Return to Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs Page B

prospect of having a baby is a wonderful thing. It’s
fabulous news. But there’s some not-so-good news as well. It’s kind of hard for
me to say this, but…” Her voice wavered, then trailed off.
    He glanced over at her, and saw that she was blinking fast, the
skin taut across her cheekbones. After having filmed hundreds of weddings, he
knew that face. It was the face of a woman fighting tears. Great.
    “Hey, are you all right?” he asked. Lame. People on the verge
of tears were not all right.
    “I’m…I will be. Zach, I just… Oh, I have to come out and say
it. I have cancer.”
    Oh, geez. Zach knew he winced visibly. Cancer. I have cancer . Probably the three worst words in the
English language. The three words no one ever wanted to say…or hear.
    “Nina, I’m sorry.”
    “It happens. You of all people know that, because of your mom.
I hesitated about coming to you because of that.”
    “It was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m glad you came to me. If
you’re going to do something like this, I’m the one you want.”
    She offered a faint smile. “Agreed.”
    “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I don’t know what else to say.”
    And he didn’t, just like he hadn’t known what to say when his
mom came to see him from Seattle, where she’d gone after leaving him and his
dad. He had been a confused kid at the time, desperate to see his mom. The
prospect of a visit from her had filled him with joy. Then when she’d told him,
“I have cancer,” his world had come crashing down. She’d still looked like his
mom, still sounded like his mom. But cancer was the worst disease he’d ever
heard of. He’d dared to ask: “Are you going to get better?”
    “That’s the plan,” his mother had told him. “I have to take a
lot of medicine and work really hard at it.”
    Three months later, she was dead.
    “It’s breast cancer,” Nina continued.
    Zach’s throat ached. He felt himself being sucked into the
distant past. His own mom had sunk down on her knees in front of him. He could
remember how her eyelashes were spiky, and her breath smelled of Doublemint gum.
She’d been wearing her winter gloves, and she’d taken off one of them. I have cancer. His mom had had breast cancer.
    “It’s treatable during the pregnancy,” Nina added. “There’s
every expectation of a good outcome.”
    “So this video diary…” He suspected he knew what she had in
mind, but something in him needed to hear her say it.
    “Is for my children,” she said, unfazed. “Look, nobody gets a
cancer diagnosis without going there—to the worst-case scenario. There’s a
chance—a small one, I’m told, but a chance—that I won’t survive. If that’s the
case, I would like to leave something behind for my kids, especially for the
little one. I want to record my thoughts, and some things about my life. Ever
since the diagnosis, I’ve been lying awake at night thinking…I want to create
something to prove I was here and that I mattered. It’s not about my vanity,
Zach, or my ego, I swear it’s not.”
    “I would never think that.” Her words struck at him. How could
she think she needed to prove something like that? He thought again about that
little boy, living with his too-quiet dad and filled with fear and sorrow. How
he’d wished for someone, anyone, to comfort him. “How did Sonnet take the
news?”
    Nina looked away. The wind whipped her hair across her face.
“She’s adjusting to the idea that she’s going to have a little brother.”
    “I don’t mean the baby,” he said.
    “I, uh, I haven’t told her about the diagnosis.”
    “Wait a minute. She doesn’t know?” Zach felt a chunk of ice
forming in the pit of his stomach. “Nina—”
    “I can explain.”
    “No, you can’t. This isn’t the sort of thing you keep from your
own daughter. And she’s more than a daughter to you. Both of you have always
said that. You’re each other’s closest friend. What do you think, that she’s