Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  “I did go to med school, Grandma,” she whispered. “Remember how I’m patching up boo-boos in Moonflower Bay instead of cutting people up like real doctors do?”

  They’d been joking around as recently as last night, but Nora didn’t get the smile she’d been aiming for. Her grandma furrowed her brow. “I’ve seen you with patients. And more importantly, I’ve seen you with doctors. You already know as much as they do.”

  Hmm. Grandma had not seen her with patients—she’d been retired by the time Nora was in med school.

  “She thinks you’re me, honey.” Her mom came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. The family was rotating in and out so at any given time there were at least a couple of them here. “She always wanted me to go to med school.”

  “She did?” Nora twisted to look at her mom.

  “You’re wasting your talents, Pam.”

  Damn, she did think Nora was her mom. And, wow, that must sting. Nurses dealt with enough shit on the job.

  “You know what, Penelope? I think you’re right. I’m going to look into it.” Her mom laid a hand on her grandma’s forehead. “You try to get some rest, okay?”

  Grandma nodded, seemingly relieved to have won the argument, and they stayed with her until her breathing, while still ragged, lengthened.

  “Mom,” Nora whispered. “What was all that?”

  Her mom gestured for her to follow her into the hallway. “I was already a nurse when I met your father. Once it became clear I was going to stick, Penelope launched a campaign to get me to go to med school. She was really relentless about it in those early years.”

  “Did you…want to do that?”

  “Not really. Maybe if I’d come from this family instead of my own, it would have been something I considered. It wasn’t something anyone ever suggested to me until I met your grandma. But by then I was already so far into my nursing career, I wasn’t interested in going back to school and making a big change.”

  “But it must have hurt your feelings.” So many doctors thought of nurses as second-class medical professionals. She’d just never thought her grandma was one of them.

  “Did it hurt your feelings all the times she tried to get you to specialize in surgery?”

  “Maybe the first few times, but I eventually realized that’s just the way she is—she likes challenging people. And I knew she was proud of me because I once overheard her bragging to her friends about how well I was doing in med school.”

  “Me, too. You remember when I won that award from the Canadian Nurses Association?” Nora nodded. It had been a big deal. They’d all gone to a gala and listened to the chief of pediatrics at her mom’s hospital sing her praises. “Your father told me after the fact that Penelope was behind nominating me. She didn’t want it to look like nepotism, so she strong-armed some of her friends into doing it for her.”

  Tears sprang to Nora’s eyes, but she swallowed them back.

  Her mom pulled her into a hug. “We were all so lucky to have her. You kids especially. You basically had a bonus parent who lavished love and encouragement on you.” Her mom smiled, her own eyes growing watery. “With a good dash of nagging in there, too.”

  Nora nodded, grasping for facts. Facts would help her be stoic. “Is it going to be long, do you think?” Nurses always knew.

  “No,” her mom said. “Not long.”

  “Is it selfish to say I wish she recognized me?”

  “Not selfish. But she does recognize you, honey. She recognizes you with her heart.”

  Jake sat on his couch for a long time hemming and hawing before he sent his first text. He wasn’t sure if texting her now—now that he wanted to talk—was selfish. In the end he talked himself into it because when they parted, she’d said, “Let’s not just…never talk again.” He’d agreed. It had been surreal to watch her drive away and think, Well, that’s it. He’d meant to keep in touch, and he’d even picked up the phone the first few times she’d called to “say hi,” once the answering machine kicked in and he realized it was Kerrie. But things had tapered off. It was just…too hard. Also, he wasn’t that much of a talker to begin with.

  Hey, it’s Jake. Is this still your number? Is it okay to text you? You can tell me to fuck off.

  Kerrie: Jake! You got a phone.

  Jake: Hard to believe, I know.

  Kerrie: And yes, of course it’s okay to text me. I’m happy to hear from you. What’s up? How are you?

  How was he? He had no idea. Confused. Maybe.

  Jake: I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about a lot of stuff. I didn’t handle things well at the end there. I know that’s a lot to dump on you in a text out of the blue. You can just hang up on me. Or whatever the text equivalent is. I just got this phone and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

  Kerrie: Oh Jake. Neither of us handled things well at the end. How could we have? It was such a miserable end. I’m sorry, too.

  That was a huge relief, and more than he deserved.

  Jake: I wanted to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. But you know when we drove the boat out to scatter Jude’s ashes? Should we have said something?

  Kerrie: You mean like a prayer?

  Jake: I don’t know. Anything.

  Kerrie: I didn’t know what to say.

  Jake: I didn’t either.

  Kerrie: What would you have said if you could go back?

  What would he have said? I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better, maybe? But that would open up another conversation about how it wasn’t his fault.

  Jake: I don’t know. Maybe just goodbye?

  Kerrie: Yes. Goodbye to our boy.

  There was a certain comfort in seeing those words that she’d typed. Like they were saying them now. Too late, but also not too late. Because who would they really have been saying them for?

  Jake: Anyway, sorry to ambush you. I’ll let you go.

  Kerrie: I’m glad to hear from you. But…is there any reason you’re thinking about this all right now?

  Jake: I’m never not thinking about it.

  Kerrie: Yeah. Yeah, I know.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She should have called first.

  She didn’t have his number, though. It had been written on the back of a receipt months ago and shoved into her purse. She had looked for it on Walsh-giving, to no avail. Anyway, that purse was in her room at the Mermaid, and she hadn’t stopped there first.

  Despite Jake’s joke about actually checking his messages the day he’d given her his home number, Nora had never called him. They had an old-fashioned relationship. Friendship. Whatever-ship. He would show up in person, often at lunch. More recently at dinner, with pizza, while she was doing her billing. They’d make plans for the future, and they’d stick to those plans without having to text each other a million updates. It was refreshing.

  Jake wasn’t a phone guy. He really wasn’t.

  And after the past week and a bit, she needed one thing to stay the same. She needed one thing she could rely on.

  She needed a place where she could fall apart. Someone who would let her do that and then prop her up afterward.

  She hadn’t been planning on coming back to Moonflower Bay today. The clinic was closed until after New Year’s. There was no reason to hurry back. Her grandmother’s funeral had been yesterday, and today was supposed to be spent opening sympathy cards and sorting through memorial donations. It was supposed to be about grieving together, just her family, without her grandma’s legions of friends and former colleagues hovering. And it had been.

  Until around dinnertime, when the weather reports started talking about a massive storm headed for Toronto.

  They had all tried to talk her out of it. What was her hurry? It was dark. When the storm came, it might become dangerous. But once she’d heard the meteorologist on the radio say the phrases significant accumulation and snowed in, she’d become almost frantic. She couldn’t be snowed in in the city for severa
l days.

  She had to get…back. Initially she’d thought I have to get home. But that wasn’t right. She was home, huddling in a protective cocoon with her parents and siblings and nephews.

  The problem was, it didn’t feel that protective. It felt, suddenly, stifling. Everyone was crying all the time and that, paradoxically, made her extra committed to keeping her shit together. Someone had to schedule obituaries and select caskets and wash casserole dishes. So she’d just kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept not crying, a robot carrying out the administrivia of death.

  Until she was faced with the prospect of being forced to keep doing it because she was trapped. Escape had become imperative.

  Once on the highway, she calmed down a bit. As she made her way along dark, empty country roads, and as the first snowflakes started falling, a word started to fill the silence, pulsing more and more insistently, like a weak heartbeat gaining strength.

  Jake.

  Jake.

  Jake.

  For some reason her mind kept landing back on the day—the moment—Rufus had ambushed her last summer. Jake had stood by her—literally stood by her—and lightly rested his hand on her back. He had not spoken. But he had been there, stalwart in his watchful silence.

  That was what she needed right now.

  She didn’t even know if he would be home. His truck was parked in its usual spot at the corner of Locust and Sarnia, but that didn’t mean anything. It was Friday night, and he always walked to and from the bar on Fridays. She’d given half a thought to stopping by on her way in. Even if he wasn’t there, someone else would be.

  But she didn’t want someone else.

  She could only hope it was late enough—it was just after eleven—that he’d be back home.

  She parked behind his truck and began the cold trudge. She didn’t have boots. In a warped sort of way, though, she relished the prospect of walking through the cold water. Maybe it would jolt her awake, get rid of this plodding, sleepwalking, robotic feeling.

  She hissed when she splashed into the icy lake—there were literal chunks of ice here in the shallows. If she’d relished this, it had been theoretical. The water felt like it was made of tiny, invisible needles. This wasn’t awake; this was hypothermia, or close to it. She rushed around the outcropping and stumbled onto the beach.

  She cursed her way across the snowy sand to his front door, the cold air excoriating her wet ankles. She was so cold, she was panting. The cottage was dark. Please be here.

  She took off her mitten and pounded on the door.

  Mick started barking. Mick. Tears threatened.

  He opened the door. Jake.

  Jake.

  Jake.

  Jake.

  Her refrain from the car kicked in again.

  He was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a holey T-shirt. His hair was all messed up, and he was squinting. She had woken him up.

  He said her name three times, an echo of her mantra. The first was a question, like he didn’t trust his eyes, was unsure whether it was really her. “Nora?”

  She had made it. She was here. He was here. She was no longer a robot. She was a girl with a dead grandma. The tears came.

  The second time he said her name was urgent, gruff, commanding, as he pulled her over the threshold and into his arms. “Nora.”

  The third time he said her name, as her tears became actual, literal, mortifying wails, was gentle. Impossibly, acutely, exquisitely gentle. It was a whisper she felt as much as heard. “Nora.”

  Nora only let him hold her for a minute or so before she started trying to minimize her grief. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me. She was old. She was eighty-seven.” The sobbing of a moment ago had lessened, but she was still talking through tears. They were sliding out of her eyes silently and rapidly. “This is the natural way of things.”

  “Shh.” He tried to get her back in his embrace, but she put her hands on his chest. She was keeping him at literal arm’s length. So he laid his hands on her cheeks. It wasn’t like he thought he could magically stop those tears that were still coming furiously, like a tap that had been left on, or even that he should stop them. But he did feel, irrationally, that even though his hands couldn’t stop those tears, they could bear witness to them.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “This wasn’t like Jude.”

  He shook his head. It wasn’t a contest, or a zero-sum game. There was enough room for all their grief. He had enough room for it all. He would hold hers for a while, if she would let him.

  But he found himself slow to speak. His throat was tight, and he couldn’t seem to get the words from his brain to his tongue.

  “I shouldn’t be coming here like this. Waking you up, dumping this on you,” she said in a rush.

  He kissed her. It was the best way he could think to make her stop talking nonsense and to convey what he couldn’t say. That he was so sorry her grandma had died. That he wanted her here. That he’d missed her and was glad she was home.

  He went slowly, pressing his mouth gently against hers without moving it, so he could pay attention to the way she responded. So he could make sure it wasn’t too much.

  It wasn’t too much, judging by the way she rocked up and down on her toes, gaining momentum, and, with her hands wound around his neck, hitched herself up and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  He kicked the door shut with one foot and turned. He gave a moment’s thought to whether he should deposit her on the sofa or take her back to his bed, but he felt something wet on his hip. It was her foot. He slid one hand under her bottom so as not to drop her and the other down one leg. Her feet were wet. She’d walked through the lake.

  So he went to the fireplace. He’d laid a fire earlier. It was down to embers now—he’d fallen asleep on the couch. He knelt in front of it and carefully laid her down on her back. Mick came over and stood guard.

  She stared at him, silent tears still flowing as he tugged off her wet boots followed by her wet socks. Her jeans were wet up to the knees, too, so he unbuttoned them. She lifted her hips so he could get them off her, and as he did so, she shrugged out of her parka.

  He’d only been intending to get her out of her wet clothing, but she kept going. She crossed her arms and reached for the hem of her sweater and lifted that off, too. When she got stuck, he helped.

  She had not been wearing a bra.

  Which was not the kind of thing he should be noticing right now. She was still crying.

  But oh God, she was beautiful. The pixie doctor. The woman who fixed things. She was a healer who couldn’t conquer death. Her hair was glowing almost silver, and the dying light from the fire was gold.

  She was breaking his heart.

  There were a couple of his mom’s quilts on the couch. He reached for them and tried not to mourn the loss of her as he covered her up. Mick curled up next to her and whined. She turned her face into his fur.

  Jake turned his attention to the fire. Spent a few minutes with some kindling getting it started again and fed it a log, then another, making sure it was really going.

  By the time he turned back to her, she had stopped crying and was staring intently at him. One of her legs was sticking out of the quilt, so he moved to cover her better, but in the process his hand brushed her foot. Though dry now, it was still freezing. He pushed the quilt up a little and reached for her other foot with his other hand. He squeezed, and she sighed. He rubbed his palms briskly back and forth over the tops of her feet and slid up her ankles.

  His intent had only been to warm her chilled skin, but she slid the quilt farther up, exposing her shins. So he slid his hands farther up and sent them around to massage her cold calves, staring at her the whole way.

  She stared back, watching him evenly and with what looked like great concentration. He kept going, kneading up and down from her Achilles’ heel to the backs of her knees, keeping track of her breathing as he went. It was slowing. It had been rapid before, shading int
o panting as she’d been crying. But now it was syncing itself to his, which he’d deliberately slowed as he’d been working on the fire. Or maybe that wasn’t right. Maybe his was syncing to hers.

  As he approached the backs of her knees on an upward pass, she tugged the quilt higher, exposing her thighs. She kept staring, her expression hard to read but the invitation in her gesture clear. It felt like more than an invitation, actually, it felt more like…what? Not a command exactly. An expression of need.

  So he slid his hands slowly up past her knees, massaging the tops of her thighs. Her quads were tight, perhaps from all the running. He dug his thumbs in, watching her like a hawk, wanting to deliver exactly what she needed. Pressure, but not pain. Comfort, but not pity. Protection, but not constraint.

  Her breath, which he was using as his gauge, kept slowing, shading into sighs.

  But then, as one thumb brushed the crease where her thigh met her torso, there was a hitch.

  His aim here was not seduction. It was something else, something he couldn’t begin to name, but he knew, somehow, that it had to be delivered through his hands. That words, which had never been his forte anyway, were not sufficient.

  But he would be lying if he said that hitch, that sigh interrupted, hadn’t caused an echo in his own breath. A slight inhalation breaking through the rhythm he’d been weaving. He hadn’t been planning to do anything about it, though, until the thighs he held, one in each hand, fell open.

  He stopped the movement of his hands as his pulse kicked up a notch. It was diverging from his slow, measured breathing.

  She pulled the quilt higher.

  He did not move. He watched, frozen on the outside while storms raged on the inside, as she slowly, decidedly, gathered the quilt, which was now scrunched up around her middle, and set it to one side.

  She rolled her thighs open some more, and he loosened his grip on them. While the legs moved, his hands stayed in place—maybe he was frozen—which landed them on her inner thighs. She had a tiny web of stretch marks on either side, and painted with the warm light from the fire, they looked like delicate, golden filaments.