by L. B. Dunbar
Anna softly smiles. “It’s still a little romantic.”
I suppose it could have been, had I been even remotely attracted to my patient, but I wasn’t. Still, it was sweet.
“Then he tried to tip me. He wanted to reward me for my service. I refused again. I couldn’t accept money, and I didn’t need it. I wasn’t being kind out of some obligation. I liked the old coot, even if I didn’t agree with the way he’d lived his life. Who was I to judge him? We all make mistakes.” Sometimes people make bigger ones than others, like Quincy’s experience as a father or Zack’s dad. “He’d alienated his own children, and then he wanted them back.”
Anna nods.
“When he died, I was terribly sad. I had a fondness for the man, but I wasn’t having relations with him. I wasn’t in love with him. He was an old man who had charmed me into liking him. He reminded me of my grandfather, a man I did love dearly.” My voice cracks mentioning the comparison.
Anna softly smiles. “I don’t know how you do it. I’ve lost Ben, who was the love of my life, but it still must be difficult to lose multiple patients. One person was enough for me.”
Anna is correct. It was never easy to lose a patient, but they also weren’t my family. I’d already lost someone important to me from the disease I worked amongst. I was conditioned to separate myself just enough, so the travesty of my profession didn’t completely drag me under. Still, it hurt. Each loss chipped at my heart.
“Quincy’s children came forward and accused me of manipulating their father once the will was read. Trust me, no one was more shocked than me. I didn’t even understand why I’d been invited to attend the reading. I almost didn’t go, arguing with the attorney who represented Quincy that it was a family matter. The attorney told me I’d want to be present. The accusations flew. Daniel, Quincy’s eldest, can really sling the insults.” I blow out a breath. “Eventually, the hospital had concerns, as they termed it, and I was asked to leave. If I left without a scene, I could quit versus being fired, but I was essentially let go. The Quincy Corporation was a major contributor to the hospital.”
“And that’s why you decided to move here.”
“I moved here because I’d inherited a run-down house with tons of potential, but yes, I had no reason to stay in Grand Rapids as I’d lost my job. I needed the change. Working with children had less risk than working with the elderly from a personal position. The difficulty is that losing a child is so much harder.”
I consider Jessica, my young patient who had a difficult night. She’s why I decided to take the double shift. When another nurse called in sick, I offered to stay. The sad truth was Jessica wasn’t going to make it. Her parents were taking her home soon.
“What you do is so remarkable,” Anna quietly says with awe, and the somber tone of this conversation pinches at my chest.
“But you didn’t come here to talk about me, and I just word-vomited all over you.”
“Better than real vomit,” she teases.
“I’ve had my experiences with that.”
“So have I.” She laughs before the sound fades to regret.
“I’m sorry I lied.”
Anna shakes her head and waves off the apology. “No need. I actually understand. That was too complicated to explain. Saying he was your husband kept it simple.”
“It doesn’t dispel the rumors, though, which is how Zack heard a sliver of the truth.”
“Zack misinterpreted what he heard, and then he overreacted.” Anna’s voice turns stern, even disappointed in her friend. I don’t want to discuss Zack, though. “So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Well, at first, I thought I wanted to talk about losing my husband. Does it get any easier? Will this ache in my chest ever subside? But now, I see that your case wasn’t quite like mine.” Anna sits up a little straighter and turns her head toward the front of the house. Maybe she’s thinking she should leave, but I don’t want her to go.
“You can still talk to me about him. Tell me about Ben.” She’s already told me some things when we first went out, and I’ve heard bits and pieces from the men as they’ve spoken about their wild friendship throughout the dinners I’ve shared with the group. “Tell me something unique about him. What was his favorite color? What did he love to eat? What was a song he loved to sing?”
For the next hour, Anna speaks, giving me the mundane details about her husband. We finish the bottle of wine she brought, and I open another one. The following hour passes with her telling me more about the ache in her chest and the emptiness in her bed.
“That might have been too much,” she says, as a way of apology for explaining how much she missed sex and the feel of his hands on her. She missed kissing him and took it for granted that she’d have years to continue pressing her lips to his.
“You can tell me anything you wish.” What I offer is the truth. I’m happy to hear about how wonderful they were and how they were not-quite-so perfect at the same time.
“I’m not close with my younger sister. Fortunately, I have an amazing relationship with Ben’s sister, Autumn. She’s become one of my best friends, but I feel weird discussing intimate details with her about her brother. The truth is most of my friends are in Chicago. Over the past year, I haven’t kept in touch as well as I should, and I worry I’ve made a big mistake agreeing to move our family here. I don’t have those friendships to support me.” Her voice grows quieter as she speaks, and her fingers trace along the edge of my table.
“I don’t have any girlfriends here either.” I have work companions and a few nursing friends in the larger city, but with our chaotic schedules, we don’t have the opportunity to see each other often enough.
“I just needed someone impartial.” I understood. Anna needs a friend without a connection to Ben. She needs to take those baby steps to move forward without every detail of her future life revolving around her loss.
“I totally understand, and my door is always open. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I want us to be friends, Zack or no Zack.”
Anna sighs in relief. Her shoulders fall, and her hands stop moving along the table. “Agreed. Zack or no Zack, I’d love a new friend.”
“I’m only curious, but why aren’t you part of the bonding ritual?” I don’t need to specifically reference the fire for her to know I mean tonight’s memorial.
“Ben wrote them letters. Each of them has a mission to complete in a year. Even my damn brother has a directive, and he hasn’t been home in years.” Anna sighs. Her voice saddens as she asks, “Why do you think Ben left them a letter and not me?”
“It sounds like you and Ben were very open in your relationship. Perhaps he said everything he ever needed to say to you. He knew you’d be able to carry on, but those fools needed a final word of advice.” It was a stab in the dark at the thoughts of a dying man I didn’t know. Anna softly smiles, and I can only hope I’ve hit the mark or at least dispelled the question.
“You’re a strong woman to have been through what you went through, River. And I’m sorry Zack added to the grief of your situation. It wasn’t right of him. You’re a survivor.” She pauses a beat. “I’m not as strong as you.”
“Yes, you are.” I mean every word. “You’ll make it through this. You just take it day by day. Some days will be good, and some won’t be, but you make it through the day and do it again the next day and the next. Days will turn into weeks, but there is no rush. There isn’t a finish line. Day by day, my friend,” I repeat, holding out my hand across the table.
“Day by day,” she echoes and reaches over for mine. She swallows hard and adds, “Thank you for listening.”
“Listening is what friends do.”
She squeezes my hand, and I know she’ll get where she needs to be. It’s just going to take time.
25
[Zack]
“Flowers?” Mason snorts. “That’s how you wanted to win her back? You can’t woo a woman on flowers alone.”
I’ve spent most o
f the evening glancing up the cliff in hopes of seeing River at the edge of her property or even coming down the stairs to the beach, and I can’t seem to help myself. I peer upward again before looking at Mason.
“And how would you know about wooing a woman? You’ve never wooed anyone in your life.”
“I do, too, know how to woo.”
Logan breaks into hardy laughter as the three of us remain around the beach fire. We’ve let it dwindle to low embers so we don’t get in trouble for a full blaze in the dark. The wind is low tonight, and it’s a perfect evening for what we need to do soon.
“And I don’t need to woo when I have all this.” Mason draws a hand down the length of his body as he sits in a chair opposite me.
“Fuck off,” I mutter, and he laughs. “I don’t know how else to apologize. I’ve said I’m sorry. I gave her flowers.” I sound like a chump, but I honestly don’t know what else to do. When Jeanine and I fought, we fought. There weren’t passionate apologies or vigorous makeup sex. We silently went about, tiptoeing around one another until the boys needed something and the next fight began. I told River I didn’t like confrontation, and I didn’t want to argue with her ever. She told me it was inevitable, but she assured me we’d always make up.
We hadn’t made up. “She doesn’t want me within ten feet of her,” I remind them.
“When has that stopped you?” Logan teases. “You need a grand gesture.”
Oh God. Not more romantic bullshit. Logan has gone so soft and squishy for his new wife and their baby boy that he practically has heart emoji eyeballs. It’s sickeningly sweet, and I’m so fucking envious it comes naturally to him.
“Like what?” I ask Logan instead of Mason, who wouldn’t actually know how to woo a woman.
“Something big. Something she wants that says you agree, you want that too, and you want her.”
“Jesus, that sounds more complicated than Mason’s words of wooing.”
Mason snorts and tips back a bottle of tequila. I swear we are too old for this shit, but I hold out my hand, wiggling my fingers. I need the strong stuff again tonight. We remain silent as I take my burning sip, shaking my head at the sharp tang on my tongue.
“We really need to find a fourth point for Four Points,” Mason says, sobering our conversation a bit. We’re leading up to what’s to come next, and I sense it in the lowering of his voice.
“It doesn’t feel right to ask someone outside of us to take over the landscaping portion,” I say.
“We still have his crew.” Logan, Mason, and Ben have been using the old Kulis Landscaping offices as the new headquarters for Four Points. With Ben gone, the landscaping manager has continued the position he’s held for years. We need to make a decision whether we keep him on and add to the general contracts they have for our special builds or add a new addition to our business.
“We could ask Anna,” Mason suggests. I’ve thought the same thing, but Anna is a teacher, not a landscape designer. She knows some basics but not the intricacies that Ben did. Ben had a financial investment in our new venture with a specific amendment that stated Anna receive his proceeds or sell his position. We all agree we cannot be the Three Points. It doesn’t make sense, and we aren’t willing to dismiss that Ben was our True North. He brought us together. In his name, we plan to keep our number at four.
“What about Archer?” Logan asks.
“We don’t even know where he is.” Somehow, I don’t think landscaping will be of interest to him. I’m convinced that Archer isn’t just some wayward vagabond but possibly something greater, something risky. He hadn’t been home in years, and when he has appeared, Ben said he always looked a little rough, a little tough, and a lot beat up.
“What about your brother?” Mason asks.
“I don’t think Mr. Magellan Hotel has landscaping in his blood. He’s a hotel manager, catering to the rich and famous. Champagne bars and nightclubs are more his speed.”
Mason huffs as if agreeing, and Logan nods. “We’ll find somebody.”
For another minute, we silently watch the low glow of the fire and listen to the soft breeze whistling around us.
“Well, should we do this?” Logan asks.
As Ben wrote each of us a message, Logan suggested we write one back to him. It was actually Autumn’s idea and a little New Age for me. Not surprisingly, River loved it. The idea was we write our own thoughts on a notecard and toss them into the fire, allowing the ash to carry the message to our friend. The concept reminds me of Japanese lanterns, and I don’t know why we didn’t purchase a few of those instead. Then again, we couldn’t easily write a personal note on them.
Mason doesn’t answer Logan but adds another log to the fire and restokes the embers by placing twigs against them to ignite the wood. The fire builds, and we each reach for our notecards. So much had been said to Ben in those final months, and he hated it, always feeling like people were saying goodbye. We were. He would be leaving us forever.
I hadn’t really known what to write on my card. Did I thank him for his friendship? Did I promise him I’d look after Anna and the kids? Did I acknowledge he was like another brother to me? All these things had been said to his face before he passed. It was actually River who helped me come up with something.
“What’s one word you’d use to describe Ben?”
“Kind.” It was that simple and reminded me quite a bit of River herself. “Understanding. He had this way of reading people, seeing something in them that others did not. Maybe even seeing something in a person the individual didn’t see in himself.” What had Ben seen in me as a friend? I was dedicated and loyal. I’d do anything for any of them. Beyond that, what was I missing that he saw?
It’s strange to think Ben might have seen a teenage boy who needed people to love him unconditionally. A boy who’d lost his pride and his home, who only wanted to feel safe and seen for himself, not his father’s crime. Ben had done those things. River was doing it too.
“You could always tell Ben how you are doing,” River also suggested. “Respond to his note. Tell him how you’ll work on his message.” I hadn’t told her what Ben had said. She didn’t ask me to share it after the night I told her about it. Yet she’d still given me the best advice.
I wasn’t eloquent with my emotions. Reflecting on my multitude of apologies to River, my vocabulary was severely lacking. Still, I wrote what I thought Ben might want to know about me.
“Ready?” I ask, leaning forward in my seat. Mason already sits on the edge of his.
“How do we do this?” Mason asks next.
“I think we hold the card until we can’t anymore, letting it burn to nothing, then allowing the wind to take the rest,” Logan suggests.
I do not know what kind of voodoo Autumn feeds Logan, but it made sense. We each dip our note into the flame and watch it instantly ignite. Holding the notecard at one corner, I wield it slowly from side to side as the flame lowers and the paper disappears. As the heat nears my fingertip, I toss the last corner into the air and watch it dance before fluttering into the larger flames. Mason and Logan do the same, and we continue to stare at the orange and yellow pattern crackling around the darkening log.
“To friendship,” Mason states, lifting the bottle of tequila for another swig. He easily swallows and passes the bottle to Logan.
“To family.” Logan raises the bottle in salute as well but doesn’t drink. We allow him a pass.
“To forever,” I say, finding my eyes cloud with thoughts of our lost friend and hope that I haven’t lost the woman who helped me write a note to honor him.
I’m learning to fly. It’s frightening and fantastic, and I only wish you were here to see me.
+ + +
The next day, I wake with a nasty hangover, but it’s time to leave. I’ve missed another night with River, and as much as I long to cross into her yard, I don’t know what to say to her. She works the morning shift as yesterday was her day off, and I’m sad that she hasn’t had final
words with the boys.
To my surprise, I find them each digging into a paper treasure chest full of things. It’s an explosion of books, Lego sets, another eye patch for each of them, and plastic hand hooks.
“What’s this?” The sound of my own voice is too loud for my pounding head.
“Miss River gave us each our own treasure.” Oliver holds up a book about pirates. Trevor slips the hand hook over his fist. Sadly, I want to ask if River left anything for me, but I know she didn’t.
“Maybe you need to go over there and steal her booty,” Mason mutters, coming up beside me as the boys have littered the floor of the sitting area off the kitchen.
“You’re so inappropriate,” I mumble as he hands me a mug of coffee. “But I could kiss you for this.” What I should do is kick his ass for always bringing out the tequila when I’m at my lowest. At forty-one, you’d think I would’ve learned my lesson.
“My booty doesn’t swing that way, but thanks for the offer.” Mason winks at me before laughing, which rattles my teeth. Why is everything so loud today?
“Okay, boys. We need to pick up and pack our stuff.”
Oliver stills before looking up at me. “We didn’t say goodbye to Miss River.”
“I know, but she has to work today, and we need to head home.”
“Why can’t we live here?” Trevor asks. “We’re leaving the tree fort.”
“It doesn’t belong to us. It’s in River’s yard. We can build our own at home.”
“But Miss River said it was ours,” Trevor says, his voice winding up. “She said it would always be ours.”
“And it will be, but it stays here with her.” I hate that I’m giving them an empty promise. I don’t know that River will honor what she told the boys.