“Rachel,” she said. “Before you read anything. You need to understand some things. Your mother was sick for almost two years before you knew how serious it was.”
I remembered those months. God, I remembered them now, in a new and terrible light. Mom saying she was just tired. Mom brushing off the vacation Dad kept trying to plan. Mom on the phone telling me the treatment was going great, it was working, don’t you worry about coming home.
By the time she finally admitted she was dying, we had eleven weeks left. Eleven.
“You knew?” I said. “Back then? Before—”
“Before either of you did. Yes.”
I pushed back from the table. “Were you her doctor?”
“No.”
“Then why on earth would she tell you before she told her own husband? Before she told me?”
Helen looked at the scratched-out face on the wall. And she said, “Because I was her best friend.”
