March
Looking back—and Russ has in thirty years, many times—he was already unsettled to see Maeve and Glory waiting for him when he’d come back from lunch. It hadn’t been seeing them together—by that point, Glory and Maeve were as inseparable as the teeth of a closed zipper—nor was it that he could have counted on one hand the times in ten years Glory had visited him at his office. The reason for his discomfort had been something in Glory’s expression when she saw him step through the door. A strange flash of disappointment, as if she’d hoped he might not show, despite her obvious intent to see him. It could have simply been the weather, Russ had thought, too, as he led the two women back to the privacy of his office and closed them all inside—a heavy, gray day, one of those especially bleak ones after the tease of sun.
“Is everything all right?” he asked as they took seats. “Is Gabe okay?”
“Gabe’s fine,” Glory said, carefully peeling off her leather gloves, the same shade of coral as the silk scarf that swirled around her neck like the foamy head of a tropical drink.
Russ scanned her lowered face, dissecting her answer. Gabe was all right.
He laced his fingers together and sat forward. For nearly a decade of winters now, they’d all watched Glory bear the swells of seasonal depression, some more successfully than others, and even though Russ wasn’t her doctor, he’d observed the toll of the affliction on her like one. It wasn’t uncommon for her to lose weight, or some days simply not get out of bed. During one particularly grueling February a few years back, Russ had even suggested to Mitch that he take Glory to LA for a visit; Mitch had joked that he didn’t dare because he didn’t think he’d be able to get her to come back. Russ never believed he was kidding.
But they were nearing the end of the siege. This wasn’t the time to be despondent. Especially not when Glory was greeting this spring with victory, finally returning to a film set after so many years away. Her dream in her grasp—what could possibly be troubling her?
Glory’s gaze drifted absently to his collection of framed pictures on the bookshelf, holding there briefly, before she flashed Russ one of her Action! smiles—his nickname for the megawatt beam that appeared so quickly and convincingly, it could have been cued by the snap of a director’s clapboard.
“Did Louise tell you Paul and Joanne might swing through for the festival this summer?” Glory’s voice was as bright as her smile. “They’re doing summer stock in Williamstown again and they think they can make the scheduling work.”
“Lou mentioned that, yes.” He glanced at Maeve. She smiled at him.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Wonderful,” he said. “Very.”
“And you heard that Michelle Pfeiffer wants to premiere her new film with us this year?”
Russ nodded patiently and shifted another quizzical look in Maeve’s direction, finding the young woman’s expression even and patient. They were stalling. But why?
“Glory…?” He could hear the whistle of concern in his own voice. “What’s going on?”
Maeve’s folded hands pushed deeper into her lap, causing the shiny plastic of her windbreaker to crackle.
Glory’s face was a split screen—her smile was high but her eyes flickered with alarm.
“I’m not well, Russ.”
“If this is about your medication … I told you we can look into—”
“I’m not talking about depression.”
He stared at her, waiting for the rest, for more, even as his stomach sank with dread.
“It’s ovarian cancer. Stage four.”
Russ glanced at Maeve, expecting to see her previously calm features now tangled with strain, but Maeve’s expression didn’t shift.
“Maeve knows, Russ. She’s known this whole time. That’s why I needed an assistant, someone to live with us. I knew radiation would leave me weak, and I needed someone to help me keep up with things when I couldn’t, someone to keep people from asking questions, from worrying more than they already do…”
Russ scanned the top of his desk as she talked, tearing through his memory to assign a timeline to this impossible news. Glory had hired Maeve last May, which meant Glory had been living with her condition, her death sentence, for almost a year.
Guilt twisted, making fists of his hands where they fell in his lap. As a doctor, he should have seen the signs. Her lack of appetite, her constant need for rest. They’d all assumed it was depression, but he was a doctor. He was trained to look closer, to see clues where others couldn’t.
The shame of his failure sickened him.
Especially remembering that he’d just seen Mitch the day before, his old friend stopping by with a bucket of crabs. They’d snapped the tabs off a pair of beers and laughed over a memory of the two of them getting drunk the night before their high school graduation when they’d tried to catch lobsters with their bare hands. Laughed! How had his oldest friend managed to appear so carefree when he knew his wife was dying? No one was that good an actor—
Russ’s breath caught, panic sizzling across his scalp.
He fixed his gaze on Glory, but her resistance to meet it was answer enough: she hadn’t told Mitch.
Maeve reached across for Glory’s hand and squeezed it. “I’ll just be outside, okay?”
It was a thin excuse, but Russ was inexplicably grateful for it; he offered Maeve a small smile in thanks as she crossed to the door and closed it behind her.
“I don’t know what I would have done without her, Russ,” Glory said quietly. “I’ve asked so much of her. Made her the keeper of so many secrets.”
“Glory…” Just the two of them now, he pulled in a ragged breath and let it out slowly, determined to keep his voice even and calm, as if she were a feral cat he’d finally lured close enough to catch. “You have to tell Mitch and Gabe. They have to know.”
“Why? So they can worry and feel nothing but dread and fear and pity? And don’t tell me they won’t, Russ, because I know.” She climbed carefully from the chair and crossed to the window that looked out onto the street, her gaze trained on the view. Her chin rose, as if to keep her voice from falling. “As you know, I’ll be filming on the Outer Banks—”
“You’re not still going?”
“I have to.”
He pushed out his chair and stood. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re ill. There are clauses in contracts—”
“No, I mean I have to do this, Russ.”
It was her emphasis of the word—this—combined with the steely point of her gaze that sent his heart racing with dread. After nearly a year of being oblivious, he was suddenly reading the compass of her features with devastating clarity.
“I didn’t only come here to tell you I’m sick, Russ. I came because I need your help as a doctor. As a friend. We both do.”
We? Russ squinted at her, as if she were something tiny on the horizon.
“It just seemed the perfect time,” she said. “I don’t have to worry that Mitch or Louise or, God forbid, Gabe will find me.”
He swallowed, needing moisture. Surely she wasn’t suggesting…?
Jettisoned by fear, he came around the desk.
“Glory, there are other treatments.” Despite the confidence of his words, his voice still trembled. “Just the other day, I was reading about a trial at MD Anderson…”
But when she turned to face him, the remainder of his plea sank in his throat. Her eyes pooled with resolve.
He reached for her hands and she let him have them.
“This isn’t some movie, Glory. You don’t get to write the ending.”
“Don’t I?” She gave his fingers a reassuring squeeze, then pulled free, sliding her gaze back to the window. “I watched my mother fade away, knowing she just wanted peace—not just for herself, but for everyone who stood by helplessly watching her suffer. I won’t go through that, Russ. I won’t put the people I love through that.”
And in the anguished hush that followed, he knew she didn’t just mean Gabe and Mitch, or even Louise and Maeve. She meant her fans.
“Glory, I’m begging you to think about this.”
Her laugh was thin and sad, and not even a little bitter as it should rightly have been after a statement so absurdly, shamefully stupid. Did he honestly think she’d thought of anything else in the past year?
This time, it was she who took his hands. Russ looked down at their joined fingers, feeling a swell of affection. Ten years knowing her, his oldest friend’s wife—had they ever shared this kind of exchange?
If his voice was as brittle as blown glass, hers was hard as stone.
“You’ll need to explain everything to Maeve. She’s smart, Russ. And she won’t panic. The timing is, of course, crucial. We’ll need to create an excuse so she can’t travel south with me as we planned. She’ll have to disappear, at least a week before I do. I’ll, of course, pretend to be shocked. I’ll call Louise and ask her if she’s seen Maeve, I’ll say that she’s disappeared. You’ll have to make sure she has what she needs when she goes.”
Instinct took over. “I want to be there,” he said. “I have to be there.”
“No.” Again, her gaze flashed stubbornly. “Maeve has already agreed. I know what’s involved, Russ. It’s not so complicated.”
“But it can be, Glory. Things can go wrong…”
She shook her head; he wasn’t sure if it was to argue his point or simply a refusal to believe anything might.
“I can’t ask that of you, Russ.”
“But you can ask her?”
Glory’s eyes welled. “She’s strong enough.”
“No one’s that strong, Glory. Believe me—I know.” He clenched his teeth. “I’ll be there. Or I won’t do it.”
He hadn’t meant the last part to sound threatening, but her features flickered. He meant it. He’d find an excuse—a conference, somewhere near enough to the Outer Banks that he could get there by car, but not so near to cause suspicion. But even as he plotted, his head spun with the sudden weight of what he was agreeing to—all the people who would grieve, the years ahead he’d have to see the confusion and heartbreak on the faces of those he loved most, and never be able to give them solace—but he forced his thoughts to still. He was a doctor, he’d taken an oath. And if he’d learned anything about Glory Cartwright, it was that once she made her mind up, there was no changing it. Clearly she’d found someone in Maeve who was the very same. All Russ could do now was help. And to help, he had to listen.
So he did.
And when Glory was done, he looked her full in the face. “You trust her?”
“I trust her. I trust you both with my life.” Despite the sudden veil of tears, she smiled at the irony of her statement: it was the end of it she was entrusting to them. “There’s another thing,” she said. “I want Louise to have the festival—it’s always been hers more than mine, as devoted as she is to it. And I want Maeve to have my collection. I’ve set aside a few things I want to stay with the festival—mostly the pieces that we already display—but the rest I want her to have. I know it won’t be easy—you’ll have to orchestrate the packing and the shipping when the time comes. Mitch can’t know, not that I kid myself he wouldn’t be thrilled to see it all disappear when I’m…”
Her voice caught on the last word.
“Glory. Please.” Russ gripped her hands again, tipping his face to catch her gaze. She let him hold it, even as her eyes brimmed with tears.
“Don’t you dare make me say it, Doctor.”
He whispered, “What?”
“As if you don’t know?” And there it was, shining back at him: the smile that had won so many hearts, for the moment, blinding. “The show must go on.”