The Last Letter (Page 32)

“Hi, Mom!”

Blinking quickly, I looked at the monitors before responding. Her pressure was back up, her temp was down, her oxygen levels up. My hand flew to cover my mouth as my knees buckled, but Beckett caught me by the waist, pulling me to his side without missing a beat.

“Hiya, Maisie-girl. How are you feeling?”

“So much better,” she answered.

My mouth trembled as I looked back at the doctor, who was flipping through the chart, listening to the report of another doctor. It was seven fifteen in the morning. The night shift had changed to day while I was asleep.

“Well?” I asked.

“Looks like the drugs are working. She’s going to be just fine.”

I turned my face into Beckett’s chest before I lost it in front of Maisie. He wrapped his arms around me as I took deep, gulping breaths filled with his scent. I was literally expelling my fear and breathing him in.

“Did you hear that, Maisie? Looks like you’re not getting out of tutoring next week,” Beckett joked, his voice a gravelly, deep rumble against my ear.

He’d driven us here, taken care of me, of Maisie, of Colt. Uprooted his entire life to move in next door. He’d been steadfast every time I’d sworn I didn’t need him and there the moment I did without any hint of I-told-you-so.

I took one last breath and turned back to the doctor, who gave me the satisfied nod of a job well done.

“We’ll keep her here in the ICU another day, just to make sure, and then move her to pediatrics another few days for monitoring. Better safe than sorry.”

“Thank you.” There weren’t any other words to say.

“You’ve got a little fighter there,” the doctor said before heading out, leaving the three of us alone.

“I don’t have Colt,” Maisie said quietly, looking around her bed.

It took me a second to realize what she was saying. “I’m sorry, we left so fast that I didn’t think to grab him.” The bear was most likely sitting on Colt’s bed, the lone pink spot in a sea of blue.

“Don’t you worry, we’ll have your mom grab him when she runs home tomorrow for a little bit. Sound good?” Beckett offered.

“What? Me run home?” Hell no, I wasn’t leaving my daughter.

“Yep,” he said with a nod. “If you leave by ten, you can get home, shower the hospital off you, and get to Colt’s graduation by two.”

Colt’s kindergarten graduation. My mouth dropped, and my gaze flickered from Beckett to Maisie. How could I leave her here? How could I miss Colt’s graduation? Sure it was a little silly, but I knew how important it was to him. How could I leave her here when she was supposed to be walking across the stage with him? How was any of this fair?

Beckett cupped my cheeks, stopping the ping-pong battle with my concentration. “Ella. She’s stable. She’ll be out of the ICU. I am more than capable of hanging out with her for a few hours. You need to be there for Colt. Let me do this. Stop splitting yourself in two, and let me help. Please.”

“Yeah, Mom. You have to go. I don’t want Colt to be sad,” Maisie added.

“I don’t have a way to get back.”

“You take my truck.”

Wait. What? Trucks were sacred to guys. He might as well be offering his soul on a platter. “Your truck.”

“You do have a driver’s license, right?” he joked.

“Well, yeah.”

“Then it’s settled. You’ll grab Pink Colt when you go home tomorrow. In the meantime, Maisie and I will watch movies and hang out. What do you say, Maisie-girl?” He looked back at my daughter.

“Yes!”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Absolutely.” He took my hands and held them to his chest. “I swear.”

The sweetest feeling unfurled in my chest, only to plant deep in my belly. It stretched through my body until I swore my fingertips tingled.

“Take lots of pictures, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied, focused on the overwhelming emotion consuming me.

It had to be infatuation, right? Who wouldn’t crush on this man a little? That’s all it was, because there was no way in the world I was falling for Beckett.

Absolutely none.

He turned and high-fived Maisie, that little strip of white on his wrist screaming louder than my brain could deny. Because while my head had been panicked Saturday night, focused on forms and doctors and transfers, my heart had declared that this man was trusted. My heart had signed that paper while my head was consumed with other matters. This man was in my life, and in a way, mine. And Colt’s. And most definitely Maisie’s.

After all, that bracelet had her name written on it.

Oh God. I was in love with him.

Chapter Fourteen

Beckett

Letter #20

Chaos,

I feel like all I write to you about lately is Maisie’s diagnosis. Honestly, sometimes I feel like that’s all I think about. I’ve become one of those people with a one-track mind, and everything revolves around her.

So let’s try to snap out of that for a few minutes. Christmas is coming. It’s one of our busiest times of the year for guests, and as usual, we’re booked solid through the first week in January, which is great for business and referrals.

I moved the kids to the last cabin we had available and took it off the books. It’s the best way to keep Maisie safe when her levels bottom out, and so far it’s working. And there I go again, back to the cancer.

We put up a tree in the cabin, and Hailey, my receptionist, moved in with us to help at night when I have to run out. I’m beginning to think the kids like the privacy better, too. Colt even asked for a tree house out back for Christmas, but I told him he’d have to wait for my brother to get home. I’m pretty handy, but a tree-house maker, I am not. It would probably bust apart before he stepped foot in it. I’m also wondering if it’s a good idea to build him a tree house when we’ll hopefully be back in the main house soon-ish. Soon. Whenever. Truth is, everything feels like soon lately.

How are you guys holding up with the holidays? Do you need anything? I had Maisie and Colt send you a few pictures. They were worried that you didn’t have a Christmas tree, so they drew a few for you and helped me bake this weekend.

It’s hard to believe it’s already December and that you guys are coming home soon. I can’t wait to finally see the person I’ve been talking to all this time and show you around. Don’t freak out, but it’s definitely what I’m looking forward to most in the new year.

~ Ella

…

Problem solving was a skill I was particularly proud of. There wasn’t an issue I couldn’t fix, a puzzle I couldn’t piece together. I was good at making the impossible a reality. But this felt like beating my head against a brick wall just to see how it felt.

I flipped through the MIBG information for the hundredth time and cross-referenced what I’d found on my phone. What I wouldn’t give for my laptop.

It was ridiculous that Ella’s insurance didn’t cover the therapy, but mine would. Then again, if there was one thing the military got right, it was health insurance, which I still had since I’d gotten sidetracked and hadn’t signed Donahue’s declination papers yet.

“I wouldn’t have left the tower,” Maisie said from her bed, sitting up and bouncing slightly on the mattress. We’d been out of the ICU since this morning, right before Ella left for Telluride.

I glanced over at the movie—Tangled. Rapunzel. Got it. “You would if your mom was an evil witch.”

“But she’s not, so I would have stayed.” She tugged her cap down farther over her forehead.

“But look at that big wide world. Are you saying you really don’t want to see what’s out there?” I set everything down on the table.

She shrugged, twisting her mouth to the side and scrunching her nose.

“There’s a lot out there.” I pushed off the floor, rolling in the chair over to the side of Maisie’s bed.

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean I get to see it.”

There was no whine in her voice, just simple, accepted fact. It dawned on me how young she was, how much of her life she remembered, and how much of it had already been spent fighting. This had been a hellish seven months for Ella, but it must have seemed an eternity to Maisie.

“You will,” I told her.

She glanced my way a few times before finally turning her head and meeting my eyes.

“You will,” I repeated. “Not just the whole school part, either. That’s just the beginning.”

“I can’t even graduate kindergarten,” she whispered. “Please don’t tell Mom I’m sad. She’s already sad enough.”

It was like talking to a mini-Ella, already concerned about everyone else but herself. Even their eyes were the same, except Maisie hadn’t learned how to guard her thoughts yet.

“I have an idea,” I said.

Forty minutes, another hospital gown, and a quick run to the nurses’ station, and we were nearly ready.

“Ready?” she called from the bathroom.

“Almost,” I tried to say, my mouth holding the tape dispenser as I wrapped the string around the frayed edge of a strip of my undershirt.

I ran the string up to the top of the hat and then taped it. Arts and crafts were not my strong suit, but this would do. I knocked on the bathroom door, and it opened far enough for Maisie to stick a hand out.

“Your highness,” I said, handing her my creation. Thank you, God, for nurses and pediatric craft stations.

Maisie giggled and took it, shutting the door in my face. Man, she’d bounced back so quickly. The antibiotics were still pumping through her IV line, and she was still hospital-bound, but it was night and day from the day of the soccer game.

I kicked myself for the hundredth time for not noticing while I’d carried her to and from the car. There had been no fever then, no redness, nothing, but I’d known she was off, that she was overtired.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

I checked my watch. They would be walking across their little stage any minute now. “I am if you are.”

“Give a speech,” she ordered with the door between us.