CHAPTER 18
Katie hands Eric a present wrapped in blue paper and a white ribbon. As he’s tugging on the ribbon, she suddenly wishes she could take it back. Giving her genetic counselor a gift seemed like a good idea back at home, but watching him open it here in his office, she feels weird, inappropriate, lame.
He tears off the paper, revealing a three-by-five white index card in a black frame. In Katie’s neatest writing, the card reads: “Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”
—Emily Dickinson
Eric smiles as he reads it. “Wow, thank you. This is great.”
“I thought it would be good for your office.”
“It’s perfect,” he says, standing the frame on his desk, facing Katie. “And my birthday was just last week.”
“Cool.”
“So,” he says, studying Katie for too many discomforting seconds, dipping his toe into conversation as if they’re on an awkward second date, the possibility of a third looking highly unlikely. “I’m glad you came back.”
Katie laughs.
“What’s so funny?” asks Eric.
“You kinda need people like me to come back or you’d be out of a job.”
“I’m not worried about my job, Katie. I’ve been worried about you.”
At first she feels flattered, special as the subject of his concern and care, but she backs away. Concern is a thin hair on the head of pity.
“How was your summer?” asks Eric.
“Good.”
“How’s your dad doing?”
“He’s okay. You can definitely see his symptoms. Those spastic, jerky movements—what are those called again?”
“Chorea.”
“Yeah, his chorea is getting more obvious. He’s disorganized and forgetting stuff, and then he gets frustrated with himself and blows up at someone, usually my mom.”
“How’s your mom doing with it?”
Katie shrugs. “Okay.”
“Is your dad still working?”
“Yeah.”
“Does anyone at the police department know about his HD?”
“Just his best friend there. He has another friend, an EMT, who knows, but no one else does. It’s a secret.”
Tommy Vitale and Donny Kelly are keeping an eye on her dad. For now, they agree that he’s okay to work, and no one else has to know. Honestly, she can’t imagine that he can go on as a police officer much longer. And at the same time, she can’t imagine her dad not being a police officer. Her dad is getting hard to imagine, even when he’s sitting in his chair, right in front her.
They decided as a family back in May that they wouldn’t tell anyone in Town. This kind of news would spread like the plague. If it leaked, every Townie and Toonie would know within the week, maybe even the same day. Her dad doesn’t give a shit what people in Town think about him, but it matters for JJ. If the guys at the firehouse know about her dad’s HD, it wouldn’t take a genius after a little Googling for them to figure out that JJ might have it, too. Then they’d start watching him, treating him differently, maybe passing him over for promotions. It wouldn’t be fair to JJ. So they all swore themselves to secrecy.
And then she told Felix.
“So how about you? How are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m okay.”
She hesitates, holding back, protecting herself from being exposed. She bobs her cross-legged foot up and down and reads the Emily Dickinson quote.
“When I didn’t hear back from you after two weeks and then a month and then two months, I figured I’d never see you again.”
“Yeah, well, for a while there, that was the plan,” she says. “Nothing personal.”
It’s not like she was playing hard to get. Eric holds up his hands as if he’s being held at gunpoint.
“Hey, I get it. This is tough stuff.”
“Do you see that a lot? People come in one time and then disappear?”
He nods. “Yeah, over half. Not unlike my stats following a first date.”
Katie laughs.
“Plus it was summer,” says Eric. “No one wants to find out if they’re HD positive in the summer.”
“And now it’s October,” says Katie.
“Yes, it is.”
“And here I am.”
“Here you are.”
“On our second date.”
Eric smiles and taps his fingers on his desk. A flirtatious energy passes between them. Katie blushes.
“So what brought you back?”
Katie switches her crossed leg, buying time.
“I told Felix.”
“This is the guy you were seeing back in July?”
“Yeah.”
“How did he take it?”
“Better than I thought he would. He didn’t break up with me on the spot, so that was good.”
“Sounds like a good guy.”
“He is. He told me he loves me.”
She blushes again and looks down at her claddagh ring, feeling silly.
“But I don’t think he really gets it,” says Katie. “He’s read the little HD pamphlet I gave him, but he refuses to read anything else or Google it or anything. He says he doesn’t need to know more now. I think he’s in denial.”
“Or maybe you are.”
“How am I in denial? I’m here.”
And, she’d like to point out, it took some undeniably huge balls to come back here, but she decides not to say balls to Eric.
“About Felix and how he feels about you.”
Katie rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, he loves me and I love him, and that’s all great, and I’m really happy. But if I have this, I’m going to change. A lot. I’m not going to be the same girl he loves right now, and I wouldn’t blame him for not loving me with HD.”