“I’ll be there, it’s fine. It’s probably nothing,” I told her as confidently as I could, but in the back of my mind I was thinking that she hadn’t looked well for weeks now. She seemed to be a little relieved by my confidence, which had been the intent, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty for what amounted to lying to her.

I wasn’t the only one worried, as the looks on Bette, Helena and Jenny’s faces told me. Alice knew something was up, but to her credit she didn’t say anything, probably so as not to upset the kids. We went to the restaurant and things were fine, aside from the fact that Kit begged off eating anything. That worried me, too.

Turns out, we had good reason to be concerned. Kit was diagnosed with stomach cancer less than a week later, and it was fairly advanced. She told me she didn’t want to even consider chemo, which of course enraged Bette, but I could see her point. She did agree to surgery and radiation, though. Looking back on it I think she probably did it to shut her sister up, and it worked for awhile.

Charlie took her sickness the hardest. For reasons we couldn’t really explain, he’d started to gravitate toward Kit more as he got older. I like to think that he might have reminded her a little of David, her own son. She doted on him constantly, and on Kallie too. She tried to be fair to both of them, but there was no way to doubt the special friendship she had with Charlie.

Kit started to be in and out of the hospital a lot, in more than out. It was hard for everybody, and the first several times she was in there we couldn’t even get Charlie to go into her room. It was the same way with Shane. She hated hospitals and only went because she knew Kit wanted to see her. Eventually she seemed to get used to going, although she’d be pretty tense when she was actually in the hospital. Everyone else went to see Kit as often as they could, but it never seemed to get any easier for Charlie.

His swimming performance started to suffer when she was admitted as an inpatient. It wasn’t as if any of us were upset about it, and he apparently didn’t care much either. Kit, however, was devastated and told him that if he tried harder, she’d try as hard as she could to get released before his next meet. She promised Kallie that she’d come to a basketball game, too.