Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle

Mirabelle.”
    “Like it should be someone else?”
    “I just mean…Shit, it isn’t supposed to be fun people that get sick.”
    “Oh, you’re a sweetie.” I haven’t looked her in the eye yet.
    “Well, they’ll cut it out, right? Where is it? Not in your brain or something, I hope.”
    My whisper is even lower, such that I have to repeat myself when Patty squints at me. “Breast cancer.”
    Damned if she doesn’t light up when I say that. “Oh, babe! Hell, I’ve had three cousins and an aunt get that. They can just cut it right out, or even lop off a tit or two. You’ll be right as rain.”
    I can’t answer her. Nor can I look at her. I have another decision to make about how much to tell.
    “Mira? Honey?”
    That weight rests on my chest again, it’s like something pressing down, a vice, pushing, pushing. I put my hand over my heart to remind myself it’s still beating. “It’s worse than that,” I finally choke out.
    “No.” Patty grabs my hand across the table. “How much worse?”
    I put my forehead in my other hand. It’s so much harder to say this out loud than it is to smile and ignore it. I’m so right not to have told my children yet. Patty takes this gesture as her answer. “How could that be, in just a year?”
    “A year?” I finally pick my head up, and pull my hand back from hers. I need both hands to steady my beer for another drink.
    “Since your last mammogram.” Realization grows in Patty’s face, and her countenance darkens. Her eyebrows droop, and everything about her slumps a little lower. “You hate going to the doctor. Bet you haven’t gotten one of those things in years.”
    As with most best friends, I don’t have to speak. She can read my answer in my face, just like she knew already that I was sick though I’m putting on a pretty good act where everyone else is concerned. Though I’ve known her for more than twenty years, I’m not sure whether she’ll be angry, or crying, when I meet her eyes again.
    I look up, and I see neither. Her face is soft, expression mild. She’s a vision of compassion and openness, ready for whatever comes next.
    I put my head down on the table and weep, much to the horror of the college student waiter, who has come by with lunch menus. I don’t deserve such friendship.

CHAPTER 21
Ivan
    THE BOARDS OF THE DOCK CREAK UNDER IVAN’S FEET AS HE WALKS out to its end. As a boy, he used to get a touch of vertigo out there, seeing the sandy lake bottom appear to undulate under the clear, cold water.
    The fishing boats normally docked here are already out. It’s a perfect day for boating: hot and steamy on land, but out on the water, the lake breeze would be a welcome gift. Mira and Max never owned a boat, though. They were always so busy with their careers that they wouldn’t have used one, anyway.
    Ivan sits on the edge of the dock, dropping his bare feet into the bracing cold of the lake. He can still remember the summer his feet could first reach the water. He was twelve, and his girlfriend at the time was Kimmie Addison. Well, not so much girlfriend as object of distant affection, Ivan clarifies to himself. So little has changed.
    He could write a song called “Distant Affection.”
    Across the way are the condominiums, which seem to be winking at him with reflected sunlight. Ivan knows he’ll never live in a condo, because that’s what beautiful people do. Katya has a condo in Florida. Though, “beautiful” strikes him as the wrong word when he remembers Alex and what he did to Irina that day in his fancy condominium.
    Van pulls out his phone. He knows there are no more messages because he’s had the phone in his pocket all morning, and it vibrates so hard when it rings that it rattles the change in his pocket. Even so, he checks the voice mail. No new messages.
    He dials a number so familiar under his fingers it’s easier to dial it manually than page through the menus to select it from the programmed list. She picks up after