MOLLY LAY WIDE AWAKE in bed, listening to Jack’s gentle snores. She hadn’t slept a wink that night. How could she? Her girl was going into hospital to have her breasts removed. It was the right thing to do. If Rabbit had known she’d had the gene, if she’d been given the opportunity to save herself, she would have. Molly knew that now. Sometimes it takes a death to put life into perspective. Even though she was on board she was worried. Medicine had progressed so much in so few years it was hard to wrap her mind around it. Her breasts would be gone but they would be replaced. She wouldn’t be exactly the same woman ever again; she’d be battle-scarred but not broken, and most importantly she’d be alive.

Molly wished the day away. It was hard to be relegated to the sidelines; much easier for a woman like her to be in the thick of it, holding Grace’s hand, putting on her gown, putting slippers on her feet, brushing her hair, whispering words of comfort and holding her hand right up until that moment when she disappeared through a door. She envisioned the trolley being wheeled into a sterile room and under lights, and Grace asleep while strangers cut into her and took pieces away. It would be better to be the one walking the hospital floor with her phone on her hip and ready to respond to any nurse or doctor with news. She desperately wanted to be there when Grace opened her eyes to a new fuzzy world filled with pain and fear. She’d know what to say and what to do. She’d done it for Rabbit every time and she was Grace’s mother, for God’s sake, but Grace had Lenny and his place was by his wife’s side. Don’t mess this up, Lenny. It was going to be a long day, and she refused to spend it waiting for the phone to ring. The arrival of Davey and Juliet would be a great distraction later in the morning. Francie and Jay Byrne had organised a shindig in Rabbit’s name for that very night, so all she had to do was get through the early part of the morning.

If there had been one day Molly considered going to church, that would have been it. She’d passed it three times while strolling around the area aimlessly, and maybe if Father Frank had been there and seen her pass by he could have enticed her in, but he wasn’t and he didn’t so she kept walking. It was five in the morning. Sorry.

Chapter Thirty-Eight: Grace

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Grace