Jolene said very little. She listened and nodded and stood there. Not once did she sit down, even though her hip started to ache.
As night fell, she saw Michael come up to the open door.
He saw her standing there by Sarah’s bed, and he smiled. She thought about the letter she’d written him all those months ago, those few simple words: I loved you beginning to end. No wonder she hadn’t been able to say anything more. What else was there?
She’d had to go to war and lose almost everything to find what really mattered.
I’m so proud of you, he mouthed. At that, she felt something open up inside of her, in the deepest, most untouched part of her heart that for years and years had been hers alone.
Tears stung her eyes, blurred her vision until he was the only solid and true thing in this bright, unfocused world. She could feel her tears, streaking down her cheeks, taking years of hurt with them. She wiped them with the back of her hand until her tears were gone, a memory.
Epilogue
Summer comes, as it always does, in a wash of light and expectation. One day it is cool, wet spring, and then, as if at the turn of a switch, the sun returns. Long, hot days bake the pebbled shores of Liberty Bay, turn the already-weathered dock into brittle, silvery slats of wood trimmed in dune grass. Shorebirds call out to one another, swooping and flapping above the peaked blue waves.
Jolene sits in the Adirondack chair on her small deck, watching Michael and Carl teaching Lulu how to fly a kite. Betsy and Seth run along behind, laughing, waving their hands in the air. Mila is their adoring, cheering audience. The day smells of kelp steaming on the rocks and charcoal burning down to ash in the barbecue pit.
Every few seconds, someone yells: “Look, Mom!” and she looks up, smiling and waving. It isn’t that she can’t walk along the beach. In her new prosthesis, she can do almost anything—she runs, she skips, she chases after her five-year-old. She even wears shorts and rarely feels self-conscious.
She is here, separate from them, because she has something to do … something she’s been putting off. She can’t do it with them, but neither can she quite do it without them.
Lulu’s giggle floats on the air.
Jolene reaches down for the letter in her lap. Her hand shakes as she picks it up and sees her name in her best friend’s handwriting.
At last. After months of therapy, she is past the time when words can break her. Or, she hopes she is.
She eases the seal open, feels it resist for a second and then give. The letter is written on plain copier paper. She can imagine Tami on that last day before they left, with her clothes piled in a heap on her bed and her duffle bag by the floor. She would have rushed around, looking for something to write on, and probably curse that she’d forgotten to buy stationery. Tami was like that; she remembered all of life’s big things, but the little details had often passed her by.
Jo
If you’re reading this, it didn’t go the way I wanted over there. It’s funny, I never thought I’d die. I pictured you and me lasting forever, sitting on your deck, watching our kids grow up while we managed to stay young. I hope that’s where you are now. In a deck chair, with a fire going in the pit. I hope Michael and Carl are down with the kids on the beach. Is my chair empty beside you?
Jolene looks up, into the clear blue sky. An eagle flies past, dives deeply into the blue water, and comes up with a bright silver salmon in its beak, dripping water on Jolene as it soars to the top of an evergreen.
Don’t be whining about how much you miss me. Of course you miss me. Wherever I am, I miss you, too. But you know all that. From the time we met, we knew everything that mattered about each other, didn’t we? We just knew. I guess that’s what best friends are: parts of each other. So you’ll have that with you, have me with you.
I don’t want to get maudlin. I’m sure you’ve cried enough tears for me to fill the bay. I know I would cry for you.
God, Jo, we had it all, didn’t we? That’s what I’m thinking about now, on a sunny day when I’ve been asked to think about my death.
Here’s what matters: take care of my baby. My Seth. It’s hard to even write his name. My damn pen is shaking. Make sure he knows me. Me. There are bits of me that only you can share. Tell him about my dorky sense of humor, how I used to cry when he hit a baseball in Little League, what dreams I had for him. Make him know that I was more than his mother; I was his champion. Tell him that sometimes when I laugh too hard, I sound like a seal. Help him remember me. That’s my last request of you.