“Leo has illusions,” Luke said with a fond smile. “Want to give me a hand in the kitchen?”
“Sure.” Madeline followed him into the kitchen. It was even smaller than the living area, and Luke had to inch in between the fridge and the little kitchen bar to open the fridge. He pulled out two beers, popped the tops, and handed her one. A shout of laughter went up in the front room.
“I didn’t know,” Madeline said. “When you told me that Leo had a muscular disease, I had no idea—”
“Yeah,” Luke said, and looked down to rub his nape. “It’s motor neuron disease. He’s slowly turning into a vegetable.” He tipped the beer bottle back and took a long drink. “Never seems to be a good time to say, hey, by the way, my brother is in a chair. And besides that,” he leaned forward, glanced to the doorway. “We don’t do a lot of talking.” He stole a kiss from her.
Madeline jumped back. “Don’t,” she whispered, a tiny moment before Luke’s aunt and uncle came tromping through the kitchen and out the back door.
“You look fantastic,” he said, his gaze skirting over her. “Gorgeous.”
Madeline blushed again. “Thank you.”
Luke stepped away from her and opened the fridge. “We’re going to eat outside,” he said, and took a big bowl of salad from the fridge, kicked it closed, put the bowl on a tiny little breakfast bar and grabbed some tongs to toss it.
“How long has he been like that?” Madeline asked.
“Five or six years,” Luke said. “He was playing football for the Colorado School of Mines and started to notice that he couldn’t grip a ball with his left hand. It took about a year before they finally figured out what was going on, and then, things started happening pretty fast. He’s been in a chair for about three years now.”
Madeline could not imagine the devastation for Leo, for his family. The wasted potential was heartbreaking. “What will happen to him?”
She saw the hitch in Luke’s shoulders. He turned partially away from her to grab salt and pepper and said, “Eventually, he won’t be able to breathe or swallow. Nothing will work.”
He didn’t need to say more than that. Madeline could feel tears building in her. “Luke… I am so sorry.”
“Thank you,” he said. He turned back to her, composed, but distant.
Madeline could not fathom it. She’d never endured anything so painful. And to think his mother’s cancer had come in the midst of it! How did one family find the strength to go on every day? How did Luke hold them together?
“May I do something to help?” she asked.
“No, you sit back and relax,” he said, and began to toss the salad.
Madeline didn’t know how she was supposed to sit back and relax. In the living room, she could hear Marisol’s lilting accent and Libby’s laugh. The back door suddenly banged open, and Patti came in. “Excuse me, hon,” she said, and squeezed her ample hips past Madeline into the kitchen, next to Luke. She bent over at the oven, bumping Luke aside, and brought out two pans of lasagna, stacking them on the stovetop.
She was peeling back the tin foil when Libby came in to the kitchen. “Want me to get the drinks?” she asked.
“That would be great,” Patti said. “Glasses are there.”
“There” was just above Madeline’s head, and she had no choice but to step back into the living room where Jackson and Leo were sitting together.
The two men abruptly stopped talking when they saw Madeline.
“Come in, Madeline,” Jackson said. He gestured to a chair on the other side of Leo. It was set slightly back; she wondered if she was supposed to pull it up and join the conversation.
She sat, looking at the back of Leo’s head, wondering how he’d found the strength to endure what he had. She turned her attention to the peeling wallpaper, and noticed a big framed collage of photos on the wall behind him. It was the only adornment in the room. They were various pictures of a happy family—a broad woman who looked like Patti, who Madeline assumed was Luke’s mother, Leo with a cane. Luke, Leo, his mother and father sitting on a picnic bench that she recognized from the west lawn at the ranch, laughing. Pictures of a happy family before their lives were decimated.
Jackson suddenly hopped up, interrupting Madeline’s thoughts. “I’m going to get another beer. Anything for you, Madeline?”
She glanced down at the beer she was holding. She’d taken one sip. “No, thank you.”
“I’ll be back,” he said, and walked out of the room, leaving her alone with Leo.
“Hey,” Leo said. “I can’t see you.” His chair suddenly lurched forward, then stopped and lurched backward, and again and again, until he had maneuvered it around to face her. He smiled crookedly at her. “You like football, right?”
“Ah… not really.”
“What, are you kidding? You have three professional teams in Florida! Dolphins, Buccaneers, Jaguars—you’ve gotta find one you like.”
“I never really got into football,” she said apologetically.