very smart. When Sadie got pregnant at nineteen and the boyfriend skipped, none of us had any idea that it would be one of the best things that ever happened to our family and, early on, one of the most gut-wrenching.
Maddie has a tiny, uninvited peanut in her brain. One afternoon when she was three, she fell off a live animal, a rite of passage for McCloud girls. The scan in the emergency room revealed a disturbing shadow. Instantly, Daddy took over. Trips to the Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, Boston Children’s, and several rounds of radiation later, the tumor didn’t budge, seemingly oblivious to all of the hubbub on the outside.
But it didn’t grow, either. For six years, Maddie has continued to outperform all her classmates in everything: running, reading, writing. Once a year, she endures an MRI and doctors on a FortWorth tumor board meet to reach the same conclusion. The neurologists say that with every month, it gets more possible Maddie will live a completely normal life. It makes me think that sometimes it’s better not to know what’s inside us.
Watching her little face, the furrowed, intense brow as she devised a game strategy to eradicate me from the planet, I promised myself, not for the first time, that I’d never let anything take her down. Not the invader in her brain. Not any malevolent forces in the wind.
Sadie observed our antics from the couch while updating her jewelry website on her MacBook. We didn’t say much to each other until I picked up my stuff to go.
This would be my first night out of Sadie’s cramped guest bedroom and in the family ranch house up the road, a departure planned before the events of this long day. Now I had another very good reason to set up elsewhere. I wanted to draw away the evil thing smoothing out its map and plotting a fresh path to me.
Sadie walked me to the pickup. She handed me an old Nordstrom shopping bag filled with her clothes and a blue drawstring Gap bag with shoes. A peace offering.
“To tide you over,” she said.
We wore almost the same size, everything just a little tighter on me. I’d been in such a hurry to catch my plane after hearing about Daddy that I’d packed minimal clothing and only the pair of scarred beige cowboy boots on my feet.
Now I was down a pair of jeans. But up a pair of jorts.
“You should let me wash your clothes, Tommie. I don’t mind. Who knows the last time someone has run that old Kenmore of Mama’s?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She lingered outside the truck after I shut the door, her armscrossed in the same defensive posture I’d seen since she was four and furious that Daddy wouldn’t let her drive the golf cart around the property. I rolled down the window.
“When are you leaving?” she asked. “Going back to Wyoming, I mean? Get back to those kids and your research? You could just forget all this stuff. Leave the ranch and everything else for Wade to watch over.”
Run away again, she meant.
“That’s the thing, Sadie. I’m not leaving. Not this time.”
In the dark, I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
“Please be careful,” I told her. “Lock everything up. Turn on that fancy alarm that Wade installed.”
“I’m well trained,” she replied. If the terseness in my voice worried her, she didn’t show it. “All of that is standard procedure around here.”
I shifted into first gear and sucked in a shaky breath. Everything I loved most in the world fit in this tin box on the prairie. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to take it away. Or, for that matter, let Rosalina Marchetti make it anything less than it was.
“We’re forever,” I said, the words we used to write together on the sidewalk at school, in the sand at the beach, in the glass fog on the car window.
Sadie watched me drive away, growing smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, until the blackness swallowed her.
The pickup crawled up the curved drive. The timed security lights from the sprawling
Maddie has a tiny, uninvited peanut in her brain. One afternoon when she was three, she fell off a live animal, a rite of passage for McCloud girls. The scan in the emergency room revealed a disturbing shadow. Instantly, Daddy took over. Trips to the Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson, Boston Children’s, and several rounds of radiation later, the tumor didn’t budge, seemingly oblivious to all of the hubbub on the outside.
But it didn’t grow, either. For six years, Maddie has continued to outperform all her classmates in everything: running, reading, writing. Once a year, she endures an MRI and doctors on a FortWorth tumor board meet to reach the same conclusion. The neurologists say that with every month, it gets more possible Maddie will live a completely normal life. It makes me think that sometimes it’s better not to know what’s inside us.
Watching her little face, the furrowed, intense brow as she devised a game strategy to eradicate me from the planet, I promised myself, not for the first time, that I’d never let anything take her down. Not the invader in her brain. Not any malevolent forces in the wind.
Sadie observed our antics from the couch while updating her jewelry website on her MacBook. We didn’t say much to each other until I picked up my stuff to go.
This would be my first night out of Sadie’s cramped guest bedroom and in the family ranch house up the road, a departure planned before the events of this long day. Now I had another very good reason to set up elsewhere. I wanted to draw away the evil thing smoothing out its map and plotting a fresh path to me.
Sadie walked me to the pickup. She handed me an old Nordstrom shopping bag filled with her clothes and a blue drawstring Gap bag with shoes. A peace offering.
“To tide you over,” she said.
We wore almost the same size, everything just a little tighter on me. I’d been in such a hurry to catch my plane after hearing about Daddy that I’d packed minimal clothing and only the pair of scarred beige cowboy boots on my feet.
Now I was down a pair of jeans. But up a pair of jorts.
“You should let me wash your clothes, Tommie. I don’t mind. Who knows the last time someone has run that old Kenmore of Mama’s?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She lingered outside the truck after I shut the door, her armscrossed in the same defensive posture I’d seen since she was four and furious that Daddy wouldn’t let her drive the golf cart around the property. I rolled down the window.
“When are you leaving?” she asked. “Going back to Wyoming, I mean? Get back to those kids and your research? You could just forget all this stuff. Leave the ranch and everything else for Wade to watch over.”
Run away again, she meant.
“That’s the thing, Sadie. I’m not leaving. Not this time.”
In the dark, I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
“Please be careful,” I told her. “Lock everything up. Turn on that fancy alarm that Wade installed.”
“I’m well trained,” she replied. If the terseness in my voice worried her, she didn’t show it. “All of that is standard procedure around here.”
I shifted into first gear and sucked in a shaky breath. Everything I loved most in the world fit in this tin box on the prairie. I wasn’t going to allow anyone to take it away. Or, for that matter, let Rosalina Marchetti make it anything less than it was.
“We’re forever,” I said, the words we used to write together on the sidewalk at school, in the sand at the beach, in the glass fog on the car window.
Sadie watched me drive away, growing smaller and smaller in my rearview mirror, until the blackness swallowed her.
The pickup crawled up the curved drive. The timed security lights from the sprawling
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