by Amy Harmon
I DON’T KNOW what time it was when we finally spoke again. We had slept for hours and awoke with growling bellies and dry throats, but stuck our faces beneath the bathroom tap and guzzled water to ease our thirst, just so we wouldn’t have to leave the room. Then Millie’s mouth found mine, her lips wet and cold, water clinging to her chin and sliding down her breasts, and we began again. Sometime before dawn, I attempted to slide out of bed, untangling myself from my sleeping beauty only to have her come fully awake and sit up, reaching for me, panicked.
Her fear made me sad because I had created it.
“Shhh, Millie. I’m not going anywhere. I promise. I’ll be right back,” I whispered, kissing her forehead and smoothing her hair. “Lay back down. I promise you I won’t leave again. Not on purpose. Not ever again.”
She nodded and sank back against the pillows as I pulled on my jeans, but when I came back several minutes later, her eyes were open and she was waiting, listening for me, the sheets pulled up over her body, one arm curled under her head.
“Where’d you go?” she asked.
“Your mighty hunter has brought meat. And bread. And cheese,” I grunted in my best caveman voice.
“And Miracle Whip?” she interrupted.
“Gross.”
“You know I like Miracle Whip.”
“And Miracle Whip,” I said, handing her a sandwich on a plate, complete with Miracle Whip, just the way she liked it.
I scarfed down three sandwiches in the time it took her to eat one and cracked the top on a can of soda, listening to the bubbles for just a second in quiet appreciation of Millie’s favorite sounds.
When we were done, I padded back to the kitchen and set our plates in the sink, put the sandwich fixings back in the fridge, and closed the tie on the bread bag. That’s when I spied the keys to my truck on the counter and paused, considering. I swept them up and was out the front door, inside my truck, and then back in the house in less than a minute, grateful that the house was still quiet and Millie hadn’t chased me down.
Millie was brushing her teeth and her hair at the same time, wearing my discarded T-shirt and looking like salvation, even in the dark. I sat on the bed and watched her, enjoying her, but she’d heard me come in, even over the running water. She knew I was there.
She climbed back into bed, snuggling down, and I thought about tugging my T-shirt over her head and kicking off my jeans, but some things required pants and I kind of felt like this was one of them. I crawled up behind her and wrapped myself around her, pulling her back against my chest. Then I whispered into her hair.
“Will you marry me, Millie?”
“What?” she gasped.
“Will you marry me and let me be Henry’s brother? I want you to be part of Tag Team.” I was parroting Henry’s proposal, trying to be cute, but my heart was in my throat and my hands felt slick against my T-shirt. I was glad I hadn’t pulled it off her. I pressed on. “Statistically, athletes with families have more purpose, better mental health, more stamina and overall improved performance than athletes who aren’t married.” If it wasn’t word for word what Henry had spouted off to me, it was close. But she was silent, and I couldn’t see her face.
“I was gonna ask you a month ago. I bought a ring. It was still in the glove box in my truck,” I explained, rushing over the words. And now it was in my pocket, in my jeans, waiting for her to give me an answer.
“I know. You told me,” she whispered.
“The tapes?” I asked, realizing I had indeed told her.
“Yes.”
“If none of this had happened, if I’d asked you two weeks ago, before all this went down, what would you have said?” I asked, my heart fat in my chest.
“No. I would have said no,” Millie said quietly.
My stomach lurched a little, and I pulled her closer even though I wanted to let go. My heart was pounding.
“Why, Millie?”
“Because I thought you needed more time,” she said.
“You thought I needed more time?” I asked, incredulous.
She nodded, one quick jerk of her head, and her hair tickled my lips. I waited for several seconds, processing.
“And now?” I asked.
“Now, I want to marry you so badly that I don’t care if you need more time,” she confessed.
I laughed, suddenly glad I was lying down. I felt lightheaded with relief. And then something else occurred to me.
“Have you changed your mind because I don’t have any more time?” I probed, and my voice cracked.
I felt a tremor run down her body.
“No. I’ve changed my mind because I don’t want anyone keeping us apart. I don’t want someone telling me I can’t be by your side. I want to be a Taggert. Or a Taggerson.” I felt her effort to smile, but I don’t think she succeeded. “I want to be yours. I want you to be mine. Hospital beds, my bed, your bed. I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”
“You want to take care of me,” I said flatly.
She ignored my statement and made one of her own. “If I wasn’t blind, I would have said yes. A month ago, I would have said yes.”
I waited.
“But because I’m blind, I would have wanted to give you lots of time to know what you were getting into.”
“I wouldn’t have changed my mind, sweetheart.”
“I’m always going to be blind, David.”
“Most likely . . . yeah,” I agreed.
“And a month ago, you wanted to marry me anyway?” she asked, clearly knowing the answer.
“Yeah. I did.”
“You wanted to marry me in spite of my blindness, and I want to marry you in spite of your cancer. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No,” I whispered. Because it wasn’t. Not when she put it that way.
We lay in silence, listening to each other breathing, thinking, considering. But I’d made my decision the moment I submitted. Moses had warned me that’s what it would take, hadn’t he?
“All or nothing, Millie?” I asked, my mouth pressed against her temple.
“All,” she answered back.
“Me too,” I whispered. All or nothing. That’s who I was. And if I was going to fight, if I was going to stay, I was going to have it all for as long as I could have it. I reached in my pocket and took out the ring.
Moses
I GOT UP before the sun rose. I was restless and moody, even more than usual, and I decided to paint for a while. But painting hadn’t eased the prickle under my skin or the knots in my belly, and when the sun rose I made a pot of coffee and decided to spend a little time outside seeing the day break before the rest of the house woke up and made contemplation impossible.
“You look like your thoughts weigh a thousand pounds,” Tag said, his voice rough with sleep, and the French doors to my left closed quietly. He eased down into the deck chair next to mine and faced the sluggish sunrise, his eyes trained forward. He held a cup of my coffee in a mug between his big hands and sipped at it like heaven came in mouthfuls of caffeine.
“Well, well, well,” I said, and I felt my lips twist up in a smirk. I had told myself I wasn’t going to give him any grief about being holed up with Millie for a solid sixteen hours. And here I was, giving him grief the moment he set foot on my deck.
He didn’t smirk back or tell me to shut up. He looked tired. But he looked good. Amazingly enough, he looked good. Content even. I still wasn’t used to his buzzed hair. It looked a little too skinhead for my taste, but Tag worked it. He had the jawline to pull it off, irritating as that was.
“You look like shit, Tag,” I lied, just because it was our way with each other.
“So do you, Mo,” he said amiably.
“It’s your fault,” I said, just like I had in the hospital. I immediately felt bad and wished I could take it back. It was his fault. But it wasn’t his fault.
He didn’t respond and took another long draw from his coffee.
“Do you ever think ab
out Montlake?” I asked him, sipping the surface of the coffee, not going too deep. Kinda the way I was doing now, dipping my toe into a conversation that felt a little like a cauldron.
“All the time,” Tag answered, tipping his mug again.
“I do too. All the time. Especially lately,” I said.
We sat like two old men, sipping away, time slipping away, yet not in any hurry to fight it. Funny how that was. Old folks knew their days were numbered, and yet they rarely rushed to fill them.
“Those were some dark days, Mo,” Tag said softly.
“They were dark. But we had nothing to lose,” I said.
“And now, we’ve got everything to lose,” he said.
“Now we’ve got everything to lose,” I repeated.
“I dreamed about Dr. Andelin’s wife,” Tag said suddenly, inexplicably, and I was distracted from where I was leading the conversation.
“What?” I gasped.
“Remember that counseling session when you saw her?” Tag insisted, his green eyes sharp. “When we met?”
“That time you wanted to kill me?” I tried to laugh, but couldn’t gather enough mirth. My laugh just sounded like I’d been punched in the stomach, which was strangely fitting, because Tag had done just that. I’d asked him about Molly, and he’d punched me in the stomach, slapped me across the face, and knocked me to the floor. And I’d welcomed it and fought back.
“How did you know?” Tag said, his eyes on mine. The din around us quieted slightly. “How did you know about my sister?” The orderlies pulled us off the floor and let us sit, but Dr. Andelin pressed me to answer.
“Moses, do you want to explain to Tag what you meant when you asked if anyone knew a girl named Molly?”
“I didn’t know she was his sister. I don’t know him. But I’ve been seeing a girl named Molly off and on for almost five months,” I said.
They all stared at me.
“Seeing her? Do you mean you have a relationship with Molly?” Dr. Andelin asked.
“I mean, she’s dead, and I know she’s dead because for the last five months I’ve been able to see her,” I repeated patiently.
Tag’s face was almost comical in its fury.
“See her how?” Dr. Andelin’s voice was flat and his eyes were cold.
I matched his tone and leveled my own flat gaze in his direction. “The same way I can see your dead wife, Doctor. She keeps showing me a car visor and snow and pebbles at the bottom of a river. I don’t know why. But you can probably tell me.”
Dr. Andelin’s jaw went slack and his complexion greyed.
“What are you talking about?” he gasped. I’d been waiting to use this on him. Now was as good a time as any. Maybe his wife would go away and I could focus on getting rid of Molly once and for all.
“She follows you around the joint. You miss her too much. And she worries about you. She’s fine . . . but you’re not. I know she’s your wife because she shows you waiting for her at the end of the aisle. Your wedding day. Your tuxedo is a little too short in the sleeves.”
I tried to be flippant, to force him out of his role as psychologist. I dug around in his life to keep him from digging around in my head. But the savage grief that slammed across his face slowed me down and softened my voice. I couldn’t maintain my attitude against his pain. I felt momentarily shamed and looked down at my hands. Then Dr. Andelin spoke.
“My wife, Cora, was driving home from work. They think she was blinded—temporarily—by the sun reflecting off the snow. It’s like that sometimes up here on the bench, you know. She drifted into the guardrail. Her car landed upside down in the creek bed. She . . . drowned.”
He supplied the information so matter-of-factly, but his hands shook as he stroked his beard.
Somewhere during the tragic recount, Tag lost his fury. He stared from me to Dr. Andelin in confusion and compassion. But Cora Andelin wasn’t done—it was like she knew I had the doctor’s attention and she wasn’t wasting any time.
“Peanut butter, Downey fabric softener, Harry Connick, Jr., umbrellas . . .” I paused because the next image was so intimate. But then I said it anyway. “Your beard. She loved the way it felt, when you . . .” I had to stop. They were making love and I didn’t want to see this man’s wife naked. I didn’t want to see him naked. And I could see him through her eyes.
But Dr. Andelin was dialed in, his blue eyes intense and full of his own memories, and something else too. Gratitude. His eyes were full of gratitude.
“Those were some of her favorite things. She walked down the aisle on our wedding day to a Harry Connick song. And yeah. My tux was a smidge too short. She always laughed about that and said it was just like me. And her umbrella collection was out of control.” His voice broke, and he looked down at his hands.
The room was so heavy with compassion and thick with intimacy that if the five others present were able to see what I could see, they would have looked away to give the lovers a moment alone. But I was the only one to witness Noah Andelin’s wife reach out and run a hand over her husband’s bowed head before the soft lines of her inconsistent form melded into the flickering light of the fading afternoon.
Strange. I hadn’t thought about Cora Andelin since I’d left Montlake. And I hadn’t seen her since that day, just as I’d predicted. But the memory was so sharp and specific that I felt a sense of déjà vu, like Tag wasn’t the only one who’d dreamed about her. Dr. Andelin’s face, when I’d told him I could see his wife, was burned into the backs of my eyes. I’d thrown all his precious details, details of her life, of their life together, in his face, simply because I had needed to distract him from looking too hard at my own. I was my own special brand of asshole in those days.
“Remember how you said that she was fine, but Doc wasn’t?” Tag asked.
I nodded, incredulous. “She follows you around the joint. You miss her too much. And she worries about you. She’s fine . . . but you’re not.”
“So that’s why she was hanging around. She was worried about him,” he said.
“I can’t believe you remember that,” I exclaimed in disbelief.
“Some things you don’t forget, Mo.” Tag swore. “I won’t ever forget it.” He shook his head like the images still haunted him. “Do you think the reason you saw Molly—and don’t lie to me, Mo. I know you’ve seen her a few times now. Do you think it’s because she’s just worried about me?” There was a wistful note in his voice that made hope flicker in my heart.
“It very well could be,” I answered softly, coaxing the flicker to a flame.
He nodded and set his empty mug down at his feet. But I wasn’t ready to let Montlake go, not yet.
“Before we left Montlake, you asked me to keep you alive. You told me to knock you down, restrain you, whatever it took. Do you remember that?” I asked, not looking at him. I couldn’t look at him and keep my emotions in check.
“Yeah. I remember,” he said.
“I told you I would.” I had to stop talking for a minute. I took a few deep breaths and a huge gulp of coffee to soothe my burning throat and ease the ache in my chest. “And I intend to keep that promise,” I said, my voice cracking on the last word.
When he didn’t respond, I braced myself and turned toward him.
Tag’s throat was working even though his coffee was gone. He rubbed at his jaw, passing a hand over trembling lips, and I could tell he was fighting for control, just like I was.
“I can’t cure cancer, Tag. And I sure as hell can’t stop the people I love from leaving me. I couldn’t save Gi. I didn’t save Eli. But I’ve got some pull on the other side. And they’re all gonna have to go through me if they want you.”
He was nodding. “All right,” he whispered. “All right. But Mo, if that’s not enough. In the end, if that’s not enough, I need you to take care of Millie and Henry. Millie won’t want to let you. She’s stubborn like that. But make sure she doesn’t stop dancing. I hate it, but she loves it. And that’s the importa
nt thing. Make sure she’s doin’ the things she loves. Don’t let her grieve too long. Don’t let her grieve like Dr. Andelin did, making his dead wife follow him around because he couldn’t let her go. Help her let me go, Mo. Tell her I’m happy. Make shit up.”
I choked, laughter and tears warring for supremacy.
“Tell her I’m fighting with legends in heaven, that I am running through meadows of flowers, that I’m being fed grapes . . . scratch that. She wouldn’t like that. Just tell her I’m eating grapes.”
I laughed harder and wiped at my eyes.
“I’ll fight this thing, Mo. I’ll fight as hard as I can until the bell rings. But if the bell rings sooner rather than later, then you gotta promise me that you’ll take care of my girl. We gotta deal?”
“Deal,” I whispered. And we were both quiet for a time, battling grief and gratitude and the irony that there is no sorrow without the sweet.
I heard the door this time and ducked my head, not ready for an audience, but it was just Millie, and Millie couldn’t see my tears. Her face was shiny and pink, like she’d just washed it, and her dark hair was smooth and heavy around her shoulders. She had coffee in one hand—my pot was definitely gone—and she reached forward with the other.
“Where are you, David?” she asked, and she said David like an endearment.
“I’m here, baby.” Tag stood and reached for her hand, guiding her forward and onto his lap. He took her coffee and stole a sip as she dropped a kiss on his whiskery head. Her left arm was wrapped around his neck, and I noticed the ring on her finger. My heart swelled in my chest, and for a moment there was only the sweet, even if I wasn’t surprised. It reminded me of the images I’d been shown the day before.
“I saw your mom again, Millie,” I said gently. Tag turned to stare at me, his eyes blazing in his tired face. Millie turned too, as if opening her mind to the impossibility.