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It took some effort, but she finally managed a smile. “This is the
best day I’ve spent in a long time. Best weekend in fact.”
“You’re still mad about the bike, aren’t you?” he said, narrowing
his eyes in mock suspicion. Despite the tension she felt, she
laughed.
“Of course. It’s going to take a long time for me to recover from
that,” she said, pretending to pout.
Turning his gaze to the horizon, he seemed relieved.
“Can I ask you something?” Katie asked, turning serious again.
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
“Anything,” he said.
“What happened to your wife? You said she had a seizure, but
you haven’t told me why she was sick.”
He sighed, as if he’d known all along she was going to ask but still
had to steel himself to answer. “She had a brain tumor,” he began
slowly. “Or, more accurately, she had three different types of
brain tumors. I didn’t know it then, but I learned that’s fairly
common. The one that was slow-growing was just what you’d
think; it was about the size of an egg and the surgeons were able
to take most of it out. But the other tumors weren’t so simple.
They were the kind of tumors that spread like spider legs, and
there was no way to remove them without removing part of her
brain. They were aggressive, too. The doctors did the best they
could, but even when they walked out of surgery and told me that
it had gone as well as it could, I knew exactly what they meant.”
“I can’t imagine hearing something like that.” She stared down at
the sand.
“I admit I had trouble believing it. It was so… unexpected. I mean,
the week before, we were a normal family, and the next thing I
knew, she was dying and there was nothing I could do to stop it.”