by Andre, Bella
Miranda felt better just being in Lucy’s presence. Lucy was an expert at priorities. When a friend dropped in, she dropped everything. She brought a tray with two cappuccinos and biscotti and they had a seat together. Lucy had declared this particular table in the café a worry-free zone. In fact, there was a small sign in the middle, next to the flower vase, with WORRY in block letters and a slash through it.
“Sophie just called,” Lucy said. “She’s running late.” “That’s all right. Let me put these flowers in water.”
Miranda looked around the café. “I’ll divvy them up among the tables.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lucy said.
“It takes thirty seconds,” Miranda told her, creating a small arrangement for each table. “Look at the difference it makes.”
“You’re right, of course,” said Lucy. “I wish I had your touch.”
Sophie Bellamy joined them, rushing in with her usual burden of briefcase, purse and tote bag. There was a flurry of hugs and greetings, and Sophie requested her usual—a double espresso.
The three of them were an unlikely trio, but their differences made for a lively friendship. Lucy, the creative bohemian, held fast to her dream of running the café. Sophie had the lucrative, high-powered career. Miranda had taken the traditional route to marriage, kids and house with a white picket fence. They used to joke that if they rolled their lives into one, they’d have a woman with a perfect life, living the dream.
They’d stopped joking about that last year. The year Miranda got sick, Sophie’s marriage fell apart and Lucy took out a second mortgage to keep her café afloat. Now when you put them together, they were a Dr. Phil show.
Miranda got up and hugged her friend. “I’m so glad you’re in town.”
“Not for long. I’m flying to New York in a couple of hours.” Sophie’s international-law firm had assigned her to a case that had her commuting to Seattle every other week. “But please,” she said. “Tell me something good. I need it.” “I’m done with my treatments,” Miranda announced. “The doc gave me my walking papers yesterday. I get to rejoin the human race.”
Lucy’s face lit up. “That’s fantastic—isn’t it?”
“Pretty fantastic. For the foreseeable future, I’m a free woman.”
Lucy burst into tears. She buried her face in a paper napkin. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Miranda assured her. “I feel too numb to cry. I might later. The crazy thing is,” she confessed, “now that I don’t have to fight the cancer anymore, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Anything you want,” Lucy said with an airy gesture. “I appreciate the thought, but it’s not that simple. My treatment has been my life for the past year now. Now that it’s over, I have no life.”
“Oh, honey,” said Sophie. “You’re just shell-shocked, but this is wonderful. Your treatment is done. You have your life back.” “Yes and no. I can’t just roll back the past year and go on as if it never happened. I’ve changed. My…marriage has changed. Our family has changed.” There. She’d said it. She had given voice to a dark fear, which, in its own way, was more menacing than cancer.
“So change it back,” Lucy said simply. “Now’s your chance.”
“It’s not like everything was so perfect before,” Miranda confided. “Jacob wasn’t home enough, the kids had their ups and downs, I had the usual troubles with work.”
“So now you have a chance to turn your life into something even better than you had before,” Sophie pointed out. Lucy nodded. “She’s right, Miss Miranda the miracle girl.
What will you do with the rest of your life?”
“This is what I love about you.” Miranda took a sip of her cappuccino. “You keep things simple. You’re living your dream, Lucy. When we were in college, you always said you wanted a café like the Gambrinus in Naples, and here you are.”
“Bless you for saying that. I’ve got a ways to go before people start comparing this place to the Gambrinus.”
Miranda felt better just being with her friends. She was grateful that they were here to listen and talk, even when Lucy probably had a zillion things to do in the café and Sophie had a plane to catch. Sophie was perpetually busy, always on the run. After college, she’d gone to law school, moved to the East Coast, married, had two kids, made partner—the perfect life.
Last summer, she had divorced.
As always, Sophie was beautiful and dressed for success, but Miranda knew her friend was dealing with the pain and loneliness and upheaval of splitting up with her husband. “How are you and the kids doing?” Miranda asked. Sophie’s children, Daisy and Max, were close in age to Valerie and Andrew.
“All right, I think. Daisy’s busy applying to colleges this fall. Max is actually doing much better in reading. They’re sad about the divorce. What kid wouldn’t be?” She brightened a little. “We’ve got a four-day weekend together over Columbus Day. I’m taking them to this incredible place in the Catskills that belongs to my former in-laws.” She sipped her cappuccino. “Sometimes I miss the Bellamys more than I miss Greg.”
Miranda heard the pinch of hurt in Sophie’s voice when she spoke of her ex-husband’s family. Having almost no family of her own, Sophie used to be close to the Bellamys. “I’m not surprised you miss them, Soph.”
“More than I ever imagined I would. And they’re still so good to me.” She blinked fast, close to tears.
Lucy passed her a plate of biscotti. “Aw, Sophie. There’s only one thing that makes you more unhappy than being divorced from Greg, and that’s being married to him.”
“True,” she said, visibly trying to shake off the mood. She swirled the biscotti in her cup.
“You kept your married name—Bellamy,” Lucy observed. “With a maiden name like Wiener, can you blame me? Besides, I built a successful law practice around that name and made partner. It’s on the letterhead. And there’s not nothing wrong with the name. The problem was with my marriage.”
Miranda felt as if a shadow passed over her heart. “Sweetie, what is it?” Lucy asked.
Miranda stared at her hands in her lap. These women knew her too well. She took a deep breath and told them what had happened—or, more accurately, what hadn’t happened—the previous night. “He said I was sleeping so hard, he didn’t want to bother me.”
Lucy regarded her thoughtfully. “So how do you feel about that?”
Miranda shook her head. “I feel like a traitor, complaining at all. I mean, Jacob’s been great through all of this. But I’m ready to start feeling like a couple again, not patient and nurse.” “Although he makes a very cute male nurse,” Lucy pointed out.
“You should tell him,” Sophie said. “Sit him down and look him in the eye and explain what you want and need. And while you’re at it, ask him what he wants and needs. His answers might surprise you.”
“I like that,” Lucy said. “How’d you get so smart, Sophie?” She smiled a bit sadly. “If Greg and I had followed that advice, we might still be married. I think it’s easier to be smart about other people’s marriages because you don’t have to actually do the work.” She patted Lucy’s hand. “You’re the smart one, staying single.”
“How come I don’t feel smart, then?” Lucy gestured around the café. “I opened this place ten years ago. I know you guys think I’m living the dream, but the truth is, I’m barely staying afloat. Unfortunately, dreams don’t tell you how to take care of details like making the books balance.” “Oh, Lucy.” Miranda felt frustrated. Here was another thing the illness had taken from her. Forced to focus on her treatment, she’d lacked the time to be a good friend. “Isn’t business picking up?”
“I need to make some changes.” “What sort of changes?”
“I’m going to have to share this retail space, lease out half the shop. The rent is killing me, so that’s the solution I’ve come up with.”
“Lease it to whom?” asked Sophie.
“Good question. I’ve
thought of a few possibilities—a book and magazine shop would be a good fit. Cards and stationery. Yarn, maybe, or quilting.” She glanced at the flowers Miranda had placed on each table. “Hey, maybe a florist.”
When Miranda was young, she used to imagine she had a tuning fork inside her, one that would resonate when just the right note struck. She felt that now, a deep vibration of interest at Lucy’s words. Out of habit, she dismissed the feeling. “I wish I could help.”
“Oh, I’m not asking for help. What I need is a real partnership here. I’m good until the end of the year. Come January, though, something’s got to give. I keep hoping the right person will just walk through that door—poof.”
Miranda smiled. “So what are you thinking? A café-newsstand?”
“Those are a dime a dozen.” “A café-music store?”
“There’s one less than half a block away.”
“A café-legal clinic,” Sophie said. “That way, I could quit this dumb job and be bohemian with you.”
“Except that it’s not a dumb job, it’s a great one that you love,” Miranda pointed out. “Don’t you?”
“True,” Sophie admitted. “I complain about the travel and so forth, but honestly, sometimes I think it’s the one thing that has kept me from going nuts through the separation and divorce.”
“My job,” Miranda pointed out. “Now, there’s something.
It’s the one thing I didn’t miss when I was sick.”
In college she had studied retail marketing, but had found her passion in a fluffy-sounding elective area—floral design. She used to picture herself amid buckets of cut flowers and greenery, surrounded by beautiful glassware and pottery, creating bouquets to brighten some woman’s home, or lift her spirits when she was sad, congratulate her for a job well done, comfort her when she was sick. She would be renowned for her Homecoming corsages.
Unfortunately, self-employment was a dubious prospect, especially for someone with a mortgage and two kids, so the idea remained only a daydream, and a private one at that.
Which was why she surprised herself by saying, “I’m tempted to lease the space myself and open the flower shop I’ve been thinking about since college.”
Sophie and Lucy looked at each other and then back at her. “It’s a crazy, brilliant idea and I think you should do it,” Sophie said.
“I’ve always said we should be partners,” Lucy reminded her.
“You two.” Miranda grinned, grateful to have such wonderful friends. “I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get my grown-up job back.” And then, without warning, she burst into tears.
To their credit, her friends sat patiently by and waited. Miranda finally pulled out a wad of Kleenex and dried her face. “God, sorry. I totally didn’t see that coming.”
“What’s going on?” asked Lucy. “Really.”
Miranda tried to pull herself together. She hoped the other customers and the girl behind the counter hadn’t noticed her outburst. She told them about the meeting with Marty and her feeling that she didn’t belong in her cubicle at Urban Ice anymore. “Lucy. Sophie,” she asked urgently. “What if there was some cosmic reason I got cancer? That reason being I’m supposed to change my life in some way?” “See, that’s just what I was saying,” Lucy said. “It’s a chance to make a big change.”
“It’s not just the job,” Miranda said. “I suppose the one thing that’s not fixed is what this disease has done to my family. I feel horrible, like an ingrate, because I shouldn’t be thinking about what’s wrong. But there’s…a sense of loss. I knew this whole experience would change me, but I saw the surgery—the loss of my breast and my hair—coming. I never predicted the loss of my family, though. I mean, we still live under the same roof, but last night it all hit home. We feel like strangers to one another. The kids have retreated, and Jacob’s buried himself in work.”
Sophie took her hand. “Not good,” she said. “I know. It feels like a hole in my heart.”
“And I’m here to tell you, don’t ignore that feeling. Because one day you might wake up and realize you’ve forgotten how to love that great guy you married.”
Miranda’s blood chilled. Though she realized Sophie was talking about her own situation, she understood the warning.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed to her friends. “I’ve been pretending I’m not, but I am. The thing I fear most is not the disease coming back, but that I’ll never be able to reclaim my family.” “Take it easy on yourself,” Lucy advised her. “You built that marriage and family over sixteen years. You’re not about to let it be taken away in just one.”
Miranda nodded resolutely. “Easy enough to say, but you know what my family is like. We’re all running in different directions. Getting us together is like herding cats. We’re all on fast-forward. What I need is a Pause button.”
“I think I can help with that,” Sophie said. “I have an idea for you, Miranda. How about taking your family away for a little R & R?”
“I’d love to,” Miranda said. “I can’t remember the last time we went on vacation.” She frowned, feeling a new sort of bleakness unrelated to being ill. Their lives simply weren’t organized for a family vacation, even when she was well. Weekends were for catching up on the things she’d failed to finish during the week. School vacations were simply occasions when she and Jacob had to make child-care arrangements for the kids until Valerie was deemed old enough to watch her brother.
“Sometimes Jacob and I talk about piling everyone in the car and taking them to the seashore for a weekend,” Miranda said. “But frankly, it’s going to take a little more than a weekend. And I know what Jacob will say—we simply can’t afford some big family vacation.”
“I hear that,” Lucy said. “I read somewhere that the average family vacation has shrunk to four days a year.”
Sophie placed her briefcase on the table. “So here’s my idea.” She pulled some brochures from her briefcase and placed them on the tiled tabletop. “I learned about this from a client of mine. It’s an organization they have in Canada, called Cottage Dreams. It was created so that cancer survivors could spend some time away with their families after treatment. It gives them a chance to recover and look to the future once again. Anyway, I wanted to tell you about it because even though we don’t have anything like this in the States, I had an inspiration. I started thinking what it would be like to be a host family. And I have a proposal to make you.”
Miranda glanced at the information on the table. The glossy pictures of lakeside cottages looked impossibly romantic and remote.
“Remember I mentioned that Greg’s family has a summer camp in the Catskills,” Sophie continued. “Camp Kioga, on Willow Lake. It’s been in the Bellamy family for years, and they renovated it last summer. There’s a perfect, perfect cottage that’s completely empty this time of year and I’ve asked the Bellamys if your family could use it for a week. They didn’t hesitate for an instant. They would love it if you’d come.”
“Oh, good Lord, yes,” Lucy added. “It’s brilliant.”
Sophie was never one to beat around the bush. “I think you and your family should do it as soon as possible. Greg’s family was wonderful when I asked them, and they really want you to use the cottage.”
“It’s a great idea,” Lucy said. “Miranda, you finally got off the roller coaster. Just a week at this cottage could change your whole perspective.”
Miranda felt a tug of yearning, as though something inside her signaled yes. There were a dozen things she could say— probably should say. “It sounds like heaven,” was what came out.
Sophie and Lucy beamed at each other. Miranda knew then that this was a planned ambush. Her friends had intended all along to present this idea to her. She didn’t mind, though. The idea of a hideaway with her family seemed magical to her. But also…impossible.
“…to JFK, and then you rent a car from there. It’s about a three-hour drive through some of the prettiest countryside you’ve ever seen,” Sophie
was saying, and Miranda realized she had drifted off to the realm of fantasy. The mention of travel arrangements brought her crashing back to the real world.
“Unfortunately that’s probably going to be a deal killer,” she confessed. She told herself that these were her two best friends; she could tell them anything. But still it pained her to admit that she and Jacob weren’t in such great shape financially. “Airfare for four makes it a bit too rich for my blood,” she confessed.
“Hello?” Sophie gave a dry laugh of disbelief. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been commuting between New York and Seattle for months. I’ve got enough frequent-flier miles to fly a small army there and back.”
“I couldn’t take —”
“Maybe not,” Sophie interrupted. “But I can give.” “I don’t get it. Why would you do this?”
“Because you’re my friend and I love you, and I know you’d do the same for me.”
“But the Bellamys—they don’t even know me.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Sophie said, her expression softening. “It’s…um…I suppose they realize that it’s a fragile time for a family. Ours as well as yours.”
Miranda nodded. What an enchanting, impossible idea.
There was no way Jacob would ever go for it.
Chapter Five
A week away in the wilderness seemed like the most remote of possibilities for Miranda and her family. Yet the more she thought about her conversation with Sophie, the more she was convinced that this was what her family needed. Healing time away.
It was so very simple, yet so vital. Miranda was already aware that recovering from this devastating illness was much more than just a physical process. There were emotional and spiritual components that were just as important. She also knew that being in a natural environment, far from everyday distractions, played a crucial role in healing, too.
When she got home, she changed into dungarees and gum boots, and headed out into the garden. There was something that happened to her out here, digging in the dirt, working with her plants. She gained a sense of her own worth, felt a connection to the earth and to nature. Just being outside, breathing the air and contemplating the gardening chores ahead felt right.