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One Month Later
“Ohh, Mila. I’m just not so sure about this.” Hannah paced in the living room of Mila’s house on Witchwood with her eyes focused on the ground. “I mean, I just haven’t... I haven’t even...”
“Gone on a date since before you married your husband?” Mila finished. “I figured as much.”
“It’s just that I don’t really get the point,” Hannah blurted as she yanked her head up. Her eyes were passionate and overly large, like those of a child. “I’m nearly sixty-five years old. Anyone in their sixties probably has buckets of money and all eyes on women half my age.”
“This guy is seriously great,” Jennifer affirmed from the opposite couch as she flipped through a magazine distractedly. “He’s a friend of Derek’s with plenty of money, yes, but he’s not a particularly vain man and he likes a woman who can keep up with him intellectually.”
“And he’s a bit on the younger side...” Mila teased.
“Younger?” Hannah chirped. “I’m not a cougar!”
“Relax, Hannah. He’s fifty-nine,” Jennifer returned as she slapped her magazine off to the side. “He said he’s free Friday for dinner before he heads back to the city on Saturday. Why don’t you just try it? See what happens? If it’s a no-go, then it’s a no-go.”
“You have nothing to lose,” Mila told her as softly as she could, coaxing her. “Remember what we always say now. There’s so much life to live.”
“There’s so much life to live,” Hannah echoed.
“We’re going to be late,” Jennifer announced as she turned her wrist to catch the light of her wristwatch. Along with that turn, she flashed her engagement band— a new addition to the fourth finger as of only a few days before.
“I see you showing off over there,” Mila said as she reached for her crutches and hauled herself upright.
“What do you mean?” Jennifer feigned innocence as she twirled her fingers through her red hair and flashed her left hand to and fro. “I just really don’t know what I would have to show off?”
“Good grief,” Hannah replied as she burst into laughter. “You have a good time at the rehabilitation clinic. As if you don’t always.”
Mila blushed as she hovered with her crutches for a moment before collapsing again in her wheelchair. Her strength had mounted day-by-day as she’d grown more accustomed to the crutches and her wobbly legs beneath her. Even still, Jack had said it would take time. “I guess I have nothing but time,” Mila had told him in return.
Hannah slipped back into her car outside after a wave of her hand. Jennifer and Mila watched as she pulled out before they, too, piled into Mila’s car.
“Do you miss her being around the house?” Jennifer asked.
“I do, actually,” Mila replied. “But she likes her space with all her art and her photographs and her vinyl records. I have to respect that.”
“She loves you so much, Mila,” Jen offered then. “You’re the daughter she always wanted.”
Mila blushed as the feeling overtook her again. Sometimes, the love she felt for the beautiful people in her life felt overwhelming, like ocean waves crashing over her and disallowing her to breathe.
Up at the hospital, Jennifer wheeled Mila’s wheelchair alongside Mila as Mila pushed herself forward on her crutches with an ease that surprised even Jennifer.
“You’ve gotten good at them,” she said. “Do your legs feel stronger?”
“They do. But hasn’t been that long...” Mila countered. “So I don’t want to push it. Just maybe here to the door and then the chair.”
But when they reached the door, it opened automatically to reveal none other than the handsome rehabilitation doctor, Jack Lawrence. Mila’s heart shot into her throat at the sight of him.
“There she is. My top patient,” he smiled as she entered.
As Mila hobbled through the door, she was reminded of long-ago mornings at Edgartown High School, when she’d entered in that cheerleading miniskirt and eight out of ten heads had turned with jealousy. That’s how Jack made her feel.
She hadn’t thought she’d ever feel that way again. It was miraculous.
“You want the chair?” Jennifer asked as she gestured toward Mila’s now-forgotten wheelchair.
“Oh, what? Oh, no. I can make it.”
Jennifer gave just the slightest of eye rolls as she witnessed Mila go full-on teenager. “Have fun,” she said as Mila headed in after Doctor Jack.
After the traditional routine that Jack outlined for her every three days, Mila sat with her legs outstretched on the large patient chair so that Jack could assess her growing flexibility. For some reason, Mila thought this was a good time to tell him how flexible she’d been as a cheerleader.
“I was the most flexible of anyone else on the team,” she explained brightly. “I could put both of my legs behind my head.”
Jack laughed appreciatively. “I don’t know if we can get you there by spring, but maybe by autumn?”
Mila blushed. “Will you still be my doctor in autumn?”
Jack’s face fell into stoicism for the briefest of seconds before he said. “Well, I guess we’ll see what kind of progress you make, won’t we?”
What had Mila wanted him to say? Had she wanted him to propose a many-year-long journey toward wellness? Had she wanted him to propose marriage?
You have to walk before you can run, she told herself now as she assessed the strange scars across her naked legs.
Admittedly, they weren’t as bad as she’d thought they would be. They seemed to tell a story of survival, one she thought she rather liked. Who else could say they’d survived something like that? It had been a journey into the darkness of her soul and back again, like an epic written by Jules Verne.
When they were finished for the afternoon, Mila hovered on her crutches at the door, again like a teenager waiting for a boy to ask her to prom or something. Jack looked equally nervous. His blue eyes captivated her. They seemed as blue as the Nantucket Sound. He pressed open the door, which broke the spell only slightly, as Jennifer rushed up through the hallway with the wheelchair before her.
Mila wanted to tell her to stay back if only so she could have a few more beautiful moments of flirtation with Jack. Maybe it was all in her head. Maybe it wasn’t. But did it really matter?
“Mila! We have to hurry!” Jennifer’s voice rasped so much that Mila lost her balance on the crutches and catapulted herself into Jack Lawrence’s arms.
“Woah!” Jack cried as he held onto her.
God, his arms were so comforting. Mila had forgotten what it felt like to be held like that. She’d forgotten what it felt to be safe in the warm arms of a man.
And Jack Lawrence was nothing if not a man.
“Mila! Amelia went into labor!” Jennifer cried as Jack eased Mila into the wheelchair again, a place she so desperately wanted to escape.
“Oh my gosh!” Mila draped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my gosh!”
Jack imitated them playfully. “Oh my gosh!” But his smile was infectious. “I guess you ladies had better go. She’s one of your five-some, isn’t she?”
“Indeed she is,” Mila said. “You paid attention.”
“It’s part of my job to learn details about my patients,” Jack told her sheepishly.
“Ah. I see.”
Jennifer began to drag the wheelchair back as Jack hustled after her with the crutches in hand. Mila’s eyes met with Jack’s as laughter rolled over her. The moment seemed so outrageous and outside of time. She wanted to record all of it— every intimate and silly detail.
When they reached the hallway that led to Labor and Delivery, Jack pressed the crutches into Jennifer’s arms and made eye contact with Mila all over again.
“By the way. About autumn,” he stuttered.
“What about autumn?” Mila’s lips twisted into a smile.
“I just think, you know. Maybe we won’t have to meet in these sterile walls. But we could still work together. The football player and the cheerleader. Weren’t we always supposed to work together? Although I guess we switched places. I’m more of the cheerleader as you head out there on the field.”
“We could maybe work something out, Cheerleader,” Mila returned softly as they shared a smile.
“Good.”
“Good,” she repeated back. She then swallowed the lump in her throat as she said, “But right now, me and my best friends have to welcome our new best friend into the world. It’s kind of a big deal. So maybe... that date can wait?”
Jack’s smile stretched across the entirety of his face. “Tell your new best friend welcome to the big, wide world. There’s so much to see and so much to love, if only you give it a chance.”
Jennifer wheeled Mila swiftly through the hallways after that as Mila cackled with delight.
“If only you give it a chance!” Jennifer repeated his words. “God, he loves you, Mila. But that’s not new, is it?”
Mila shivered with joy. Despite the chill to the January air and the weight of the walking journey to come, there was a lightness to her, an assuredness that all would be all right as long as there was love between them. Very soon, Amelia would welcome a baby into the fold and finally, finally become a mother, after so much hope and so much heartache.
There was so much open to them— beauty and heartache and love and hope. They just had to be brave enough to experience all of it without holding themselves back. It was the Sisters of Edgartown’s way.
**
