Chapter 1
Spencer knew on a purely logical level that it was a possibility, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less when, two days before she’s set to fly across country, she gets a call from her dad saying without saying that she’s too late. That she missed her chance.
That her mother is dead.
The past eight months have been moving toward this, though no one wanted to say it. The Hastings sojourn to Los Angeles, seeking some kind of mystical new breast cancer treatment, was nothing if not a Hail Mary, and Spencer knew in her gut that it wouldn’t work, even if she couldn’t admit it.
If only she’d gotten out there sooner.
“Was she alone?” is the first thing Spencer asks. She’s read lots of stories of terminally ill people waiting to let go until no one is in the room. There are many theories as to why this is, though none of them seem very comforting right now. The idea of her mom all by herself…
“No, she wasn’t,” her father assures her gruffly. “I was with her, the whole time.” She can’t tell if he’s lying or not, but then he clears his throat, and Spencer knows what that means. There’s some business to attend to. “Listen, I need to get back to Rosewood right away and get things in order.”
“Okay,” Spencer murmurs, not really focusing on his words. She brushes her fingers beneath one eye, catching some tears in the process. She isn’t really sure when she started crying, but that’s been a common theme these past few weeks.
“Your mother wanted to be cremated,” Peter explains. “She also wanted you to have her car.”
“Her car?” Spencer echoes. It sounds so strange. She didn’t even know her mother had procured a car during their few months in L.A.
“Yes,” Peter confirms. “You know how she always liked to drive, and we got a little Prius that she loved. Even toward the end, she’d ask me to take her on long drives around the city.” Spencer can hear some tears in her father’s voice then, and it startles her. She’s only ever heard her dad cry once, after the death of his own mother, and even then she was too young to recall it clearly now. It’s like an image rendered from a dream: fuzzy and heavy with emotion, but not quite real.
Spencer blinks a few times. She has a feeling she knows where this is going, but her brain feels too tired to put the pieces together, so she says again, “Okay.”
Peter sighs. He's probably disappointed that she's forcing him to spell this out for her. “What I’m asking, Spence, is if you could come out here, get the car and…” Peter clears his throat again. “And…your mother, and bring them both back East for the service.”
Spencer props her head in her hands. “That’s, like, a forty-hour drive, Dad,” she points out.
“I know,” Peter says. “But it might be good for you. Get you out of D.C. for a bit. Give you some time to think and—and process.”
Spencer doesn’t really know what to say to that. She doesn’t know what to say to anything. Her entire body has felt cold ever since she heard the news. “Okay,” she hears herself say for the third time this conversation. She’s not sure where she finds the words, but more come now, louder than the ones before them: “I’ll do it.”