It’s so wrong, so unfair.

Come on. Who are you kidding?

Violent death at the hands of someone else is always, always wrong and unfair. But for it to happen to someone who’s been through cancer—someone who already stared the prospect of terminal illness in the face, not once, but twice, and won—it seems even more cruel.

On the table beside her chair, her cell phone rings.

Landry pounces on it, hoping it’s one of her blogger friends at last.

But the number in the caller ID window belongs to her cousin Barbie June.

Their mothers are sisters and they’d grown up like sisters themselves, born just ten months apart and raised right across the road from each other. They looked so much alike they were often mistaken for twins. They ran with the same crowd in high school, became roommates in their college sorority house, maid of honor at each other’s weddings and godmother to each other’s firstborns.

Ordinarily, Landry would pick up her cousin’s call, but not tonight. She just isn’t in the mood to try to explain about Meredith to someone who won’t understand—and there’s no way Barbie June will understand.

Her cousin has lots of great qualities.

Subtlety and empathy aren’t among them.

“I know you’re scared,” Barbie June told Landry when she opted for a preventative mastectomy over a lumpectomy, “but why put yourself through major surgery? Why disfigure yourself when you don’t have to? How are you going to wear that darling strapless dress you bought last month at Dillard’s?”

Landry bit back her anger and frustration, explaining why it was the right choice for her, despite the fact that her cancer was stage one—microscopic cells limited to one breast, with relatively low odds for a relapse.

There were no guarantees even with the surgery, but she had a husband and two young kids who needed her, and she intended to do everything within her power to take control and perhaps further reduce her chances of a recurrence.

Barbie June just didn’t get it.

“But look at Grammy,” Barbie June said. “She didn’t do anything so drastic, and she was just fine.”

Their maternal grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer a good forty years ago. She’d survived it with just a lumpectomy, minor treatment, and faith that God would let her live to a ripe old age. He did.

Unfortunately, she passed away just a year before Landry’s diagnosis. The quintessential steel magnolia, she’d have been a godsend: a fellow wife and mother who knew what it was like to face your mortality one day out of the clear blue sky.

That was why it was such a relief to her when she found Meredith and the others.

Naturally, Barbie June had since made her share of comments about her blog and social networking in general, hinting that it was for people who don’t have anything else to do.

Landry had always thought pretty much the same thing—until the day she went searching online for information about reconstructive surgery and stumbled across an irreverent breast cancer blog on the subject.

Back then, she barely knew what a blog was.

“I think it’s a sort of online daily journal,” she explained to Barbie June when she made the initial mistake of telling her about it.

When she described the post—an account of nipple reconstruction that managed to be simultaneously poignant and hilarious—her cousin reacted with an incredulous, “Why on God’s green earth would any halfway decent person put something like that out there in public for just anyone to read?”

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “I guess for the same reasons people keep diaries. Because sometimes it’s cathartic to write about things you can’t find the nerve to talk about. It’s an outlet.”

“Yes, but you write a diary for yourself. Not for perfect strangers to read.”

“Well, then, maybe they do it to help other people cope. Or maybe because they’re shy, and they can hide behind anonymity online, or because they’re lonely and socially isolated . . . who knows?”

Undaunted by her cousin’s disdain, Landry began to follow the cancer blogs daily, along with the usual barrage of comments from other readers.

Like a would-be pledge wistfully eavesdropping on a chatty cluster of sorority sisters, she noted not just the easygoing banter among the regulars on Meredith’s blog, but also their genuine compassion for each other. Nearly all were fellow breast cancer patients or survivors, and many were bloggers themselves. Landry clicked their links and began to follow their posts as well, on blogs that had clever titles like Yes, Ma’am(ogram) or Making the Breast of It.

Finally, she worked up her nerve to post a comment somewhere—was it on one of Meredith’s entries? Or Whoa Nellie’s?

She no longer remembers the details, only that she was welcomed so warmly that her shyness evaporated—kind of like the first time she stepped over the threshold of her college sorority house.

Barbie June didn’t understand that reference either. She knew her cousin would never understand why she was initially drawn to the online community, or why she was still there. Barbie June has asked, time and again, why she “still bothers” with her cancer blog now that she’s “cured.”

“Don’t you want to put the whole nasty thing behind you and move on?”

Landry sighs. How do you answer a question like that?

“I think she’s in denial,” she confided in her friend Everly. “She’s afraid that if it happened to me, and to our grandmother, then it could happen to her, too, and she doesn’t want to face—”

“Oh, please, she’s just jealous,” Everly cut in, “same as she always was back in high school whenever you got invited to a party without her. She wants to be front and center in your life, just like the old days. I’ve always thought it’s a wonder she doesn’t resent me—or resent Rob, even, for taking you away from her.”

“Don’t be silly,” was Landry’s response, though Everly had a point.

Barbie June’s possessiveness had occasionally reared its head during their formative years whenever Landry spent time with other friends, or when she had a boyfriend and her cousin didn’t. But by the time Rob came along, Barbie June was already engaged.

Now, she and her husband live in a waterfront home less than a mile away with their two children, a son and daughter born in reverse order of Addison and Tucker but almost exactly the same ages. The new generation of cousins isn’t nearly as close as their mothers and grandmothers had been, and their husbands aren’t particularly fond of each other, but despite traveling in different social circles with disparate lifestyles, Landry and Barbie June have maintained a connection over the years.

If she picks up the phone to talk to her cousin tonight, there will be no concealing the fact that something’s wrong. And if she were to tell Barbie June what happened to Meredith, she’s certain she wouldn’t be met with much sympathy.

The phone goes silent, and after a long pause, it beeps to indicate a new voice mail message.

Moments later the home phone begins to ring.

Barbie June again. If her cousin doesn’t get an answer on one number, she always tries the other—and sometimes she’ll even call Rob’s phone, trying to reach her.

Landry ignores the ringing, letting it, too, go into voice mail.

Guilt settles over her as she tries to go back to her book. What if the call was about a family emergency rather than the usual chit-chatty check-in?

Worried, she reaches for her cell phone to listen to the message.

“Hello there, darlin’. That was a divine picture of you and Rob and the Sandersons in the paper on Sunday, and I’ve been meanin’ to call you ever since I saw it. I know it’s Rob’s golf night so I figured you might be lonely. But—you’re not pickin’ up. Where the heck are you without your phone? I’ll try you at home. Buh-bye.”