Someone Else's Bucket List

SOMEONE ELSE’S BUCKET LIST AMY T. MATTHEWS www.kensingtonbooks.com Table of Contents Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Chapter 1 - Thanksgiving Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 - Thanksgiving Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 - 17. Plant a Tree Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 - 39. Piano Lessons with Mr. Wong Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 - 73. Sallying at Katz’s Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 - 74. Broadway Cameo Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 - 17. Plant a Tree Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 - 99. Antarctica by Air Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 - 17. Plant a Tree 100. Fall in Love Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 - A Regular Monday in March Acknowledgments KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018 Copyright © 2023 by Amy T. Matthews All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book. The K with book logo Reg US Pat. & TM Off. ISBN: 978-1-4967-4209-4 (ebook) ISBN: 978-1-4967-4208-7 For Tully, my friend And I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry And I said to myself, What next big sky? —Laurie Anderson In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. —Albert Camus Chapter 1 Thanksgiving Bree The last months of Bree’s life were, absurdly, full of hope. Hope like a burst of yellow; the vivid dash of goldenrod, daffodils, yarrow; a sudden splash of spring color in the monochrome of the wintery cancer ward. It came when she needed it most—when the world had narrowed to stark black and white. When she had all but given up. It was a thickly snowy season in Delaware, many months into her internment in the ward. Tethered to the bed, she’d seen spring and summer froth and flourish through panes of glass that were perfumed only with Lysol, and she watched the tree-of-heaven outside her window turn bright as hot coals as September fell into October, its fiery orange leaves fluttering like Himalayan prayer flags. She’d arrived in May with a cough and was still here in November, sicker than ever. She’d thought watching summer flitter by had been difficult, but winter was looking to be infinitely worse. It was like being buried alive. The hospital was muffled from late October on, with great drifts of constant snowfall. The gusting winds blew the last leaves from the trees well before Halloween, and November spat with ice storms and arctic temperatures. The windows fogged up and she lost her meager view. As Thanksgiving neared, Bree watched the perky newsreader on channel three sweeping her hand from North Carolina to Vermont, tracing the projection of yet another storm. The holiday was going to be bleak. Bree wasn’t sure which was worse: the weather outside, or the conditions in here, where the ice-white fluorescent lights hummed, everything had a chemical smell, and the food was so soft that it turned to paste when you tried to cut it. And then there was chemo . . . Just the thought of chemo made her want to curl into a ball. She still had mouth ulcers from her last course. “At least you’ll be free and clear of it for the holiday,” her oncology nurse had told her with brisk optimism. “You’ll be able to eat some turkey.” Bree could only imagine what the hospital kitchen could do to turkey. She pictured dry white shingles of meat in commercial-grade tinned gravy. Wrinkly peas. A couple of stubby carrots leached of color. If she was lucky . . . The nurses had hung desultory paper decorations around her room to lift her spirits. There were hand-stapled chains made from craft paper in the shade of overcooked pumpkin—which seemed apt. Wanda, one of the orderlies, had taped a cardboard turkey to Bree’s door. It had a slightly startled look and a weird tissue-paper tail that was the exact same shade as Clorox Bleach and Blue toilet water. Bree didn’t like the Bleach and Blue–tailed turkey on her door, but she didn’t have the heart to ask Wanda to take it down. Wanda had been so proud of herself for “cheering the place up”; how could Bree possibly tell her that all the cheer made her feel infinitely worse? At night Bree listened to the orange paper chains making limp rustling sounds. Like old leaves. It was the sound of seasons past, of the end of things. It made her think of the tree-of-heaven leaves, snatched from their moorings by the wind and sent tumbling into the night. Bree wasn’t a person naturally given to despair. When she’d first come into the hospital with pneumonia last May, she’d been the kind of person who posted motivational memes on her Instagram, the kind of person who took a selfie featuring the stupid hospital gown, amused by the oddly stylish wraparound print of the garment. This gown is snatched, you guys! She’d put a warm filter over the photo so she didn’t look quite so frightful. She hadn’t felt despair when she was sent for round after round of X-rays, or when