Where the Stars Still Shine

by Trish Doller

  Greg nods. “She’s in recovery right now. Stable condition.”

  “I promised I would stay with her.”

  “You wouldn’t have been allowed, Cal. They had to, um—pump her stomach. And you were in shock, so I had one of the nurses administer a sedative to help you relax until they let us see her.”

  “Can we?”

  He nods. “Soon.”

  There are dark circles under his eyes and I wonder if he’s slept, or if he kept vigil beside my bed all night.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “For everything.”

  “We don’t have to talk about this now.”

  “I want talk about it,” I say. “I love it here with you, and Phoebe, and the boys, and—I love you, Dad. I don’t want to leave.”

  He brushes my hair back from my forehead the way Mom does and I allow myself to take comfort from the gesture, instead of feeling as if I’m betraying her. I’m doing what Kat suggested. This is what I want. He smiles. “I don’t want you to leave, either.”

  The privacy curtain around us slides open, and a doctor comes in. His name, Dr. Labasilier, is embroidered in blue on his white lab coat. “How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Better.”

  “I like the sound of that.” His accent is French Caribbean, and it reminds me of the vending-company guy who used to collect the money from the machines at the Super Wash. He was one of those people who could whistle high notes without losing the tone, and his smile made me feel as if my insides were made of bubbles.

  “Also, I’ve got good news for you.” Dr. Labasilier straps a blood-pressure cuff around my arm and begins pumping the bulb. “Your mother is awake and you may see her in thirty minutes. You’re welcome to wait, but I might suggest you’ll feel more refreshed if you go home, wash up, and have a bite to eat.”

  The cuff releases with a whoosh.

  “You’re free to go,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”

  Chapter 23

  “I’ve never missed church on Christmas before,” Greg says as we ride the elevator up to the hospital’s third floor, after a quick trip home for showers and breakfast. A note on the kitchen counter from Phoebe explained that she’s taken the boys to Christmas services with her family and that she’ll meet us at the hospital later. I feel bad that all the Christmas Day presents from Santa are still waiting, unwrapped, under the tree, and I don’t know when Tucker and Joe will have the chance to open them.

  “I’ll be okay,” I tell my dad. “If you want to join them.”

  He shakes his head. “I think God will understand that my daughter needs me more than he does.”

  My mom’s room is the first on the left, and a nurse is checking her chart. My dad hangs in the doorway as I enter the room. Mom’s eyes are closed, but I can see the rise and fall of regular breathing, and a monitor beside her beeps softly along with her heartbeat.

  “Mom?” I say it softly so I won’t startle her, and touch my fingers to hers. They’re warmer now and a tube stretches up from her hand to a bag of clear fluid. Her eyes open, and a tear escapes from the corner, trickling down toward her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  I reach for a tissue and wipe away the trail the tear left behind. Another follows and I erase that one, too. There’s no strength in her grip as her fingers curl around mine, but I can feel the plea in them. I can see it in her eyes.

  “Forgive me.”

  Forgiveness has never been something I’ve had to consider. Never an option. I’ve always granted it because she is my mother, but the price I’ve paid for her choices has been high and I have a right to be angry. Except choosing anger, choosing blame, won’t bring back all that was lost. The only thing I can do is hold on to what I have right now, so that it can’t ever be lost again.

  My fingers answer first, squeezing back gently, and I lean over to whisper in her ear.

  Just one word.

  “Always.”

  She gives me a tiny, weary smile. “I need to talk to your dad for a minute, okay?”

  Greg and I swap places. I’m leaning against the wall outside the room when Phoebe comes around the corner from the elevator. She’s wearing her dark-green Christmas dress and heels—and she’s crying. “Where’s Greg?”

  “Phoebe?” His voice comes from Mom’s room and they reach each other just outside her door. “What happened?”

  “My mom—” She crumples against him and his arms go around her, sheltering her. “She didn’t wake up this morning. She’s gone.”

  Greg says soft words of comfort, words just for her, as she sobs into his chest. Watching makes me feel like an outsider, but I don’t know what to do. I want to be with my mom, but that feels selfish when Phoebe’s just lost hers.

  “Where are the boys?” I ask.

  “Alex dropped me off here, then took them home so they wouldn’t see her like that,” she says, her tissue fighting a losing battle against her tears. “It’s a blessing that she died peacefully in her sleep, instead of suffering the agony of being starved to death by her disease, but—I can’t believe she’s gone.”

  “I’ll go home and stay with the boys so Alex can be with you and your dad,” I say. “Let me just say good-bye to my—” I stop abruptly, not wanting to remind her that my mom is alive.

  “Oh, God, Callie.” Phoebe starts sobbing again. “I can’t take you away from your mother.”

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. “She needs the rest. I can come back later.”

  Mom lifts a tired hand as I enter her room, waving me off. “Your family needs you,” she says. I listen for sarcasm, for anger, but it’s not there. She just sounds drowsy, and she blinks slowly, fighting off sleep.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say. “I promise.”

  Alex is sitting on the top step of the back deck while Tucker and Joe wallow happily in the detritus of Christmas. They’ve unwrapped every gift, including the presents from Kat and the architecture book I bought for Greg. A blue Sesame Street monster chatters on the television as Tucker cracks open a black velvet jewelry box. Inside a pair of sapphire earrings sparkle blue. “Look, Joe! It’s pirate treasure!”

  Taking the box from Tucker earns me a cry of protest. “Santa did not bring those for you.” I stash the earrings on the mantel above the fireplace, then gather all the unwrapped presents not intended for toddlers and discard the wrapping paper. Leaving the boys to play with proper Christmas toys, I go outside to Alex.

  “I can stay with the boys if you need to go,” I say, lowering myself to the same step. My hands tremble with wanting to touch him.

  “Not yet.” He shakes his head. “How’s your mom?”

  “She, um—she’ll be all right. I mean, she’ll probably go to jail but …” But my mother is still alive. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” His voice is hollow. Sad. And he leans forward, resting his folded arms on his knees. The gesture stings a little, as if I’m too close and he needs to get away, until I feel his fingertips whisper-soft on the back of my calf. I should offer words of consolation, but I don’t know what to say. Instead, we sit a long time without speaking. The rich blue of the bayou sparkles in the sunshine, and behind us, Tucker and Joe are oblivious to how much the world has changed overnight.

  “There’s a job waiting for me at a dive shop in the Keys.” Alex breaks the silence first. “Now that my mom’s gone, there’s nothing keeping me here anymore.”

  It hurts to be lumped together with the father who smacks him around and a sponging job he never wanted. To be considered nothing.

  “Now you can take that dive trip to Roatan in February.” I hope the words sound light and excited, even though my heart is shattered and sharp. He turns to look at me, and those hazel eyes tell me I failed.

  “Oh, shit. Callie, no.” He touches my face with both hands, his thumb catching a tear I never meant to cry, and my breath hitches in my throat. “I didn’t mean you. You’re not no
thing. You’re the best kind of something.”

  “Don’t go.” It’s selfish of me to ask this of him when he’s already sacrificed so much, but he’s mine and I want to keep him.

  “Come with me.” His kiss is so gentle, so perfect, that it takes everything I have to keep from saying yes. I’ve never been in love before, but this moment is bittersweet and tender and terrible and perfect. Surely this must be it.

  I want to go with him, but then I think about my dad and Phoebe. About my little brothers. Yiayoúla and Kat. My new job. My mom. I have so many more reasons to stay. I’m not ready to leave yet. “My family is here.”

  “I know.” He touches his forehead to mine and sighs. “This sucks.”

  A laugh escapes me. “Yeah.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “But we can’t just let go. I won’t do that.”

  Alex’s mouth relaxes into his easy grin and he kisses me again. “Then I guess we figure something out.”

  Hope blooms on the surface of my sadness. It’s improbable that our relationship will survive the time and distance. Except improbable is not impossible. There are so many maybes in life, but sometimes you just have to put your faith in possibility.

  We hold hands as we go back into the house, where Joe is crashed out on the floor and Tucker has used a chair to pull the “pirate treasure” down from the mantel. Alex and I exchange guilty smiles before he kisses my cheek and tells me he needs to go home. It feels like good-bye. I mean, I know I’ll see him again at Evgenia’s funeral, but this is it.

  The end of us.

  For now.

  Chapter 24

  Mom comes into the visitation area wearing a loose-fitting blue uniform that looks more like emergency-room scrubs than prison garb. Her hair is shorter than she’s ever worn it before and a shade of dark auburn I’ve only seen at the roots. Without her signature red lips, the bottom of her face seems unfinished. Un-her. She smiles when she sees me and I’m surprised by how much younger she looks. Rested. Maybe even a little bit … happy.

  “There’s my girl,” she whispers into my hair as she wraps me in the fiercest of hugs. She’s more substantial now. Softer. She kisses my temple and presses her forehead to mine. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

  It took a whole month before Greg’s and my applications to visit were approved by the Florida Department of Corrections. “Of course I’d come.”

  Mom pulls back and smooths the hair away from my face in her familiar way. Her hand pauses against my cheek. “Look at you. So damn beautiful.” She smiles again and glances over my shoulder at my dad. “Greg, thank you for bringing her.”

  “You doing okay?” he asks.

  She tilts her head and crinkles her nose. “As well as can be expected, I guess.”

  Dad touches my elbow. “I’m going to grab a sandwich and maybe do some reading. Let me know when you’re ready to go, okay? No rush.”

  I nod. “Thanks.”

  The tables around us are filled with reunited families, and the air is festive and chattery. Some of the visitors recognize each other from their weekly treks to the prison and call out greetings to each other. Others argue over what they perceive to be the best tables.

  “Let’s go outside,” Mom suggests. “It’s quieter.”

  We push through a set of double doors to a covered pavilion, stopping at a vending machine for bottles of water before finding empty spaces at one end of a picnic table. At the other end, a couple sit opposite each other, their brown-skinned fingers entwined as they talk in voices only they can hear. I feel a pang of sadness when they lean across the table to kiss, but I push it away, reminding myself that I will see Alex again.

  “I like your hair,” I tell my mother.

  She touches the pixie fringe at the back of her neck. “Do you? The roots were growing out so I figured—it’s hard to keep your color up in here.”

  “How are you, Mom? Really.”

  “It’s not like in the movies, you know?” She picks at the label on her water bottle, her fingers fidgety. I realize she hasn’t lit up a cigarette yet. That’s usually the first thing. “I’m safe and I know where I’m going to sleep at night. I mean, we’ve lived in places worse than this, and the food isn’t bad.”

  “Mom.” I reach across the table and still her busy hands, looking at her until she looks at me. “I don’t want to hear about the jail conditions.”

  “I’m sick, Callie, and I know that without medication I do impulsive and stupid things, like leaving you alone with Frank. Like leaving your dad. But I don’t feel like myself anymore. It’s as if part of me is missing, and I hate it.”

  Her jail sentence was shortened to just six months, contingent on her staying on medication and getting counseling. I worry that when she gets out on probation she’ll backslide and run away again. I worry that she’ll resent me for sending her here. “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Don’t.” She holds up a warning finger, and for a moment I see a glimpse of fire.

  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be here,” I say. “You’d be—”

  “If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead,” she interrupts. “God, Callie, if I could go back and do it all over again—”

  “Don’t do that to yourself.”

  “I deserve it.”

  “I love you, Mom.”

  There are tears in her eyes when she smiles at me. “There are so many ways you could have turned out. You could be like me, with feelings my body just can’t contain. The life we’ve lived could have made you hard and unforgiving. But you’re so strong and your heart is so good … you’re just like Greg, you know? And that’s how I know you’ll always be okay.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  She lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “I hope so.”

  I wish she had a better answer, but right now it’s the best she can offer. “Me, too.”

  “Let’s talk about something else.” She takes a sip of water and grins. “What’s the capital of Nebraska?”

  I laugh. “I’m not six anymore. I know my state capitals.”

  “Prove it. Capital of Nebraska.”

  “Lincoln, Mom—”

  “No, it’s Omaha.”

  “It’s Lincoln.”

  Mom laughs and reaches across the table, brushing the backs of her fingers against my cheek. They’re soft and for a moment I am six again, with the future stretched out like a highway before us. “A girl as smart as you can do anything she wants,” she says.

  This time … I believe.

  Author’s Note

  * Tarpon Springs is an actual Florida town, and the Greek-themed sponge docks area really exists. While Kat is only joking about Connor being a token non-Greek friend, there is a very active Greek-American population in Tarpon Springs, and names like Ekaterina, Callista, and Alexandros are not unusual.

  * The Shrine of St. Michael Taxiarchis is a real thing, too. It was built in the 1940s by Marie Tsalichis after her son fell ill with—and miraculously recovered from—a mysterious disease (possibly meningitis), and there are accounts of people being cured of their ailments after visiting the shrine.

  * Sponges—which are primitive animals, not plants—are a renewable resource because they grow back after they’ve been cut. Divers in Tarpon Springs have been harvesting the same beds for more than a hundred years.

  * Pastitsio (pah-STEE-tsee-oh) is a dish made with pasta, meat, tomato-based sauce, and a custard-like cheese sauce. As Greg mentions, pastitsio resembles lasagna, but the addition of cinnamon and nutmeg gives it a distinctively different flavor.

  * Galaktoboureko (gah-lahk-toh-BOO-reh-koh) is a dessert of custard baked in a flaky pastry called phyllo and served with honey poured on top. It’s one of my favorite Greek foods.

  * Another Greek dish is dolmades (dol-MAH-thes), which is made from grape leaves stuffed with a rice filling that contains herbs and sometimes meat. Like Callie, I’m not a fan, but it’s a pop
ular dish in Greece and most of the surrounding countries. It’s also called dolmas.

  * Learn some Greek:

  korítsi mou (ko-REE-tsee-MOO): my girl

  yiayoúla (yah-YOU-lah): grandma (the actual word is yiayiá, but the addition of -oula makes it a little more affectionate)

  matákia mou (mah-TAH-kyah-MOO): my little eyes, the apple of my eye

  latría mou (lah-TREE-ah-MOO): my beloved, my adored

  gorgóna (gor-GOH-nah): mermaid

  seirína (see-REE-nah): siren, mermaid

  yia sou (YAH SOO): hello

  efharistó (EF-hah-ree-STOH): thanks

  s’agapó (sah-gah-POH): I love you

  Acknowledgments

  I owe a world of gratitude to …

  The city of Tarpon Springs for being such a cool place. Please forgive any added businesses, park benches, and trees that might not otherwise exist. Also, any inaccuracies in the world of sponges and sponge diving are solely mine.

  Tumblr. Yes, tumblr, for being my happy place when I need it. And efharistó to Georgia for helping a total stranger with Greek translation.

  Carla Black, Kelly Jensen, Ginger Phillips, Grace Radford, and Gail Yates for reading and cheering me along while I wrote this book. Couldn’t have done it without you. And Carla, you brainstorming star, thanks for the brilliant title.

  Josh Berk, Cristin Bishara, Tara Kelly, Miranda Kenneally, Amy Spalding, and the crew of Barnes & Noble 2711 in Fort Myers, Florida, for the exact same reasons as last time. I love you guys.

  Suzanne Young is the best writing partner in the world. Thanks for sticking with me all these years, Suz.

  The late Charles Singler, who answered my questions about law enforcement and extradition. Uncle Charlie, you will be missed.

  Kate Schafer Testerman, Victoria Wells Arms, and the team at Bloomsbury for falling in love with Callie and Alex the way I did. Special thanks to Regina Flath for a cover that makes my heart beat a little faster every time I look at it.