The Truths Behind the Life of Maeve Sun Lively

64

IT WAS RAINING HARD ON the day Mary Qiu was buried. It didn't match the way she was at all, her joyful face, always trying to help you even when you didn't need it, always gleeful and happy, yet can be serious and get to business at the same time. So many people came to her funeral, from around the world, they came to pay their respects.

I wasn't crying anymore. I had drained too many of my tears, that after a week, no more could come out for the actual day to say goodbye to her. I wore my ugliest black dress, and remembered Mary telling me how she'd show me her ways of making her appearance. She never got to, did she?

Cameron stood next to Mason, holding an umbrella over his head, the rain pouring a little onto him because of that. None of us cared that I wasn't pretending to be Cameron's dear girlfriend and that he was instead next to my agent, because the press were told, no, warned, to not come close.

Mason was on his knees in front of the hole Mary's coffin was about to be put into. He wouldn't let them put it in. I've never seen him cry so much, and it ached me very much I couldn't do anything.

I stood there, black umbrella over my own head as I watched people watch Mason, and then my eyes all over back to him. He hadn't been acting like himself. He wouldn't talk to me, not even Cameron. And since me and Cameron weren't on speaking terms either because of what happened at the Academy Awards, I was basically talking to no one.

People recognized me, some asking for autographs, and I would have been mad at them for being so disrespectful if for not that all my energy felt somewhere else. I felt like a ball of swollen stuff. No one came to ask me how I felt, Cameron mad at me, Mason dealing with his own extra weight of pain.

I watch the people arranging the coffins try to move Mason out of the way, who was screaming at them to stop, and Cameron trying to calm Mason down and pull him away. I watched the people watching, confused since Mary never announced having a son. It felt like I wasn't really there anymore.

"She was in stage four of renal cancer when she found out," the doctor explained to me and Mason right after I saw her cold body, covered with a blanket. You do not know how relieved I was that that blanket was there.

I was the one who was really paying attention to the doctor and did most of the talking and paperworks, because Mason, he couldn't even look at the doctor. This memory pains me.

I cleared my throat, looking at Mason who was beside me, hands in his hair as his elbows rested on his two knees, head bowed down. "Around when did she find out?"

"Three years ago. We tried everything, but...you know how it is, when it's at this stage," he shook his head. "There isn't really anything we can do other than to give the medicine to help them live a more normal life, giving them closure on their last few years in this world."

"So she knew..." I glanced at Mason, his head facing the floor. "She knew she only had this much time left...she didn't tell us."

"I'm very sorry for your loss. She was a lovely woman."

I shook my head, tears once again springing out of my eyes. I looked at the doctor hard in the eyes. "Tell me. Tell me how much time she was supposed to have left."

He looked taken back. "Ma'am, I don't think that will make you feel any better about——"

"Just tell me!" The tears finally came, I didn't want them to.

"Five. At least it was supposed to be five. She only got to live three, she had two more years left...that was when the symptoms should've really started showing and been more painful. I guess it was good she didn't...have to go through that pain."