Page 63 of Gray Hair Don't Care
“Love you, too, Echo.”
Donovan turned off his ringer for the rest of the drive, and put on one of his favorite playlists so he could get lost in the music, and keep his mind off what was ahead. It didn’t work. Every song was a reminder of something—a time in his life, or a person or event. Thoughts of his three favorite women kept circling through his head. His mom was sick, his daughter married, and Lela… well, he could only do his absolute best by her this time and hope to hell that was good enough.
When he pulled into the driveway of the estate, Austin’s car was already there. The door to the house was unlocked, and Donovan stepped into the foyer, happily not greeted by a pack of ill-behaved dogs.
“Hello?” Donovan called.
“In here,” Austin yelled back.
“There are more than forty rooms in this house,” Donovan muttered to himself as he made his way down the hall. He was fairly certain that Austin had meant the formal living room. When he walked in, Austin and Stuart were seated on one of the sofas, drinking bourbon, or something amber and alcoholic, out of cut crystal glasses. “Cocktail hour already?”
Austin got up from the couch and embraced Donovan. “You want one?”
Stuart extended his arm to shake Donovan’s hand. “I’m glad you could come.”
“Where’s Mom? I feel like I should talk to her first.”
“She’s upstairs in her room,” Austin said. “Taking a nap.”
“She didn’t get much sleep last night,” Stuart said. “She was mad that I figured out what was going on and that I called you both.”
“I’ll sneak up there. I won’t wake her if she’s still sleeping.”
“You know where to find us,” Austin said.
Donovan jogged up the staircase and walked in the direction opposite from the route to his own bedroom. His mom’s wing of the second floor was tucked away from everything else, with a sitting room, large en suite bathroom, and a bedroom that in size, likely rivaled the queen’s private quarters at Buckingham Palace. He rapped on the door quietly, and was met by a low growl, but no other answer. Somewhere on the other side of the door was at least one dog. This required caution.
He turned the knob, only to discover that one of his mom’s chihuahuas was curled up next to the door in a tiny pink dog bed. It snarled at him again, and the bell on its collar tinkled, but Donovan remained undeterred. On the far side of the room was his mother’s bed, heavily populated with dogs who all turned and looked at him, then put their heads back down in near unison. Despite the circus that had taken place during the wedding weekend cocktail party, the black cat was curled up next to his mom, who was nothing but a tiny lump under the expanse of a deep red bedspread.
He crept to her side and reached down to push her hair from her face. “Mom?”
Her eyes popped open, and that alone was enough to rattle the dogs. They jumped off the bed en masse and started barking at Donovan. His mom sat up in bed and two-finger whistled, then threw back the covers, stormed across the room, flung open her door and yelled, “Everybody out!” They quieted down and scampered off. She turned to Donovan. “Not you, darling.”
It was nice to have the clarification. For a moment, he was unsure. “I’m sorry I woke you. Are you feeling that bad?”
“I was actually just dozing. A little tired, but some of that might be age.”
“How are you otherwise?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s all anyone has asked me today.”
“Mom. You have cancer. And you hid it from everyone. What were you thinking?”
She eased into one of two upholstered gold chairs near the window. She was wearing white satin pajamas that hung loosely on her. “I didn’t want anyone to worry.”
“Worry? You scheduled a mastectomy and then tried to send away the one person who would willingly take care of you.” Donovan sat in the other chair, but perched right on the edge of the seat, hoping his proximity would underscore how seriously he took this matter.
“You don’t understand what it’s like to get older.”
“Yes I do. I’m fifty-one years old.”
She grimaced and sighed. “I count my own birthdays, but for some reason, I forget to count everyone else’s.”
“That still doesn’t explain the situation.”
She looked off, out the window, the sun lighting up her face. If every line and wrinkle could tell a story, he had no doubt it would be quite a tale. “Saying it made it more real. I wasn’t ready to accept my own mortality. So I figured that if I kept it to myself, I’d get better, no one would be the wiser, and I’d manage to squeeze another twenty years out of this body of mine.”
Right then and there he had to face the truth of what he’d done when he’d dismissed his chest pains—he’d been a complete idiot. “You had to have known on some level that it was a terrible plan.”
