“I’m on my way,” I say, already scrambling to my feet.
* * *
“Of course you must take the jet,” Lars insists when I rouse Rosie, who calls him. On speakerphone his voice is sleepy but firm. “I can have it ready in an hour. I’ll arrange a boat to pick you up, and I will come see you off myself.”
Rosie helps me pack. I’m ready to go in fifteen minutes but can’t leave until the plane is ready. Rosie holds me while I sob.
“I didn’t know,” I wail, face slick with tears. “I wouldn’t have left her if I had known.”
“Of course not, sugar,” Rosie soothes, pressing my face against her shoulder and rubbing my back as though I am a child. “That’s the way she wanted it. She didn’t want you to know. She wanted to watch you have a big adventure and get to live a little of that adventure through you. She was trying to set you free.”
I can’t stop crying, fueled by a potent cocktail of emotions—guilt and anger, and most of all fear. I am deeply afraid of losing Nana Alice for good. What if I don’t get there in time?
Rosie checks her watch. “You’ve still got twenty minutes. Do you want me to make you some breakfast? Want to walk on the beach for a few minutes to clear your head?”
I shake my head. There’s just one thing I need to do before I go home. I have a confession to make.
Kai answers the door of the canary-yellow guest cottage wearing only a pair of faded gray boxer shorts. I stare at the smooth, tan expanse of his chest. Why is he always shirtless? It makes this so much harder. His hair is loose, black and shiny and falling below the plane of his shoulders. He smells like sleep and chai tea—cardamom and pink pepper and a hint of sweetness. My heart swells in my chest, a feeling of regret laced with a hint of bittersweet memory.
“Mia, hey.” He scrubs his hands over his face, surprised to see me, but his smile fades as he takes in my pink eyes and strained countenance. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head. “I’m going home to Seattle. It turns out Nana Alice has been lying about her cancer. It’s bad, really bad.” I stop, my voice breaking, and clear my throat. “I’m leaving this morning. I don’t want to miss a moment more with her, and there’s not much time.” My eyes fill with tears, and I dash them away with the back of my hand. “But I had to see you before I left.”
“Just a second.” Kai ducks back into the cottage and grabs a T-shirt and shorts from his bed. He comes out on the porch. I see Milo at the tiny two-person table inside, eating Cap’n Crunch and watching us with interest. Kai shuts the door behind him and pulls on the clothes, then leans against the porch railing and watches me curiously. “What’s up?”
I hesitate, then decide to plunge right in. I don’t have anything to lose. I’m leaving in a few minutes, and we might never see each other again, if that’s what he chooses. But I can’t go before I tell him the truth.
“I lied to you,” I tell him. “I’ve never been interested in providing free medical care for disadvantaged women and children. I’m horrible at medicine, and I faint at the sight of blood. Rosie made up that story for Bryant and Stella so they would accept me on the team. I went along with it because I desperately wanted to go on the trip, and I felt like I had to offer something that sounded grand enough to change the world. But really, this is the truth: I love to bake. And I love to help people. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”
I spread my hands, an admission. “And I feel like I’ve failed at this new life. I’ve been living with a beatific vision of myself, Saint Mia who would save the world, but the riot at the camp made me realize that this isn’t what I want to do at all. I’m not Saint Mia. I’m just plain Mia, just me.” I shrug. “And that terrifies me because I don’t know what I have left. It feels like I’ve lost everything, and I’m more confused than ever.”
He’s watching me impassively, arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t look surprised.
“I guessed as much,” he says finally.
“About what?”
“I saw you working in the medical tent,” he says, quirking a small smile. “You didn’t seem like a natural, to be honest. I think it might have been when I saw you cleaning blood off the exam table with your eyes squeezed shut.” Then he sobers. “Why are you telling me all of this?”
“Because I want you to see the real me. I don’t want to leave with you not knowing who I really am.” No matter how pathetic the truth is. I look up at him, but his expression is difficult to read.
“Okay.” he says. That’s it. Nothing more.
“Mia,” Rosie calls from the porch of our bungalow, pointing toward the dock. “Lars called. The boat’s here. He’s meeting us at the dock.”
“I’ve got to go.” I hesitate. “I’m sorry I lied to you. You deserve so much more.”
Kai tips his head and considers me for a moment. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says. “I do, but it’s okay.” He reaches for me, and I instinctively step into his embrace, warm and solid. His arms are tight around me, and I burrow my face into his chest for a fraction of a moment, pretending I belong there, pretending I don’t ever have to leave.
“Thanks for telling me,” he murmurs against my hair. I nod, then reluctantly step back, throat clogged with regret and tears.
“I guess this is goodbye.” I gaze miserably up at him.
He shrugs. “I’m not that into goodbyes. Let’s just say, ‘See you around.’”
I give him a searching glance, trying to read the meaning in those words, but his expression is hard to gauge.
“Okay, then. See you around.” I smile slightly, a little bubble of hope floating through the fog of sorrow surrounding my heart.
“Go,” Kai urges me, nodding toward the boat. “They’re waiting for you.”
I go.
Chapter 49
Sprinting through the halls of Seattle’s Swedish Hospital, I frantically murmur, “Don’t let me be too late, don’t let me be too late,” over and over like a litany, a supplication. I’ve been trying to reach Henry since my flight landed, but his phone has been off, which is making me panic, imagining the worst. When I finally locate Nana Alice’s room, I stop short in the doorway, panting for air. Nana Alice is sitting up in bed, brandishing a biscuit at Henry.
“This,” she is saying, “is not a baked good.” She holds the biscuit aloft with a look of contempt.
Henry, who is standing by the head of her bed wearing a long-suffering expression, just nods.
“It’s got the density of plaster,” she says. “Did they blend these in a cement mixer?”
“I’ll bring you some better biscuits for breakfast tomorrow,” Henry says patiently. They both glance up as I knock lightly and enter the room, trying to catch my breath from my dash through the hospital.
Nana Alice looks very ill. I bite back a gasp of surprise at the contrast in just a few weeks. She’s lost even more weight; the bones of her wrists and the knobs of her collarbone stand out prominently beneath the thin cotton hospital gown. Her skin is a waxen color. But she is sitting up and feeling well enough to critique the hospital baked goods, which I take to be a good sign.
“Mia, sweetheart!” She holds out her hand and beams at me. “Henry told me you were coming. What a lot of fuss for nothing.”
When I hug her it feels like hugging a little stick figure, as though a breeze might snap her. I draw back and search her face. The whites of her eyes look yellowed.
“I came as soon as I could,” I say in a rush. “I was afraid I’d be too late.”
Nana Alice waves away my concern. “Oh, I’m not dying yet. Everyone’s getting worked up about nothing. I’ll be fine. Just a little cold. Come, sit.” She pats the bed beside her. “You look hungry. Henry can run and get you a sandwich.”
“Hey, tiger.” Henry comes around to my side of the bed and gives me a firm hug. “You need something to eat? The cafeteria has a terrible turkey club, but the pastrami isn’t bad.”
I nod. “A sandwich would be great.” I skipped br
eakfast and only had a granola bar in my satchel. “Hey, your phone was off when I tried to call. I thought something terrible had happened.”
Henry checks his phone. “Sorry, had it on silent.” He clicks the sound back on, then slips from the room.
Nana Alice clears her throat and takes a sip of water, then leans back against the pillows. She looks tired. The room is quiet for a moment, the only sound the steady beep beep beep of a machine beside the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask softly. I know I should probably leave this conversation for another day, but I can’t. I feel so betrayed.
She sighs and takes my hand in her own, her skin papery but reassuringly warm. “I’m sorry I lied to you about my cancer, Mia,” she says, looking me in the eye. “It was the only way to get you to go on that trip, and I knew you needed to go. After Ethan strung you along for so many years, well, you needed a fresh start. I wanted you to be able to do the things you’ve always dreamed of. I was afraid if I told you the truth, you’d never leave.” Her words are matter-of-fact but her gaze is beseeching, asking for understanding, for absolution.
I clear my throat. “You should have let me make my own decision about going,” I say, my voice cracking. “You took that choice away when you lied to me.”
Nana Alice presses her hand to her chest, looking pained. “I know. I’m so sorry,” she says, a frail penitent in a faded blue-print hospital gown. “Will you forgive me?”
“Of course.” I press my cheek against the soft pouf of her hair, a little flattened on one side but smelling as always of extra-hold hair spray from her weekly salon set and blow out. At this moment I will forgive her anything in the world. “But don’t do it again, okay?”
“Oh I doubt I’ll have the chance, but I promise,” Nana Alice says ruefully. “Now”—she pulls back from my embrace and folds her hands in her lap—“Tell me about the trip. I want to hear all the details.”
At some point Henry returns and hands me a pastrami sandwich, then sits on the other side of the bed texting Christine while I detail the entire story of Mumbai and our unexpected detour to Hungary, Ethan’s surprise appearance, and then the riot at the refugee camp.
Nana Alice hardly touches her dinner when it comes. She’s glued to my words, enjoying all the drama. She seems particularly intrigued by the romance surrounding Rosie and Lars, and she asks a lot of questions about Kai.
When I finish, she looks perturbed. “My goodness, what an unexpected ending to your trip.” She looks thoughtful.
“Yes,” I admit with a touch of regret. “So much of it wasn’t how I imagined it would be. Not just the end, although that was scary and traumatic and unexpected, but all of it.”
“In what way?” Nana Alice asks me, eyes bright, curious.
I settle back in the chair and ponder for a moment. “I think I went expecting some big revelation, expecting to change the world in a grand way. And what I found instead was how small I am, how little impact I really had. It was . . . humbling. The times I felt most useful were actually when I was baking.”
I think of the pancakes, of the carrot cake in a box. “And even those times, I don’t know if they really helped in the long run. I thought I would go on this trip and find my big thing, but I didn’t.”
I gaze down at the empty sandwich wrapper in my lap, tasting again the bitter disappointment, as acrid and gritty as coffee grounds at the bottom of a drained cup. “All I found was myself, stripped of everything I thought I wanted. I didn’t get answers. I just lost all my illusions.”
“Well, that has its own value,” Nana Alice says thoughtfully. “You have to be able to see a thing for what it really is before you can understand its true purpose. I know you’re disappointed, but this may turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I am worried about you leaving things with Kai the way you did, though.” Nana Alice surveys me closely. “He seems like a real gem.”
I nod, a little wistful. “He is.”
“Well then.” She purses her lips. “You have to win him back.”
“How?” I spread my hands. “I don’t have anything to offer. I lied to him. I pretended to be someone I wasn’t, to be more skilled and important than I actually am.”
“Pshaw.” Nana Alice waves away my protestations. “Mia, you are worth so much more than what you think. I bet Kai sees it. We all see it, but you don’t.”
I stare at her, trying to digest these words. I wish I could believe them, but my value has always been tied to what I thought I should be able to give and to do, and now that I’ve failed, that I realize Saint Mia is just an illusion, I don’t feel I have anything left.
The bedside phone rings and Henry answers, mouthing, “Albert?” to Nana Alice.
“Tell him to call back in a few minutes,” she says. “I want to finish this talk with Mia.”
Henry relays the message and hangs up.
Nana Alice sighs. “I know what he’s calling about anyway. He’s just going to try to convince me to marry him again.”
“He what?” I gape at her. “How do you know?”
Nana Alice shrugs. “He’s been asking me every time he sees me for the past month.”
“So what do you tell him?”
Nana Alice looks shocked. “I tell him to stop asking me.”
“You haven’t said yes? Why not?” I exclaim. Albert is sweet, gentlemanly, and obviously adores her.
“Because I’m dying, and probably quite soon. It isn’t fair to the poor man. He’s already lost a wife.” Nana Alice folds her hands in her lap and looks stubborn.
“But he loves you,” I clarify.
“Yes.” Nana Alice nods soberly. “He does.”
“And presumably he knows you’re dying?”
“Oh yes, I’ve been very up-front with him from the start.”
Well at least she didn’t lie to someone, I think, a touch bitterly.
“Well then, why in the world would you deny him the happiness of spending the . . .” I stop and swallow hard to get the words out. “The time you have left, together? If he wants to marry you, I think you should let him!”
Nana Alice cocks her head and considers me. “Well, honestly I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
A few minutes later the phone rings again. Albert. I rise and Henry does too. It seems like a marriage proposal should be a private thing, even if it is a daily occurrence. Besides, Nana Alice looks tired.
“We should let her get some rest,” Henry murmurs, ushering me from the room as Nana Alice takes the phone.
“If he asks again, say yes,” I hiss over my shoulder. Nana Alice waves me away with a smile. I can hear her talking to him as we leave the room, tired but happy. Outside at the nurses’ station we find my uncle Carl, who has just arrived and is getting an update from Nana Alice’s nurse.
“Dr. Cho feels that Mrs. West is out of danger and stable right now,” the nurse assures us. “We’ll call you if anything changes, but her vitals are strong and she’s improving.”
Carl is staying with her through the night, and Henry and I agree we will return in the morning.
As we leave the hospital, it occurs to me that I have nowhere to go. The cottage is still sublet. I’m homeless, jobless, and suddenly feeling a little lost.
When I tell Henry he smiles wryly, then jerks his head, looking so like John Lennon I almost start humming “Imagine.”
“Come on, little sister. Let’s go home to West Wind. You can bunk with Maddie in your old room.”
I nod, grateful and a little surprised as I clamber into my parents’ old Subaru and we head to the terminal to catch the ferry to the Olympic Peninsula.
So it has all come back to this, I muse, staring at the lights of downtown Seattle as Henry drives, John Denver on the radio, and the smell of salt and rain seeping through my open window. I traveled the world to end up back where I started, in Sequim, at West Wind Lavender Farm. All the dreams and grand aspirations. They are gone now, and I am just Mia, nothing more, nothing less.<
br />
Chapter 50
The next morning when I arrive at the hospital, revived by a solid night of sleep, I find Nana Alice already awake and sitting up in bed, wearing her clip-on pearl earrings, her raspberry lipstick applied boldly. She has a visitor. Albert is holding her hand, and from the looks on their faces, I’d say they have reached an agreement.
“Mia.” Nana Alice beams at me as I walk into the room. “We were just talking about you.”
Albert stands and clasps my hand warmly. “I hear I have you to thank for changing her mind,” he says, his blue eyes twinkling.
“We have news,” Nana Alice says, holding out her left hand. I see a simple gold band with a pearl flanked by two small diamonds. “We’re getting married.”
The look they give each other is so filled with love that it makes my heart ache. They will love each other fully and well for as long as they have.
“Congratulations,” I say, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. “When’s the wedding?”
“Two weeks,” Nana Alice says. “We don’t want to wait. I don’t have much time.”
“But we’ll enjoy every moment we have together,” Albert says, gazing at her, his eyes filmed with a sheen of tears. Nana Alice reaches up and gives him a kiss on the lips, and he cups her cheek. She turns to me.
“We have a favor to ask of you, Mia,” she says.
“Anything.” I blink, trying not to cry at the scene before me, which is so impossibly sweet and so heartbreakingly sad all at the same time.
“I want you to make our wedding cake,” Nana Alice tells me. “Lemon cake with cream cheese frosting. You can use my original recipe. I won twenty dollars in a Seattle Times baking contest in 1967 with that recipe. It’s a winner.”
The Enlightenment of Bees Page 25