He shakes his head immediately, speaks loudly so Mindy can hear. “There’s nothing more to say, Lauren. We’re on it. But you’ll want to assemble as many close family relations as you can so we can test everyone for a match. Aunts, uncles, cousins, the works.”
“We don’t have many. Jasper’s an only child, and I just have my sister. We have no other family to speak of.”
“Well then, with any luck, between the three of you, we’ll find a good match. I just want the closest possible familial connection. Gives us a better chance of avoiding rejection.”
Lauren drops her voice. “Dr. Oliver? I need you to be honest with me. What are her chances?”
He smiles and rubs her shoulder. “They’re really good. My colleague from Boston is the best in the business. He’s created the most advanced protocols, and his success rate for ameliorating AML with stem cell regeneration is off the charts. She’s in the best hands.”
Lauren nods, unconvinced.
“Better get back in there. That’s a heavy burden for her to carry alone, even if she is our superstar. Page me when Jasper arrives. And you’ll want to get your sister here, too.”
“I will. Thank you.”
His clogs squeak as he walks away, and Lauren feels like every eye is on her, all the children, the nurses, the other doctors strolling around. Another storm is brewing; the winter has been hard this year, as if in mourning for its lost playmate, and the sun disappears, leaving her in shadow.
Her worst fears have come to pass. Oh, God.
She realizes she is running her thumbnail over the skin of her forearm, hard enough to leave a long, deep red scratch.
Stop that. For heaven’s sake, stop.
She pulls down her sleeve and licks her lips, takes a deep breath in through her nose, then goes back to her daughter’s side. As she walks the long hallway, she calls Juliet.
*
Mindy watches her mother come back in the room, eyes red and frightened, and something clicks.
Liesel.
L.
Lauren.
The Sound of Music has always been their thing. Liesel is the name of the eldest daughter, the one who is having a secret affair with the young soldier who is her unknown enemy.
Perhaps there was a reason why her mother has the letter, after all.
7
CBI LAB
DENVER, COLORADO
Juliet is deep into a DNA run, the lab clicking and whirring around her, when her assistant, Bai, shouts that her sister is on the phone. Without missing a step, she tells him to transfer the call to the lab and put it on Speaker. She doesn’t want to contaminate herself and have to start from scratch; she is in a delicate portion of her process.
Lauren is breathless, and Juliet can tell she’s been crying. Her voice is thick and she sounds stuffy.
She halts her machine. “Lauren? What’s wrong?”
“How quickly can you get here?”
“What’s happened?”
“The cancer is getting worse. The doctor just came to see us. They have to move forward with a stem cell transplant right away. He asked for you to come. They want to get as close a match as they can.”
“Do you or Jasper match?”
“I don’t know yet. Insurance wouldn’t let them test us until it was necessary. Dr. Oliver’s been optimistic, and she’s been responding, but the latest tests aren’t good. They’re moving so quickly. A specialist is flying in from Boston—thank goodness for Dr. Oliver, he’s a skier too, and such a fan, I think if we didn’t have him we wouldn’t have had a chance to—”
“Slow down. Take a breath.”
A ragged, tear-filled sigh. “Please, Juliet.”
The longing, the fear, in her sister’s voice about kills her. Lauren has never shown an ounce of vulnerability to Juliet. Even when they were children, Lauren was always together. The strong one. The focused one. The perfect one. The private one. For her to be asking for help, allowing those walls to come down, to let her sister hear the anguish she is feeling, is huge.
Juliet puts down her pipette. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’re supposed to get another foot of snow tonight. If I get going now, hopefully I can beat the storm.”
“Thank you,” Lauren breathes, and hangs up the phone.
Thirty minutes later, Juliet is on I-70, climbing through Georgetown. It will take another two hours to get to Vail in the afternoon traffic, and the storm is bearing down. She is pushing it, speeding when she can. If she gets pulled over, she can flash her credentials, explain the situation, and get off with a stern warning.
She doesn’t want to think the worst, but she has to be the rational one. Stem cell transplants are tricky. Just like any organ transplant, the match needs to be as close to perfect as possible in order to prevent rejection. Siblings are often the best chance, but with Mindy, they have to hope for a match within the family. Juliet quails at the thought of the donor database. It could be months before a good match is found, months a child with aggressive AML doesn’t have.
She’s never heard this kind of pain from her sister. Even when Lauren’s first marriage fell apart, when her husband Kyle took off and left her alone, pregnant and unemployed, she hadn’t reached out, hadn’t asked for help.
Truthfully, Juliet wasn’t at all surprised to see their union fail—she’d never liked Kyle, felt he wasn’t right for Lauren from the start; he was a blustery, booming kind of man, a braggart of the worst sort, the kind who didn’t know his own shortcomings—but she hadn’t heard a word about the split until well after Mindy was born. All she knew was he hadn’t wanted a child and had gotten mad when Lauren found out she was pregnant, so they divorced and he moved to California.
What a jerk he’d been. Rotten and self-involved. What kind of man leaves when he finds out his wife is pregnant?
Juliet likes Jasper much, much better. He is kind, and smart, and loves Lauren beyond reason, and Mindy, too. That is good enough for her.
She feels guilty for even thinking of Kyle right now. The topic is verboten, and for good reason. Mindy has no idea Jasper isn’t her biological father. It is an agreement they’d all made soon after Lauren and Jasper married. Kyle didn’t want Mindy, Jasper did. That, in Lauren’s eyes, made him her real father. Honestly, sometimes Juliet forgets that he isn’t.
But in a situation like this...if there isn’t a match, will Kyle have to be brought back into the picture? That could get very ugly.
Don’t put the cart before the horse. Of course one of us will be a match.
She drives in the near dark grimly, watching the first flakes of the storm in her headlights, wondering what the next few days hold for them.
*
VAIL HEALTH HOSPITAL
Lauren is frantic waiting for Juliet to arrive, and not hiding it well. She’s been tearing at her hair; a glance in the bathroom mirror shows it standing on end, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t bother to smooth it down. Mindy is calm and collected, handling this new setback with typical stoicism, but after Lauren has her cheek swabbed, she leaves her daughter alone with Jasper and walks the halls of the hospital, praying.
I will do anything. I will do anything. Please. Please.
She walks to the front doors of the hospital, stations herself to watch for her sister. The storm is on them, the snow coming down in true blizzard style, tiny stinging flakes spaced so closely together the parking lot has become a blur. Just when she starts to get worried, she sees a sweep of headlights and starts to breathe again.
Get her swabbed, get the results. That’s all she can think of. Surely the odds will be in their favor, and one of the three of them will be a close enough match they will be able to save Mindy’s life.