One Last Thing Before I Go

played out?”
    “The tumor has shrunk significantly. Now they want to operate.”
    Jack sits back in his chair, disgusted. “Shit! You guys are going to die and leave me alone in this shithole, is that it? Is that the fucking plan?”
    Oliver laughs. “That’s not the fucking plan.”
    “So what is the plan?” Silver says.
    They all watch as Sad Todd executes a shockingly flawless freestyle flip at the far wall of the pool, cutting smoothly through the water on his way back across. We were all other people before this, Silver thinks.
    “I’d like to see my kids,” Oliver says. “Before the surgery.”
    Silver and Jack trade a look. Oliver never discusses his children with them.
    “Where are they?” Silver says.
    “My daughters all live out west. But my son is in Jersey.”
    Jack nods and gets to his feet. “OK. I’ll drive.”
    Oliver looks up at him. “What, right now?”
    Jack looks down at both of them as he pulls on his shirt. “Damn straight, right now. Between the two of you, someone could drop dead at any minute. I don’t even feel safe hanging out with you anymore. It’s like a fucking bad-luck convention.” He heads for the building. “Meet you in the lobby in twenty.”
    Oliver and Silver watch him walk away. “Deep down,” Oliver says, “he means every word.”
    Silver laughs. Oliver laughs along with him. In the pool, Sad Todd flips over and turns, just like the world.
    * * *
    Oliver’s son, Tobey, lives in Long Branch, on the Jersey Shore. It will take them around two and a half hours to get there. It’s a perfect day for a drive in Jack’s convertible—the sky is cloudless and the recent rain has drained the air of its leaden humidity—and despite the somber nature of their mission, they can’t help but treat this as a road trip. Casey comes along for the ride, sitting in the back with Silver, her face turned up to the sun, eyes closed, listening to music on her phone. Silver sits back, his knees braced against the back of Jack’s seat, enjoying the wind coming in waves over Jack’s windshield to lightly brush against his face.
    When they arrive in Long Branch, windblown and dusty, Oliver can’t find the house. They drive around for a while, up and down quiet residential streets filled with large, laid-back-looking homes, while Oliver tries to get his bearings. Jack offers to put the address into GPS, but Oliver is adamant that he can find the place, and seems unwilling to have to resort to satellites, as if that would be too much confirmation of this decade-long estrangement. But he finally gives in, pulling up the address from his phone, his faced etched with frustration.
    Two right turns later, they pull up in front of a large, comfortable-looking house with an L-shaped addition and the shoreline visible about a quarter of a mile behind the backyard. It’s an idyllic house, almost fake in its relaxed perfection. Oliver whistles, impressed.
    “Restored Georgian, five bedrooms, three and a half baths, newly renovated, ocean views. That’s some serious real estate.”
    “What does your son do?” Silver asks.
    “He writes children’s books.”
    “He must be good at it.”
    Oliver gazes out from the car, sinking down in his seat. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
    “You are sick,” Jack says. “That’s why we’re here.”
    “Nevertheless,” Oliver says. Then he cracks open his door and pukes onto the sidewalk.
    “Seriously, Oliver?” Jack says, looking away.
    Casey leans forward to rub Oliver’s back, a gesture that strikes Silver as particularly generous considering she barely knows him, and he feels a warm lump form in his throat.
    “We shouldn’t have come,” Oliver says, pulling himself back into a sitting position, wiping his mouth on a loose napkin from the floor. “I think we should go.”
    Casey looks over at Silver, her eyes imploring him to intervene.
    “You can’t be serious,” Jack says.
    “I’m sorry,” Oliver says, still looking a bit green. “This was a mistake.”
    “Bullshit!” Silver says loudly.
    Jack and Oliver both turn around to look at Silver, unaccustomed to such vocal certainty from him.
    “This is not a mistake. The mistakes were already made, years ago. We all made them. And we’ve been paying for them ever since. But there’s only so long we can keep paying. I don’t know what happened between you and your son. But whatever you did to him, it can’t be any worse than what I did to Casey—”
    “I slept