“What are you doing?” Lexi asks curiously.

“Getting us off the big roads before some idiot hits us,” I tell her as I glance at the navigation screen just below my dashboard. I’m vaguely familiar with this area, as I dated—fucked—a nurse who lives close to here, which is also how I found the pizza joint next to The Grind. I was starving one night after I slipped out of her house and had a pie all to myself after.

This was apparently a good idea, as hardly any vehicles are on the street. I see a few have slid off the road, gone up onto sidewalks and such, but for the most part the cut-through traffic is light. My navigation system self-corrects for a new route to Lexi’s house.

I drive extremely slowly, because even though my vehicle is heavy, I can still feel it sliding if I get much over five miles per hour. However, without all the traffic, I can relax a little bit, so I ease into some more personal conversation, since this car ride is probably the extent of my date with Lexi.

“So, care to tell me more details about Brian Brannon and how that all came about?” I ask her, daring to glance over at her. I see her hands are relaxed in her lap, an indication she’s secure with my driving, but her face is seriously studying the road before us.

“Like I told you the other night, my mom got really sick a little over a year ago. Pancreatic cancer,” she adds on for explanation.

“I didn’t say it the other night, but I’m really sorry,” I tell her, because that’s what you say in these situations although admittedly, it’s difficult to me to relate to what she might be feeling.

“She had been sick awhile and made the decision not to tell me about it, but I was planning on a visit home for Christmas and she knew she couldn’t hide it from me.”

“Where were you living?” I ask her curiously, because she’s told me she’s lived sort of all over the place.

“Pittsburgh,” she tells me, but then her voice gets a little tense. “I was bartending there, taking some classes at night. Partying and having a good time.”

“Nothing wrong with having a good time,” I assure her, because I sense some self-loathing in her tone.

“Not when your mom is dying,” she murmurs, and I can’t fucking help myself. It’s dangerous as hell because of the road conditions, and it’s antithetical to who I am, but I reach across the console and take one her of her hands in mine.

“You can’t blame yourself if you didn’t know, Lexi,” I say gently.

She reacts with a squeeze to my hand and a sigh. “I know. Logically I know that, but emotionally, I feel terrible she went through any of that alone.”

I can only imagine.

Seriously. That’s not a metaphor, as I just have never experienced loss like that.

“So you moved back home?” I ask, to move her forward a bit and not dwell on her guilt.

“Yup,” she says, and her voice sounds stronger again. “She was pretty bad by the time she told me. Was in a lot of pain, very weak. She went into hospice not long after I moved back, and I pretty much lived in her room until she died.”

“How long did it take?” I ask, stemming from a slight amount of morbid curiosity, but also because I want her to share the details with me. For some reason, I really want her to share those brutal details because perhaps that will ease some of her burden.

“Once she went into hospice, she lasted almost another two weeks. She was unconscious most of the time, heavily drugged to keep the pain down. She couldn’t talk to me. She couldn’t eat. Not even sure she knew I was there. I sat by her bed for almost two weeks and watched her wither away until she just stopped breathing.”

“Jesus,” I mutter under my breath. “That’s awful.”

“Yes, it was,” she agrees with me softly. “It was a blessing when she died.”

My mind immediately turns to my own parents who are back in Prague. My father, Cenek, is a software architect for one of the largest global investment providers. My mother, Hedvika, is an executive for Škoda Auto, an automobile manufacturer and subsidiary of Volkswagen. It’s one of the largest employers in Prague. Needless to say, my parents are fairly well off and we lived in what would be considered a luxury apartment on the banks of the river Vltava overlooking Old Town. As I was growing up, and to this day, my parents were immersed in work. It was what was most important to them. From an early age, I concentrated on hockey, which was at their insistence at first merely so I would be occupied and would not bother them. This means we didn’t spend a lot of time together. There were times when I was a kid that I wanted their attention and I would sometimes act out. It’s probably where I get my prickly nature and the driving need sometimes to do what I want to do without regard to the circumstances. But for the most part, we had a fairly sterile relationship that maybe has a tinge of fondness to it, but was and still is sadly lacking in any real bond.

I think about my parents, who are lovely people and very nice, but almost like strangers to me, and I honestly don’t know how I’d feel if they got sick the way Lexi’s mom did. While I can’t seem to muster any real empathy for my own situation, I know I feel a tremendous amount for the sassy woman beside me who has persevered through some really bad times.

“She told you about Brian before she died,” I say as a statement, as she told me that much already. “Why did she keep it hidden from you?”

I can see Lexi shrug from the corner of my eye and her voice is light when she says, “I think she had a bit of a broken heart when he cut things off with her. He was still hung up on his dead wife and couldn’t give my mom what she wanted. Plus, my mom was just one of those people who didn’t like to impose or be a burden, as evidenced by the fact she kept her illness hidden from me.”

My tires slide a little, alarming me enough to give her hand a quick squeeze before releasing it to move it back to the steering wheel. I could downplay this with Lexi, but that’s not my style. I’m bold in my opinions, but hopefully deliver them with a measure of tact. “It was wrong of your mom to keep knowledge of your dad from you, and I know you have to be reeling over all of this. But not sure she was wrong about sparing you her illness. That was purely her protective instinct kicking in.”

“I agree with you on all of that,” she says simply. “I’ve had a lot of time to process all of this and try to come to grips with it. This past week has been a little wild having just met Brian and Gray, but I think things will even out.”