Finally, when the kids and grandkids had gone home, Elizabeth got ready for bed and climbed in beside John. “You were right.”
He rolled onto his side, and with his fingers he brushed her hair back from her eyes. “About telling them?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “John, tell me this isn’t the end.” She looked at him, searching for a glimmer of hope.
“We’ve talked about this.” He looked tired, the strength he’d shown earlier long gone. “We beg Jesus for a miracle and we believe it’ll happen. Look what God’s doing with Hayley.” John’s voice gathered some of his earlier strength. “We have to believe, Elizabeth. Otherwise we’re doomed from the beginning.”
She nodded and sank deeper into the sheets. “I keep thinking about him, wondering where he is now.”
John leaned up on his elbow. “Thinking about who?”
“You know who.” Her eyes found his and a knowing was there, a knowing even John couldn’t deny. “Come on, John. Don’t tell me you don’t think about him.”
He breathed out in a way that revealed a lifetime of regret. “I try not to. Until you brought him up the other day, it’d been years, Elizabeth. Four years, maybe.”
Quiet settled around them. “I thought about him the night before Luke’s wedding.” She blinked, staring at the ceiling, seeing images from that winter night in New York City. “It was snowing outside, remember?”
“You stayed up and wrote a poem for Luke.”
“I said something that triggered my thoughts. I said it was hard knowing my only son was getting married.” Her voice grew pinched and she shook her head. “Only he isn’t. He is my second son. Luke will always be my second son, even if you and I are the only two people in the world who know the truth.”
John let his head fall back on the pillow, his eyes still on her. “We tried, remember? Back when you were sick the last time.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth pinched the bridge of her nose and squinted, as if somehow she could see back to that time in their lives. “The answer was what we’d expected.”
“The adoption was closed, sweetheart.” His voice was tired again. “It would take a miracle to find him, honey.”
“He could find us.”
“But why would he? It’s been thirty-five years. He wouldn’t know you were sick or thinking about him.”
Elizabeth nodded and the conversation died. Before long, John kissed her on the cheek. This was the last time they’d kiss good night before her surgery. The last time they’d share a bed together while she was still whole, before she was cut apart, her breasts taken away forever.
“Kiss me again, John. Please.” She moved onto her side and stared deep into his eyes. She knew that everything in her heart was already in his.
“Elizabeth . . . this isn’t the last time; you can’t tell yourself that.”
She searched his face, the familiar shape of his cheekbones, his strong jawline. “But it is, John.” Her voice was softer than the sound of the wind outside. “In some ways it’s the very last.”
He didn’t argue. Instead he took her face in his hands and kissed her. Not a kiss of anticipation or sudden desire, but a kiss that told her he wasn’t being quite honest in what he said. A kiss that put a coda on a lifetime of physical love, a love that would be changed forever when morning came.
When it was over, tears shone in both their eyes. John’s forehead fell against hers, his cheeks wet against her own. “God . . . Almighty God, we know what we’re supposed to say.”
She could feel him trembling beside her, hear the emotion in his voice. Her arm came around his waist and she held him, not sure which of them needed the other more as John continued praying.
“We’re supposed to ask for you to make sure everything goes well tomorrow. We’re supposed to be grateful and hopeful, but to be honest, right now, God, we’re confused and not sure how to feel.”
“We’re scared to death,” Elizabeth whispered.
“Okay, we’re scared to death.” John exhaled hard. “I wanted to be honest, and now I’ll say the rest. God, give us a miracle. I pray the doctors get into that operating room and find they don’t need to operate at all. I pray the cancer is gone and Elizabeth can go home free of this awful disease. If not, I pray you heal her quickly, and that the cancer hasn’t spread.” He hesitated. “We’re begging you for a miracle, Lord. One more miracle for the Baxter family. Please.”
John kissed her once more. This time their eyes were dry, and John breathed a good night against her cheek. “Believe, Elizabeth. Don’t stop believing.”
“I won’t.”
He was asleep in ten minutes, the way he often fell asleep before she did. Even now, when he had more pain in his heart than ever before, he could sleep. It was his trademark.
But Elizabeth could only stare at the dark ceiling and let herself drift back—back to that time when she and John first met. Back when they were forced to do something they never wanted to do.
She wasn’t sure if she fell asleep and dreamed it, or if it only felt that way. However it happened, the years melted away until she was back in 1967, her freshman year at the University of Michigan. Yes, she’d been a home economics major, but when they’d told the story to their kids over the years, it always jumped from their meeting to their marriage. Only Elizabeth and John knew the truth. That a lot of living and hard lessons had taken place between those two events.
John was a med student, and the two of them met at a mixer the summer before her freshman year. The event was intended for all new or returning students.
The ironic thing was how it had all come together. John never should’ve been there; he was too old. But he’d been living with a family, and their oldest son was also a freshman that year. John had taken him as a favor to the guy’s parents. It should’ve been a slow evening, a time of chaperoning and making sure the young man got home at a decent hour.
Instead, five minutes after John arrived, he spotted Elizabeth across the room.
She was talking with a group of freshmen girls. Elizabeth’s family lived down the street from the university, so she wouldn’t stay in a dorm like the other girls. Rather she would attend only an occasional social event on her way to earning something no other woman in her family had earned: a bachelor’s degree.
“Don’t talk to boys tonight,” her mother had warned her when she finally gave her permission to go. One of her neighbors, a junior home economics major, was taking her to the mixer, the school’s way of getting freshmen involved before the school year started.
“Mama . . .” Elizabeth remembered feeling embarrassed. She was certainly old enough to talk to boys. “I’m almost in college. Don’t you think I should be able to talk to boys?”
“Not boys you don’t know.” Her mother pinched her lips together. “What have we always taught you, Elizabeth? Boys only want one thing. Don’t forget it.”
Elizabeth’s family had attended a strict denominational church back then, a faction that didn’t believe in loud music, merriment, or dancing. Definitely not dancing. In fact, if her mother had known there’d be dancing at the party that night, she would never have allowed Elizabeth to attend.
But the school had done a good job of advertising, careful as they were back in those days to make the event sound tame, almost a mandatory function of having a successful freshman year.
Elizabeth knew the junior girl who was taking her. The girl’s family attended church with her own, and that, too, made Elizabeth’s mother feel better about the event. Still, she worried. And so she sent Elizabeth with the final admonition: “Don’t talk to boys.”
The moment Elizabeth had climbed into the junior girl’s car, she knew the night was going to be nothing like her mother pictured it. The girl, Betsy, wore a skirt that fell just above her knees, and on her lips was a cherry red color Elizabeth had never seen on her before.
“You know how to dance, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth chuckled and gave a final glance over her sho
ulder at her parents’ house “Sure don’t.”
“Well—” Betsy turned up the music and something with a loud beat filled the car—“you will after tonight.”
And so it was that Elizabeth was standing with a few other freshman girls near the punch table when John walked up, smiled at her, and said, “Hi.”
“Hi.” She felt her cheeks grow hot and she looked around. He must have been talking to someone else, she figured. Someone older or prettier. But he stayed, and his eyes never left hers. “I’m Elizabeth.”
“I’m John. John Baxter.” He shrugged. “I’m too old to be here, but I brought my little brother.”
“Really?”
“Well, not exactly.” John leaned against the wall and studied her. Later he would tell her that it was a classic case of love at first sight. He’d dated girls before, but no one had ever taken his breath away until he met Elizabeth.
He explained his situation. He had no parents—his father died in the war, and his mother, a few years later of a broken heart. “I live with these friends of my mother’s, a family we’ve known for a long time.” He gestured across the room at a gangly young man helping himself to a plate of food. “That’s Bill. He’s the oldest son of the people I live with. I told ’em I’d show Bill around and make sure he got home safely.”
“I see.” Elizabeth felt suddenly shy. “What year are you?”
“I graduated last year. I’m about to be a second-year med student.” He smiled. “Other than coming here tonight, I haven’t been anywhere but the library, school, and home again for the past year.”
“So how old does that make you?”
John grinned at her, searching her eyes. “Twenty-three. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Elizabeth felt a sudden sense of daring. She wasn’t supposed to talk to boys, and here she was chatting with a young man five years her senior. What would her mother think of that?
“And you?”
“Eighteen. I’ll be a freshman.”
John poured two cups of punch and handed one to her. “You’ll love it. They take good care of freshmen at U of M.”
“I hope so.”
“You dormin’ it?”
“No.” Her mother’s warning sounded in her mind again. “I live at home. My parents’ house is a few blocks from the university.”
“Good.” He nodded and a silence fell between them. Then, without warning, he set his punch down and took her hand. “Come on, Elizabeth. Dance with me.”
She still had her cup in her hand, and a shot of terror coursed through her body. The dance floor was full of couples, all of them enjoying the music. But she couldn’t, could she? Her mother would have a fit if she found out, make her go before the elder board and confess her sins one at a time.
But then, her mother wasn’t here.
A smile came across her face and she lifted her cup to her lips. In a single swallow, she finished the contents and tossed the cup in a nearby trash can. “Okay, but I have to warn you.”
“What?” John’s eyes sparkled as they met hers. “What warning could a girl as pretty as you possibly have for an old guy like me?”
She lifted her shoulders a few times and gave him a half smile. “I can’t dance.”
“You can’t?” He seemed genuinely surprised. Then he laughed and pulled her out onto the dance floor. “I guess I’ll have to teach you.”
He spent the rest of the night doing just that. When the mixer was over, Elizabeth knew how to do a modified version of the Charleston and the jitterbug, and she could swing dance in her sleep. Her legs ached from all the dancing, and before they said good-bye, John asked for her number.
Her mother’s warning came back again: “Don’t talk to boys, Elizabeth. Whatever you do, don’t talk to boys.”
“Well . . . uh . . .” She felt her face getting hot again. “How ’bout if you give me your number.” She stared at her sore feet, afraid to meet his eyes. “My mother doesn’t like me getting calls from boys.”
“She’d rather have you calling them?” His tone was light, and they both laughed. But he did as she asked, finding a piece of paper and writing his number on it. “The school has events every weekend from now till fall; you know that, right?”
Elizabeth had heard something about it, but she had no plans to go. “I’m not sure.”
John explained that the university administrators wanted students to get involved with each other and the school activities. “There’s a trip to Lake Michigan next weekend, with a bonfire on the beach. Then the weekend after that they’ve put together a bowling trip and movie night.” He took her hands and looked straight to a part of her heart no one had ever seen before. “I’ll go to every event if you’ll be there.”
The idea sounded like it might work. She took his number and bid him good-bye. On the way home she asked Betsy about the social events set up for the rest of the summer. “Yeah, they’re a blast. I’ll probably go to all of them.”
“Could you call and invite me? And make sure my mom knows the invitation is coming from you.”
Betsy raised her eyebrow. “I saw you talking with that tall, dark, and handsome med student. Every girl in the room had her eye on him.”
“They did?”
“Yes, but you wouldn’t know—” Betsy gave Elizabeth a friendly poke—“because the two of you never took your eyes off each other.”
By the time Betsy dropped her at home, the plan was in stone. Betsy called later that week and talked to her mother. Yes, the events were chaperoned; yes, she’d keep an eye on Elizabeth. No, she didn’t think Elizabeth had talked to any boys at the mixer. Yes, she’d be sure to keep an eye on her at future events also.
“You understand, right?” Elizabeth heard her mother tell Betsy on the phone. “Elizabeth’s a good girl, but she’s very pretty. I’m not sure she knows how pretty she is, but the boys know. The last thing her father and I want is for Elizabeth to get mixed up with a boy. She needs to finish college first.”
Elizabeth was mortified that her mother would speak that way about her to an older girl like Betsy. But in the end the plan worked beautifully. The next weekend students met at the west end of the university parking lot and caravanned to the beach. Elizabeth rode with Betsy to the meeting place. But she took the two-hour drive to the shore sitting beside John Baxter.
“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” she told him that day. The window was down and a warm breeze played in her hair. “I can’t believe I’m riding in a car with you to Lake Michigan. My mother would die.”
John told her later that he felt bad sneaking around the way they did those early weeks. But he was so taken by her that he’d lost his ability to think straight. That evening, after a day of playing in the surf and lying in the sun, she and John took a walk along the beach instead of attending the bonfire.
When the group was far enough in the distance, he stopped and turned to her. “Elizabeth, do you feel something?” His voice was smooth, gentle as the breeze off the lake.
Her heart pounded so loud she was sure he could hear it. “Feel what?”
“This.” John took her hand and placed it on his heart.
Beneath her fingertips she felt a strong thudding, almost as if John had just finished a race or run up three flights of stairs. “Your heart, John? What is it?”
He lowered her hand but kept his fingers intertwined with hers. “It’s you. It’s how I feel when I’m with you. Like all the world could go away and I’d be the happiest man alive. Just standing here looking at you for the rest of my life.”
“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Feel yours.” He nodded to her. “Go on, Elizabeth; feel it.”
And she did. She reached up and placed her hand over her own heart. And sure enough, the hard, fast beating she’d felt when she touched his was the same in her heart now. Elizabeth studied John, the moonlight casting shadows on their faces. “What does it mean?”
Without saying another word
, he closed the distance between them, took her gently in his arms, and careful not to press his body against hers, he kissed her.
She knew two things after that. First, she understood why her heart was beating so fast. It was because in less than a week she’d fallen in love with John Baxter. And second, she knew why her mother had warned her not to talk to boys. Because after kissing John, she didn’t care about college or getting home on time or anything else her mother had ever told her.
All she wanted was to stand there forever, kissing John and getting lost in his eyes.
Chapter Nine
The dream was only half over.
Elizabeth willed it to continue, willed herself to remember every part of their past—the height of their love for each other and the depth of their despair when their choices changed everything for both of them.
Her clandestine dates with John had continued. Always she would drive off with Betsy and get five minutes of lecture from the girl. “You’re falling too hard for him, Elizabeth. He’s too old for you. You need to spread yourself around a little, make some girlfriends . . .”
Elizabeth barely listened.
Once they arrived at each event’s meeting place, she was with John every minute until it was time to go home. She was falling madly in love with John, experiencing feelings she’d never known existed. But she could share none of it with her mother or father, because they knew nothing of what was happening.
By the end of August, she found other ways to meet up with John. She’d claim to be going to the university to find her way around campus. “Mom, you know how hard it’ll be to get to classes if I’m not familiar with the layout of campus.”
Her mother had a perpetual worried look back then. She frowned. “Maybe I could take you around, help you find your way.”
“No, Mom.” Elizabeth tried to keep her tone light. “I’ll ride my bike and explore on my own. That way I won’t need your help on the first day of school.” She patted her mother’s hand. “I am in college, now, Mama.”
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