—Boston Police Department
“That’s from Dad,” says Meghan. “There are a couple more additions.”
Katie’s eyes travel the perimeter of her room until they land on the wall just over her mirror. She laughs, and Meghan laughs readily in response, knowing what Katie is reading.
“These demons don’t know who they’re fucking with.”
—Patrick O’Brien
And then there is her mom. The lengthiest quote in the room, written in cursive above her headboard where the deadly chain of CAGs had been three days ago. The prayer of St. Francis.
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is error, truth;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, Grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
“Thank you, Mom,” Katie whispers when she finishes reading. She’s moved by the divine wisdom of this entire prayer, but five particular words sing like a choir in the center of her heart.
Where there is despair, hope.
PART III
The progression of Huntington’s disease typically runs ten to twenty years and can be divided into three stages. Early-stage symptoms typically include loss of coordination, chorea, difficulty thinking, depression, and an irritable mood. In middle-stage, planning and reasoning difficulties worsen, chorea becomes more pronounced, and speech and swallowing are compromised. In late-stage HD, the affected person is no longer able to walk, talk intelligibly, or move effectively and is completely dependent on others for care and the activities of daily living. The person with HD retains comprehension, memory, and awareness throughout all stages. Death is most often caused by complications of the disease, such as choking, pneumonia, starvation, and even suicide.
Despite the fact that the genetic mutation, the singular cause of HD, has been known since 1993, there are still no effective therapies that prevent or slow the progression of the disease.
Huntington’s disease is commonly called a family disease. Due to HD’s autosomal dominant inheritance and protracted course, parents, siblings, children, and even grandchildren within a single family might all experience different stages of the disease at the same time. Often as one generation is nearing end-stage, the next generation begins.
CHAPTER 20
The smell of Sunday supper permeates their bedroom. Joe can’t identify what boiled animal or vegetable he’s detecting, and it’s not actually an appealing odor, but it triggers his hunger anyway. He stands in profile in front of the mirror and pats his relaxed stomach, now flattened to the shape it used to temporarily take when he sucked it in as far as he could. His love handles and gut are gone. His physical therapist told him he needs four to five thousand calories a day to maintain his weight. Even with medical permission to eat all the donuts and pizza he wants, he’s rapidly shedding pounds. Constant fidgeting burns calories.
Joe’s just arrived home after a day shift. Changing into civilian clothes, he’s removed his gun belt and pants, but he’s stuck in his shirt. His fingers are flicking, playing Mozart on an invisible flute over the buttons of his uniform shirt, ignoring Joe’s commands, refusing to cooperate. He’s concentrating on his fingers as if he were aiming to thread the world’s smallest needle, trying to will his thumbs and index fingers to work the simple buttons, but no amount of focus will stop them from goofing around. Heat is building inside him, and he’s holding his breath, losing patience, about to rip the goddamn shirt in half.
“Joe! Supper!”
Fuck it. He’ll change later. He throws on a pair of gray sweatpants and walks into the kitchen.
The table is set, and everyone is gathered around it but Katie. Colleen’s chair is pushed back a considerable distance from the table to make room for her enormous pregnant belly. Her swollen, socked feet are propped up on JJ’s lap. The poor girl looks as if she could pop any minute, but her due date isn’t until December. She needs to hold the little bugger in for one more month.
Joe prays every day that their baby is healthy. Ten fingers and ten toes and no HD. But once the baby is born, the decision to know his or her gene status will belong to the baby, not the parents, and the youngest age eligible for testing is eighteen. So they won’t know if JJ’s baby carries the HD gene until he or she is an adult, and then only if he or she wants to know.
Eighteen years. Joe probably won’t be here. And if he is, he probably won’t be here, living in their triple-decker on Cook Street. He’ll be either dead or in an assisted-living facility, and either way, he’ll likely never know the fate of his grandchild. Will this cursed disease extend its wicked tentacles into the next, innocent generation, or will this lineage of HD end with JJ? He prays every day that it ends with JJ.
And Meghan. God, he’s having a hard time accepting that she’s got this monster hiding in her DNA, too. Meghan’s going to get HD. It’s a bleeding wound in Joe’s gut that no surgery can fix, and the pain at times is almost unbearable. He prays, sometimes through tears, that she’ll dance into her forties without so much as a whisper of HD. He prays and hopes for all of his kids, and on good days, he believes. But the future weighs on him, on all of them. And the guilt. It’s a miracle Joe can stand upright with all the guilt he’s carrying.
Rosie places a basket of soda bread and a stick of butter on the table.
“Are we starting without Katie?” asks Meghan as she adjusts the wrap of the black wool scarf around her neck.
“She has one minute,” says Rosie, threatening the second hand of the clock.
Joe takes a sip of what he expected to be water through his straw and is surprised by the tingly, crisp taste of beer in his mouth. He swallows and looks to Patrick, who is wearing a sly grin. Joe winks at him and sucks up another sip. Everyone else at the table has been given a glass jelly jar filled with water. No beer until supper. Joe’s “glass” is an opaque, plastic Dunkin’ Donuts to-go cup with a lid and straw. He’s accidentally dropped, sloshed, and even flung too many glasses and mugs. Rosie grew tired of picking up the shattered mess, and he certainly can’t be unpredictably smashing glassware or tossing hot coffee into the air once there’s a baby around, so he now drinks everything out of one of these plastic, lidded cups. At times, it’s felt downright humiliating, a grown man restricted to drinking from a sippy cup, but now he’s seeing the upside. Beer before supper.
Katie appears on the threshold of the kitchen, looking stiff and terrified. She’s not alone.
“Everyone,” says Katie, clearing her throat. “This is Felix.” She pauses. “My boyfriend. Felix, you’ve met Meghan. This is JJ and Colleen. That’s Patrick. And my mom and dad.”
Felix smiles and says hello to everyone. He shakes hands with JJ and Patrick.
“Hi, Mrs. O’Brien. Mr. O’Brien.”
Rosie smiles. “Welcome, Felix.”
Joe stands. He and Felix shake hands. Joe pats him on the shoulder.
“Hey, Felix. Good to see you again. Glad you finally made it to supper,” says Joe.
“I’ll go get him a chair,” says Meghan.
“Wait, again?” asks Katie, her head swiveling from Felix to Joe and back.
“Hun, I’m your father and a cop. You think I don’t know for a second if someone’s been coming in and out of this house for the past six months?”
Katie blushes, and her eyes don’t know which way to go.
“Why didn’t you tell me you already met my dad?” Katie asks Felix.
He shrugs and smiles. “I was kind of looking forward to this moment.”
“I suppose you did a background check on him,” says Katie.
“Yup. He’s clean,” says Joe. “We’ll have to beat that Yankee thing out of him, though.”
“She must really like you if she’s bringing you to supper,” says JJ.
“Or she’s trying to scare you off,” says Patrick.
“Ignore them,” Katie says to Felix. “Felix works for Biofuel.”
“We know,” says Joe. “Felix and I are pretty well caught up these days.”
“What? How?” asks Katie, her voice shrill.
“We chat when we walk Yaz,” says Joe.