After she hung up the phone, Mackenzie sat on a bench nearby and held her head in her hands. “How am I gonna do this without you Carter?” she asked herself over and over.
“Excuse me miss…are you all right?” Came a voice above her.
Mackenzie looked up with a tearstained face at the man who stood above her. She placed him at about 45 with graying hair and thick eyebrows. His gaze seemed gentle and caring. “I’m gonna be all right,” she lied. “Things just aren’t going my way right now.”
“You’re telling me,” the man said. “Cancer…it’s a killer.”
“How’d you know?” Mackenzie said cautiously, a little shocked.
The man cleared his throat as if he were about to cry. “I’m on my way to see my oldest daughter be lowered into the ground. Leukemia claimed her life.”
“It’s about to claim mine too,” Mackenzie allowed two tears to fall from her eyes before wiping them away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
The man looked at Mackenzie and put an hand on her shoulder. “A word of advice,” he said. “Don’t loose faith. You can bet this. You just have to keep a positive attitude about it. I think that the only reason my daughter died was she gave up. Her fiancee cheated on her and then left her for another women and she just gave up. You can’t do that to yourself and your family. Plus, I’m sure that there’s a man in your life that needs you…right?”
Mackenzie listened to those words intently. “I…kind of…I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story,” Mackenzie said. It took twenty minutes for the man to pry the story out of her, but Mackenzie found that talking about it made her feel better.
“This guy sounds like a jackass…he just up and left you like that?”
The words stung. “Nick’s not a jackass necessarily. I didn’t tell him…he has a right to be mad.”
“You’re the one suffering Mackenzie,” the man said. “Not Nick.” As the man finished his sentence, a Chevy Lumina pulled up on the curb.
“That’s my mom,” Mackenzie announced. “Thank you for everything sir and I’m very sorry about your daughter. I only wish there was something I can do, but your experience has taught me valuable information. Thank you and good luck. “
Chapter Seventeen
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