my yoga?”

“That granddaughter of mine is so clever, she wears a camera on her head and shows me all sorts of things in life,” she explains proudly.

“She’s also pretty sneaky. She didn’t tell me she was actually filming. She told me she was just getting used to wearing it,” I mutter under my breath.

“Is Ketki here yet?” Mark asks looking around.

Mark’s mother playfully pushes him in the stomach as she remarks, “I think you’ve been working too hard. Don’t you remember the whole reason your daughter is riding with your sister today is because she picked Ketki and her kids up from school? They’ll be up later.”

Mark snickers as he says, “I figured with Leoti’s tendency to have a lead foot, she might actually beat us here.”

“Oh, stop picking on your little sister. You know she was only trying to catch the eye of that handsome law man who was giving her tickets.”

“Uh-huh. I could never figure out why you always believe everything she tells you. I don’t know why no one realizes that I’m actually the good kid.”

“If you’re the good kid, why haven’t you bothered to introduce me?” she challenges.

Mark blushes as he responds, “This is Shelby. Shelby, these are my parents. This is my beautiful mother, Hialeah and my father, Adahy.”

I try to remember all of the lessons my foster mom taught me in her little
Miss Manners
boot camp and as I straighten my spine and try not to mumble, “It’s nice to meet you.” It’s hard not to squirm under the scrutiny as Mr. Littleson examines me from head to toe.

He turns to Mark and comments, “It’s not like you to bring someone home — especially an outsider. It is clear that this one comes with much pain and suffering. Why don’t you bring her to the powwow tonight to see Waholi? It would seem Western medicine may not hold all the answers for her. Perhaps it is time for her to consult a
didanawisgi.
”

A look of frustration crosses Mark’s face. “Dad, I appreciate the suggestion, but Shelby and I haven’t even had a chance to talk much about the ways of the Cherokee. I have no idea whether she even wants to entertain the thought of consulting a medicine man, much less at a public event like a powwow. Can’t we just have one night of enjoying ourselves as a family before we have to deal with her cancer?”

Mark’s mother has tears in her eyes as she interrupts the conversation, “Oh, nothing much has changed since you were a little boy. You were always my child who was filled with optimism and hope. You must remember that simply pretending the problem does not exist does not make it go away.”

Whatever else happens on this trip, I know that I’ll have no trouble bonding with Mark’s mother. She and I both identified the key weakness with Mark’s strategy with my disease. You cannot wish, cajole or bully cancer away. Even so, I am not above trying new — or at least new to me — approaches. Chemotherapy is kicking my butt and maybe ancient and traditional is the way to go.

I smile at Mr. Littleson as I respond, “Fate has brought Mark and I far in this relationship. Who am I to doubt it now?”

MY DAD HAS BROWN PAPER spread out over the top of the kitchen table and he’s showing Ketki how to properly reassemble a vintage 35 mm camera. Sadly, after forty years in the business, this is a dying art. Everything is digital these days. Shelby is deep in the mix with them, chatting a million miles an hour about f-stops, apertures, filters and depth of field.

I walk up behind Shelby and kiss her on the back of the neck as I say, “If I would’ve known how easy it was to win your heart, I would’ve used my inside connections to get you a tricked out new camera.”

She squirms away from me as she giggles. “You, are a silly, silly man. You’re also not very observant if you think a new camera is the one that’s going to make my heart go pitter-patter. It’s the old stuff that makes me the happiest. I used to have a camera just like the one your dad is tearing down for Ketki right now. Savannah and I found it in a garbage dumpster with a bunch of other broken camera equipment behind a university. Savannah wanted the one that was all fancy with the buttons and bells and whistles, but I wanted the one that looks like the news reporters in National Geographic.”

“Somebody just threw away a camera?” Ketki asks, incredulous.

Shelby laughs, reminding me why I call her
Immokalee.
Her laughter is like water in a tumbling creek in the springtime – light, tumbling and speckled with sunshine.
 

“No, not even almost,” she recalls. “There were just camera parts around. I was pretty good at putting puzzle pieces back together so I took a stab at putting it back together. Unfortunately, it didn’t work. I was profoundly disappointed because I’d worked so incredibly hard to clean everything up and straighten up crooked parts. One day, we traveled to a new town in search of help for Owen and at one of the homeless shelters, I met up with a veteran who served as a war correspondent. He was fascinated with my camera. He’d worked in the field for so long he seemed to have about a dozen different fixes for every problem. It took about a week and a half, but soon we were able to scavenge together enough parts to make my camera operable. Harvey “The Ghost” McCade did his best to turn me into a top-notch photojournalist at the age of eleven — and he was off to a pretty good start. Unfortunately, our stint in that town lasted less than a couple months.”

“Why didn’t you grow up to be a reporter like Lisa Ling?” Ketki inquires, riveted by the story.

“Oh, that’s a good question,” Shelby replies. “She
is
really cool. She gets to go to all sorts of neat places. I guess I just hadn’t been at it long enough for the bug to truly bite. We didn’t even have the chemicals to develop the pictures. I had to imagine what they were going to look like. When my parents decided to leave, I elected to give my camera to The Ghost because he loved it so much.”

“It sucks that you had to give up your camera,” Ketki remarks.

“Yeah, I was upset about that — but I was more upset that I had to leave Harvey. He was like a grandpa to me.”

“You poor thing — having to give up your whole family like that — aren’t you lonely?” my mom asks and Shelby breaks into a teary smile.

Right now, if it wouldn’t be hugely conspicuous, I would love to give my mom a gigantic bearhug. She just gave me the best opening ever. What’s funny about this whole situation is that my mother does not know that my phone is completely going berserk with text messages — but she has inadvertently given me a hand. We apparently have ourselves a little situation — one that I didn’t anticipate. Usually, I’m pretty good at heading these things off, but this one blindsided me.

Shelby wipes some machine lubricant off of her fingers and sits back in her chair. She glances up at my mom who is currently covered in flour. “It’s a little strange—for years, I never give it as much thought as I have been recently.” Shelby shifts her gaze meaningfully at Ketki as she continues, “I’ve recently made some new friends and they’ve reminded me what I’ve been missing without my family. In some ways, that makes it
 
a little harder, I guess.”

“It’s like having you in
my
life,” adds Ketki. “I never wondered about my mom much before, but now I do. It’s weird.”

This whole conversation and the vibrating phone in my pocket are stark reminders as to why I need to get this whole situation resolved as quickly as humanly possible. Yet, it seems that one leg of the journey is well under way, whether I want it to be or not.

“Ketki, for the love of all things we hold near and dear, please stop whining!” I snap as my head pounds in time with the tires going across the pavement on the freeway. “The noise from these cat-eyes is enough to drive me insane, I complain, as I rub the bridge of my nose and try to focus on the road.”

“Cat eyes? I always thought they were called rumble sticks,” Shelby remarks absently.
 

Ketki’s expression grows even more dark as she interjects, “Don’t you guys know anything? Those are called Bott’s Dots — you know, after the guy who invented them?”

Shelby shrugs as she responds, “What do you know? I learn something new every day —”

Unfortunately, Ketki is her usual tenacious self and refuses to be distracted by the noisy road or anything else as she continues to argue, “Dad, we hardly ever get to Grandma and Grandpa’s and you still haven’t given me a reason why we had to leave early. You can’t even use the excuse that you have trial first thing in the morning because you don’t; The guy had surgery,” she asserts stubbornly. “Shelby and I were having fun. Why do you always kill the fun?”

“Enough!” I roar. “Ki, I know what I’m doing, okay?”

“Geez, Mark, no need to bite her head off,” reprimands Shelby. “She just asked you a question.”

“Well, she’s asked me the same question four dozen times,” I declare defensively.

“Your point?” Shelby responds with a raised eyebrow. “That’s kind of a Ketki thing and honestly, you have been really reticent about all of this. You aren’t answering anyone’s questions. I mean, it’s not uncommon for you to be rather attached to your phone, but you’ve raised it to a whole new level this weekend. I’m beginning to wonder if I should be concerned. You’re checking that thing every two-seconds. I thought you didn’t have any trials going on right now.”

“I don’t,” I respond, feeling chastised. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

“I know that a lot of that’s about me,” Shelby offers, “but, I still think you might want to send your mom flowers or something. Her feelings seem a little hurt.”

“You’re right,” I reply with the sigh. “As you pointed out before, I have a tendency to barrel my way through things. I hope you understand that I always have the best intentions.”

“I’ve been hanging around you long enough that I’ve figured that out by now,” she admits with a snort of laughter.

“In that case, I’d like to preemptively ask for forgiveness in advance,” I suggest.

Shelby vehemently shakes her head as she responds, “No way. I may be a new, baby teacher, but even I know better than to give a blank permission slip like that.” She giggles and winks at Ketki. “Nice try, though. I’ll give you an A for effort.”

“I hope you still feel that way when the dust has settled,” I joke, hiding a very difficult truth in plain sight.

The mental argument I’ve been having with myself is so loud that I’m shocked that Shelby can’t overhear my thoughts. Maybe I should be doing something to prepare her for what she’s about to face, but I have no idea how to do that on the three-hour drive home in front of Ketki. My daughter is already having a colossal meltdown because of this complication and I don’t want to escalate things anymore. The time for recrimination and second-guessing is over and it is time to face the music.