“Thanks, but I think I’d rather keep handling this on my own for a little while longer. Once I figure out what’s happening to me, maybe I can come up with some way to counter it.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Before Reeny could say more, the server returned with her credit card and handed it to her, along with a final bill and a black pen to sign it.
“I hope you both have a wonderful day,” he said, and gave them a final smile before going off to see to other customers.
Fat chance of that, Lori thought.
When Reeny finished adding a tip and signing the check, she held it up as if to inspect her work, make sure her signature was neat and legible, her math accurate. As she did this, Lori saw a message scrawled onto the back of the bill in black ink.
Confess and atone – or suffer.
She almost told Reeny about the message, but she decided not to. As much of a relief as it had been to tell her sister about everything that had happened, she wondered if it had been wise. What if by talking to Reeny, she ended up bringing her to the attention of the Cabal? As long as Reeny believed she was delusional and that the Cabal wasn’t real, they’d have no reason to harass her.
She hoped.
* * *
They walked into the parking lot together. They hugged, and Reeny made Lori promise to call if things got worse. Lori said she would, though she suspected Reeny knew this for the lie it was. Reeny climbed into her red Nissan Altima, started the engine, then after a last worried look and a wave, she backed out of the space, put the car in gear, and drove off. Lori got in her Civic and turned on the engine, but she sat there for a moment, thinking, trying to decide on her next move. She was still debating when her phone rang, startling her. She almost didn’t check to see who was calling, afraid to find it was someone from the Cabal. But the phone’s display screen indicated it was Justin, so she answered it.
Instead of saying hello, she said, “Justin?” as if unsure it was really him on the other end.
“Hey.”
His voice was subdued, but it was him.
Before he could say anything else, she said, “I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”
He didn’t respond right away, and she thought he was still angry with her. She was going to apologize further, but he said, “I got the CT scan results this morning.”
She was confused. She’d known he’d had a doctor’s appointment, but he’d said nothing to her about needing a CT scan.
“Justin, what are you—”
“I didn’t want to say anything to you until I was sure. I didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I just wanted to pretend that everything was normal for a little while longer, you know? Still, that’s no excuse for keeping you in the dark like I did. Sorry.”
Lori was stunned. After everything that had happened since last night at FoodSaver, she’d come to expect that her life was going to continue to get increasingly fucked up. But finding out that her boyfriend had some kind of ongoing medical issue – evidently a serious one – that he hadn’t told her about seemed equally as surreal as sadistic occultists in blood-red robes and black cars traveling an ebon road beneath a starless sky.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’ve been feeling rundown for a couple months, so much so that I’ve been guzzling coffee by the gallon trying to stay functional. It helped, but not as much as I’d hoped. I decided to go to the doctor for a checkup, and the doctor ordered a series of tests. X-rays indicated the presence of shadowy masses on my lungs, so the doctor ordered a CT scan.”
The word shadowy caught her attention as much if not more than masses. She imagined night-black multijointed fingers entering Justin’s mouth, reaching down into his lungs, infecting them with darkness.
“It looks like cancer,” Justin said. “How bad it is, we won’t know until we do a biopsy. I’ve got one scheduled for next week. But the doctor’s already talking about aggressive chemotherapy, so I know he thinks it’s pretty bad.”
Lori wanted to say something to comfort Justin, but nothing came to her. What can you say to someone who’s just told you that their body has betrayed them in one of the most horrible ways imaginable?
“Where are you? I want to see you.”
In an awful way, she was almost glad Justin had called her with this news. It gave her something to focus on besides herself and the shitshow her life had become in the last twenty-four hours. She would go to Justin, comfort him as best she could, and in so doing hopefully forget – if only for a little while – about the Cabal. She knew this was selfish, that it made her a terrible person, but there it was.
“I’m at work. I wanted to try to keep the rest of my day as normal as possible, take my mind off—” he paused, “—off it. It’s not really working, though.” He let out a mirthless laugh.
She wanted to tell him to leave work so they could be together, but she didn’t. Doing so would be focusing on her needs, not his. Maybe she wasn’t so selfish after all.
“Then how about after work? I could come over to your place.”
Justin almost never came to her apartment. Even if Larry wasn’t there, his presence was – at least that’s what Justin said – so when they spent time together, it was usually at his condo.
“Sure,” he said, voice devoid of emotion. “That would be great.” Another pause, then, “I should go. I’ve got a lot of stuff to do this afternoon.”
“Okay. I’ll come over around six. Sound good?”
He didn’t respond to her question, and she wondered if he’d even heard it.
“Bye,” he said, then disconnected.
Normally, he told her he loved her when he said goodbye to her over the phone. It always made her uncomfortable, but now that he hadn’t said the words, she was surprised by how much she missed hearing them.
She put her phone back in her purse and sat there for several moments, trying to absorb what Justin had told her. Her initial reaction was that he was too young to get cancer. She knew this wasn’t true, though. Cancer could strike at any time during a person’s life, and while she associated lung cancer with smoking, she also knew that a person who’d never touched a cigarette could also contract it. Still, she couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that Justin’s diagnosis was related to the Cabal somehow. Perhaps they’d caused his cancer in order to punish her further. She recognized this as another egocentric thought – that she was trying to make Justin’s cancer about her when she should be thinking about him. And even if the Cabal wanted to harm Justin to punish her, it wasn’t as if they’d made him sick overnight. He hadn’t told her he was getting a CT scan, but he would’ve had to have had it done at least a few days ago in order to get the results this morning. It took time for a pathologist to examine the scan’s results and then send a report to Justin’s doctor. Whatever abilities the Cabal possessed, they couldn’t reach backward in time to give Justin cancer. Then again, who knew what they could do and what sort of unnatural laws governed their actions?
If Justin’s cancer had been caused by the Cabal, however they’d managed it, that meant no one she knew was safe. They’d already done something to Katie and Melinda. Who else might be next? Reeny and her family? Their parents? Larry? Her clients at the clinic? She couldn’t let any harm come to them, but she had no idea how to prevent the Cabal from hurting them.
Or did she?
She remembered Reeny’s words about the Cabal.
If you can figure out what they think you’ve done, then you can make amends for it, whatever that entails.
