Finding Cassidy Read Free

slipped and fell. It’s nothing to worry about.” She fiddled with her coffee cup, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Are you hungry?”
    A little fall? Understatement was not Mom’s forte, either. Plus she was avoiding my question—a sure sign something was really wrong. “No, I’m not hungry. If it’s nothing to worry about, then why are they running tests?”
    “To be on the safe side, I imagine.”
    I sighed. “To be on the safe side of what?”
    “You know what doctors are like. It’s probably a slow night at the hospital.” She giggled faintly.
    “You didn’t answer me.”
    And she still didn’t. Instead, she jumped up, dumped the last of her coffee in the sink and rinsed the cup.
    “What’s going on, Mom?” My heart galloped to triple time. “What’s wrong?”
    Her shoulders slumped. She slid the cup into thedishwasher and collapsed into the chair across from me. “Oh, Dee Dee Bird,” she whispered.
    The old childhood nickname brought an unexpected lump to my throat. I clutched my orange juice and waited for her to explain. When she didn’t, I said, “Dad’s been stumbling around here for weeks. He’s been grumpy and short-tempered. He’s always kind of quiet, but lately he’s almost anti-social. And you guys have been fighting, too. You never, ever fight.”
    I envied the way my parents got along. I argued with them lots. Being sixteen, I figured it was part of my job description. But it sometimes left me feeling like an outsider in my own family. Brynna said it was because I had no brother or a sister to take my side. “What do you mean, Dad’s not well? He slipped. That’s not such a big deal.”
    “The doctor suspects an underlying condition.”
    “Is it his heart?” Dad had had a mild heart attack when I was in grade eight, the year after he’d become a city councillor.
    “It’s not his heart.” Mom’s lower lip trembled; she bit down on it.
    “Cancer?” I whispered, trying hard not to think of Nana in those last few months.
    “Not that either.”
    I was both relieved and exasperated. “What, then?”
    “It’s—” She licked her lips. “They think it’s some kind of neurological disease. It’s affecting his behaviour. There was a reporter nosing around the hospital tonight. Dad had those two car accidents last month; the reporter seems to think he has a drinking problem.”
    “That’s ridiculous.” It was; Dad rarely drank. “The roads were icy. Dad was tired.” At least that’s what he’d said. Maybe he hadn’t been tired at all. “What kind of neurological problem? What’s it called?”
    Mom plucked nervously at the sleeve of her red dressing gown. “Huntington’s chorea.”
    I was so afraid it was going to be one of the biggies like Alzheimer’s or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I’d never heard of this one before. “How bad is this…this Huntington’s thing?”
    “Chorea,” she corrected absently. “Huntington’s chorea.”
    “How bad is it?”
    She shrugged. “We don’t know for sure, baby. Let’s not speculate. Let’s just wait and see what they find.”
    I didn’t want to wait. This was my father she was talking about. My father. The guy who had the best brain of the three of us—for sure, the calmest and most practical one. “But what does it do? It affects the brain how?”
    “Cassidy, please! I’m too upset to think straight. We don’t even have a diagnosis yet.”
    I didn’t want to upset Mom any more, but I needed to know one thing for sure. “Will it kill him?” I blurted.
    She didn’t answer. Instead she stared at the floor.
    My heart jumped into my throat. This couldn’t be happening. Not to my dependable, throw-himself-at-life dad. My daddy. “Will it?” I whispered again. As desperate as I was for her answer, I was also afraid to hear it.
    “Maybe.” She looked up. The pain I saw in her eyes took my breath away. “But we’re all gonna die of something, baby.”
    Avoidance again. “If he has it, how long…”
    “Does