| |
December 15th
It had been nearly three weeks since the accident and nearly two since Mila had returned home to heal. It also happened to be Jennifer’s forty-second birthday, yet another date to mark the passage of time and the years she’d had to live apart from Michelle. How reckless and idiotic they’d been all those years ago to let her go like that. Sometimes, it still burned Jennifer with a rage she couldn’t shift away from, not very easily anyway. Michelle should have been with all of them, this and every other day. She should have been allowed to turn forty-two years old.
Jennifer awoke on the morning of her forty-second birthday to an elaborate breakfast crafted from Derek’s own two hands: fluffy pancakes and bright red strawberries and greasy sausages and glittering mimosas. It was a Wednesday, and Jennifer had squelched all meetings and work events from her calendar in pursuit of the perfect, relaxing day.
“Mmm.” She chewed the dripping-with-syrup pancake with closed eyes. When she opened them, she refocused to discover a beautiful image. The dark clouds’ ever-constant sleet of the previous week had transformed to large fluffy snowflakes.
Always, when it snowed on her birthday, she felt it was Michelle saying hello to her in the only way she could.
“It’s beautiful,” Jennifer whispered as she placed a slice of strawberry on her tongue. Hope swelled in her stomach.
That morning, Mila had an appointment at the hospital to go over her recent progress and meet with the hospital psychologist. After her breakfast (and an additional hour in bed with Derek), Jennifer showered and headed off to take over Amelia’s position at Mila’s house.
In the past week, Mila had insisted on hiring a nurse for occasional assistance, which had eased the schedule on the rest of the Sisters. Since then, there had been a lighter quality to Mila’s conversation. Perhaps their constant attentiveness had made Mila feel guilty and useless. It was difficult for Jennifer to put herself in Mila’s shoes.
“Happy birthday, beautiful!” Amelia and Mila greeted Jennifer warmly upon their arrival. Amelia handed her a little cupcake, on which they’d drawn a J in pink frosting over the top base of buttercream frosting.
“This is sinful,” Jennifer breathed.
“We have more for tonight,” Amelia told her. “We baked them last night.”
“And there’s a whole lot more where they came from,” Mila added with a sneaky smile. “You know, it’s tradition to eat our weight in garbage on your and Michelle’s birthday.”
It was always a remarkable thing to hear Michelle’s name again. It was as though, in that split-second, she was allowed to live on again.
With Mila in the front seat of Jennifer’s car and her wheelchair safely in the back trunk, the girls fell into easy conversation. Although Mila’s journey remained long and difficult and terrifying, each day brought them closer, and there was joy in the in-between if they helped Mila look for it.
“I’m actually sleeping through the night. And I can feel the muscles in my forearms getting stronger and more powerful,” Mila explained brightly as she lifted an arm to fake-flex.
Jennifer waited outside of Mila’s psychologist appointment, where she received a call first from her mother, then from her father, then from her son, as though they had all wanted to get the obligatory birthday phone call out of the way at once.
Nick sang her a little “Happy Birthday” song, just as he always had since he’d been a little boy.
“Remember when you kept forgetting the words and would instead insert words from songs you knew better, like ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’?” Jennifer teased as he finished up.
“You always remind me of that, every year, without fail,” Nick returned, feigning exasperation. “Are we still on for lunch tomorrow? I know you have your traditions to take care of.”
“We’re still on. I wouldn’t miss a free lunch from my son or his company.”
Mila chatted to her daughter on the drive back to Mila’s place. Jennifer listened to the funny shriek of Isabelle as she explained the intricacies of the last week of her first semester of college. Mila beamed as she fell silent and allowed Isabelle’s story to roll over her. When she finally managed to get off the phone, she clucked her tongue and said, “That girl is on her way somewhere. Where, exactly, I have no idea.”
“Modeling career?”
“She really got back into her poetry class the past few weeks. Her professor wants her to take a series of upper-level classes next semester instead of the curriculum she’d set out for.”
“You must be happy?”
Mila’s smile curved toward her ears. “She could tell me she’s going to move to the moon and I’d be supportive. That fight... It changed everything for us.”
Jennifer wanted to say something about how big events in people’s families shifted things either one way or the other. They allowed either increased compassion or else brought about fear and volatility and anger. Michelle’s death had been like a bomb going off in the Conrad family, an explosion from which they’d never fully recovered. They hadn’t found compassion for many years, and sometimes, they had to really work for it.
Olivia, Camilla, and Amelia arrived at Mila’s place for the birthday festivities just past five that evening. December light was ghoulish and strange, and, as the snow hadn’t held up, rain pattered across the windowpanes. They wrapped themselves in Mila’s wide selection of cozy blankets and perched on the couch and the cushy chairs, forming a circle that included Mila’s wheelchair. Olivia played old nineties tunes they’d once loved and shoved the first “appetizer” into the oven as she opened a bottle of wine.
“What’s on the menu first?” Jennifer called.
“Mozzarella sticks and jalapeno poppers!” Olivia returned from the kitchen.
“My poor baby,” Amelia jested with a laugh. “All I’ve had is green smoothies and nut butter for the past seven months.”
“If your baby’s going to hang with us, she or he better get used to the occasional mozzarella stick,” Mila countered. “Besides. Life is about balance. You know that.”
As Olivia poured the wine glasses, they caught one another up on their weekly activities. Mila was the common denominator amongst all of them, as they all saw her one-on-one throughout their schedules. She was, therefore, the ultimate therapist when it came to things like work and marriage conflicts, as she’d heard all their stories again and again.
“You should really start a talk show.” Olivia entered with the first round of wine glasses. “You’ve got that sharp wit and enough good advice to get people back on their feet again.”
“Plus, you could give fashion and makeup advice,” Camilla agreed, taking her glass from Olivia.
Mila laughed. “I don’t know about that. But goodness, I would love to do something like ‘What Not to Wear.’ Raid people’s closets and get them to throw out all their terrible clothes. I think it’s so freeing to reinvent yourself like that and actually think about how you want to present yourself to the world.” Her right finger traced a line down her wheelchair’s wheel. “I’ve been thinking about getting some more wheelchair-friendly outfits. I even started a little online blog about what to wear when you’re wheelchair-bound. I found so many women online curious about this very topic.”
“That’s beautiful, Mila,” Jennifer breathed.
“I had to figure out something to do with all this free time,” Mila joked. “Besides, if I never learn to walk again...”
“Don’t talk like that,” Olivia scolded.
“It’s a very real possibility, and I have to find peace with it sooner or later,” Mila countered. “If I never learn to walk again, I want to be the best-dressed wheelchair-owner on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, at least. Maybe on the eastern seaboard.”
“Hear, hear,” Jennifer returned as she lifted her glass of wine to salute her.
The others joined and held their glasses aloft for a moment before Mila blushed and said, “But enough about me. This day is all about our girls. Jennifer and Michelle. Happy forty-second. How time flies when you’re having fun with your soulmates.”
The girls agreed, dipped their heads back, and drank. This term, soulmate, sizzled in the back of Jennifer’s mind. In the previous few weeks, she hadn’t seen nor heard from Liam, the police officer. Mila hadn’t mentioned him either, and Jennifer had sensed to keep her distance from the topic.
The other girls had noticed, too. And now, Amelia dragged up the courage to ask.
“Mila? Do you mind if we ask you something?”
Mila pressed her lips together as fear permeated her face. “Okay. You can.”
Amelia’s eyes shifted. “What happened with Liam? He came up the night of the accident and waited around until we knew you were okay. I saw him a few times after that, but...”
Mila’s cheeks became blotchy and red. She sipped her wine again as her eyes glossed over.
“I don’t really know, to be honest with you,” she whispered. “He finally called the other day. I hadn’t heard from him in ages.”
“God, that snake,” Camilla muttered.
Mila shrugged. “He explained that he has a bit of PTSD from some of his earlier days as a cop in Boston. When I was injured so badly, it triggered some stuff for him.”
“Still... that has nothing to do with your relationship,” Camilla protested.
Mila closed her eyes tightly. A storm rolled over her and made her shoulders shake. “I thought maybe I could love him. I’m just frankly glad he showed me this side of himself. This side that just couldn’t take the hard stuff between us.”
“So... it’s over?” Jennifer asked, aghast.
Mila nodded as the first tear fell. “You four have been such a dream throughout all of this. Every one of you is always there for me at my beck and call, trying your darnedest to make me feel normal in the midst of so much turmoil and strangeness. But Liam made me feel like I was a burden that he didn’t know how to deal with. I think deep down, he just didn’t know how to deal with the situation and it freaked him out. How are you supposed to fall in love with something like that or vice versa? I don’t want to involve myself with anyone like that.”
“I’m so sorry, sweetie. That’s not right and it’s probably a good thing it’s happening early on in the relationship rather than later. It just makes it easier to let go,” Camilla affirmed.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Mila sniffled. “All I can say is, I don’t feel particularly into the dating scene as a woman laid up in a wheelchair. If I don’t get back on my feet, that will be another question. Do I date again in a wheelchair? Do I focus on other things? I don’t know.”
The Sisters were quiet for a moment. Jennifer hadn’t known all this had lurked in Mila’s mind over the past few weeks. Jennifer recognized, now, just how much Mila had had to protect the four of them, even as they had struggled to try to protect her with their strict schedules and their home-cooked meals.
“You will find a way through this,” Jennifer assured her then. “You’re stronger than all of us put together. If you want to date, you’ll date. If you don’t want to date, you’ll rule the world some other way. Whatever will be, will be.”
Mila’s eyes shone as her lower lip quivered.
“I had a dream about Michelle the other night,” she told them.
Jennifer’s ears twitched. She’d occasionally had dreams about her twin during times of strife, as though the universe itself wanted to communicate something enormous.
“She and I were on that old dock they’ve since removed. The one near the sailboat docks,” Mila continued. “We were both young but not overly so, maybe twenty-five, and we ran and jumped into the water over and over again until we became tired. We then floated on our backs and held hands and gazed at the blue sky up above. In this world, there was never winter, only summer... only life. And at the end of the dream, she told me to let go of her hand. I told her no way. I wouldn’t do it. And she tried to tug it away from me as hard as she could until suddenly, I woke up. And...”
Mila trailed off again as her tears caught the soft light.
“And I swear, as I lay in my bed alone, I felt her hand in mind. I swear to you four. She was here with me. And I’ve felt her with us ever since.”
The girls leaped from their chairs and collected themselves around Mila’s wheelchair. The next few minutes became tear-filled smiles and the kind of hugs that negated all the fear in the universe. It was still the very beginning of what would be a very beautiful night, during which they would collect the pieces of their broken parts and slowly fit them back together again, just as they always had before.