Maddy's Oasis

Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

It was on the fourth long day, when she forced herself to the office half an hour before the workers, that she finally admitted to herself how doomed the project was. Normally, her optimism took months to wear off, but this time … no, this time she knew upon standing in front of the project that it was only a matter of time before she would run for the hills like Alex.

The office was finally clean and the files organized. The tiny bathroom still stunk, but she couldn't quite determine where the smell came from. This day she carried a suit bag and bathroom essentials. After sleeping a mere three hours a night in the hotel an hour drive away, she had decided to spend the night at the office. Five hours of sleep was not her usual, but it was better than three.

She entered the office, flipping on the two lights. Her eyes fell to the blueprints she had laid out on the desk the night prior. She pulled two books—one a new accounting book to replace Alex's disgusting attempt to track finances, and the second a book on reading blueprints—from her bag and tossed them on top of the blueprints.

Her phone buzzed, and she tapped the Bluetooth.

"Madeleine Winters."

"Hey, baby."

"Hi, Mama. How're you feeling today?" she asked, sitting on a couch.

"Can't complain," was the chipper response. "How's your new project going?"

Madeleine looked around her and suppressed a sigh.

"It's going, Mama," she answered.

"You can always quit and come home. I'll meet you at the airport."

"No, Mama," she said. "You know that's not possible. We need the money."

"Money isn't everything, baby."

"Mama, you know we need it to make you better."

"Of course, if I keel over dead this week, I'd probably be thinking I'd rather have the time with you than know you're a million miles away for money. I'm getting old, and the doctor's almost out of options, Maddy," her mother said. "He's told me twice I've only had six months to live."

"And twice he's been wrong," Madeleine pointed out. "The cancer's on the last leg, Mama. Just a little more time and a helluva lot more money, and you'll be better."

"All right, baby, if you say so."

Madeleine chuckled at her disapproving tone, unable to quell her sense of panic at her mother's words and condition. A small part of her realized her mother was right: if she couldn't beat the cancer, or if it came back as the doctors thought it might, the time she spent on this project would be some of the last good months her mother had alive.

Then again, if she continued paying what she was for the best cancer treatment in the world, her mother would have a better chance of making it.

"I've gotta get going, Mama," she said. "Rest well today."

"Love you, baby."

"Love you, Mama."

Madeleine hung up and sat for a long moment, her mind on her mother. She crossed to her desk at long last and opened her notebook to her list of priorities, one of many lists she made on a regular basis. Her priorities list was small and squeezed between a length to-do list from last week and her packing list for her trip out. Absently, she noticed she'd forgotten to cross off socks from her packing list. She crossed it out and then underlined her priorities list again.