Around six, Andrea called to say she weaved her way through the crowd, on the hunt for her. “I have Chelsea and Mandy with me, too,” she said. “We would love to sit at the bonfire with you!”
Camilla reported this to the others, who agreed it was time to sit for a while, to sip wine, and watch the light fade over the water. They gathered around the bonfire and waited for the younger girls to arrive. As Mila made light chitchat, Camilla gazed into the flickering flames. Always, she remembered a very different night, a very different bonfire when they had gathered quite near that area at age seventeen, drank beers to near black-out, and then hopped on a speedboat. That had been the last night they’d ever seen Michelle alive.
The guilt of it had traced a path through their lives. Each of them carried it — especially Jennifer, Michelle’s twin.
Still, they’d done their very best to live their lives to the fullest in the wake of Michelle’s death. In some ways, they lived and loved for her.
Camilla wondered if her lack of trying with the doctor didn’t align with that vision. Maybe Michelle would have wanted her to kiss the doctor there outside her house the previous Friday. Maybe she would have called her a “wuss” for not going for it.
“Hey, Mom!” Andrea appeared over her with a bottle of wine. She still wore that ridiculous sailor outfit and shrugged as the others complimented her on it. “Please. Don’t. I know how bad it is. I don’t even want to talk about it.”
Mandy, who was now about three months pregnant, yet still not showing, stepped over to sit alongside her Aunt Amelia. Chelsea joined her mother, Olivia, on the far log. Jennifer’s son was around there somewhere, as were Mila’s twins. They had built another generation of love, and now, Mandy’s baby would become yet another. It felt so easy and beautiful to be a part of their ever-linked islanders. Camilla knew she was related to people who’d come to the island in the 1800s. They’d never left. They’d never even wanted to.
The sun remained high in the sky. Andrea told Camilla a story about a tourist who’d demanded she tell ghost stories from the island, of which she knew very few. “I kept telling him I had to move on, that I had a set script. But he was so obstinate.”
Amelia’s phone blared, just as it always did. Mila scoffed and said, “Amelia, we always take this weekend off. Always! Can’t you just—”
But before she could finish, Amelia swung her phone to her ear and said, “Oliver, hey. How’s it going?”
“Now that she has a boyfriend who’s associated with her work, we’ll lose her more and more,” Mila stated as she rolled her eyes.
“What? Oh my gosh.” Amelia placed her hand over her mouth in shock.
The women around the bonfire stared at her. She had the air of a woman who’d just learned something horrendous. Camilla’s heart thudded as they all waited patiently for Amelia to finish her conversation.
It was then that Amelia’s eyes turned toward her. They turned toward her with fear, with sympathy.
These were horrible moments — between the moment that Camilla understood that whatever had gone wrong had something to do with her and the moment that Amelia finally hung up the phone. Camilla stood from the log; her legs hardly supported her.
Her mother? Her father? Her sisters? What?
“Mom?” Andrea stood up beside her. Her voice wavered strangely. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
Amelia, too, lifted from the log. “Oliver was at the construction site. There was an accident.”
Oh.
Camilla knew exactly who this was about.
“They’re taking Jonathon to the emergency room now,” Amelia said.
Camilla leaped over the log. Her heart surged with adrenaline. Andrea’s voice, as she hollered, “Mom! I’m coming with you!” was nearly lost to the chaos of her mind. She’d never rushed across the sand so quickly. She had never been so panicked.
Jonathon Franklin — the love of her life. What had gone wrong?
Chapter Ten
Camilla and Andrea sat at the very edge of the seats in the back of the taxi. Camilla mentally cursed each and every tourist, each and every vehicle that ducked out in front of them and forced them to stall, weave and bob.
“Is there any way you can go around all this?” she demanded of the driver, even as she knew, as an islander herself, this was the best route.
Jonathon had picked a swell day to have an accident. Due to the festival, it would take them a lifetime to get over to the hospital. Wasn’t this so typical of him? It was so classic of Jonathon to make it all about him.
No. Camilla’s thoughts spiraled. This accident, whatever had happened, was no one’s fault. She needed to be there. She needed to understand how she could help. She felt the enormity of Jonathon’s pain and because of the continued love she had for him, which clung to her heart like black mold, there was no option but to push forward with love and to leave the resentment and fear behind.
Andrea’s chin quivered as they finally cut out from the chaos of the inner-Edgartown traffic. Camilla reached across the seat and squeezed her hand.
“I just hope he’s okay,” Andrea said finally, careful to keep her voice hard. Throughout the previous weeks, she had hardly mentioned her father’s name. She’d wanted to cast him from everything, including her life and memory. Yet here they were, the Franklin girls, headed straight back for him.
“Me too,” Camilla whispered.
“Did Amelia know anything else?”
“No.” But Amelia’s eyes had been stricken with fear, as though whoever had been on the other line of that phone call had described a scene that was better not passed along. Camilla could imagine it; as a nurse, those scenes were tattooed across the back of her mind. But the scene, with Jonathon, attached to it? It was horrific.
Once at the hospital, Camilla paid the driver swiftly, ten bucks too much, as she didn’t want to wait for change. They then stepped out onto the sidewalk and ran to the double-wide doors, which led into the emergency waiting room. Camilla was so familiar with this scene; the white-washed walls, the plastic chairs, the wailing babies, it all was a great extension of her everyday life.
“Maxine! Hey.” Camilla rushed to the counter to speak with the on-duty attendant. “Jonathon was just admitted?”
Maxine gave her a knowing look and pulled up his file. “Looks like they’re going to perform emergency surgery on his hand,” she said in a low voice.
“Okay.” It took every bit of strength Camilla had to remain there at the desk; her legs itched to rush into that operating room. She wanted to be the nurse standing by.
“You should take a seat. I’ll update you when we know anything else and when you can go back and see him,” Maxine told her. “And I’m sure you’ll want to speak to the doctor afterward.”
Camilla’s heart surged. “Who is the doctor performing the surgery?”
“Gregory,” Maxine told her. Her eyes sparkled mischievously, as though Maxine knew, along with the rest of the staff, how lucky it was that the operating doctor wasn’t someone named Brett. Gossip traveled fast around that place.
“Okay. Gregory’s good. He’s always good.” Camilla sounded panicked like she was trying to assure herself. She stepped back from the counter and turned to find Andrea, her hands cupping her elbows delicately. It was the same stance she had always taken as a child when something had upset her.
“Let’s get a cup of coffee,” Camilla told her. “It’s going to be a long night.”
The little vending machine spit out two cups of overly black, overly bitter coffee. Andrea poured a pack of sugar into hers while Camilla let hers scorch the top of her tongue. Far in the corner of the emergency waiting room, a woman pressed her hands together with her eyes closed. She prayed toward the ceiling. Camilla realized she hadn’t given much thought to the waiters in the emergency room in recent years. As a nurse, it was her duty to take care of the sick; the people that sat waiting for their loved ones were miserabl
e in a whole other way. She knew that, now.
The surgery lasted an hour and a half. Throughout, Camilla and Andrea hardly spoke to one another. Andrea drank another cup of coffee and texted Isaac frequently. Just before Maxine came to tell them the doctor was ready to speak with them, Isaac himself showed up. He looked flustered; his cheeks were pale. When he spotted Andrea, he wrapped his arms around her delicately and let her cry against his chest.
“Hey, Greg.” Camilla met the doctor with a tired familiarity. She had worked alongside him frequently since his arrival five years before. He was a family man, a responsible doctor; he didn’t often work nights, as he normally complained non-stop throughout.
He didn’t voice those complaints now, though.
“Camilla, hello. Tough night, huh?”
“That’s putting it lightly.”
“Right. Well. We managed to fix him up pretty good, actually. The machine cut through a finger and part of his inner palm, but we stitched everything up. He’s wrapped up pretty good. He should be awake in about an hour. We moved him to 15A if you want to sit with him until then.”
Camilla blinked back tears as she thanked him profusely. She then headed back out to the waiting room, where Andrea and Isaac remained latched together. From a distance, Camilla could just-barely make out Andrea’s words.
“I just feel so conflicted about him, you know? And now, he’s gone and done this and I just can’t—”
Camilla stepped back again. These were words that Andrea might never have said to her mother, least of all this night. Still, if she felt them necessary, Camilla wanted to give Andrea space to say them.
She stepped back into the bright white hallway and texted Andrea with Jonathon’s information instead. She could come when she wanted to when she was ready.
Jonathon looked serene in his hospital bed. His chin was tilted slightly toward the ceiling; his eyelids glowed with slight translucency; his lips were tilted up the slightest bit, as though he was on the verge of laughter. He had lost even more weight, maybe, since the last time Camilla had seen him. Across his stomach, the doctors had placed his hand, which had been wrapped up monstrously, like a mummy.
Camilla’s heart dropped into her stomach. Her eyes filled with tears as she hovered in the doorway for what felt like an eternity. How many times had she watched Jonathon, fast asleep? How many times had she tossed a blanket over him when he’d slept in front of the TV? How many times had she checked on him when he’d had a cold, just to make sure he didn’t need more medicine, more soup?
But this went beyond the bounds of what she could do. And besides. She was meant to be in the midst of losing him.
Why then did she now want to crawl into this hospital bed beside him, curl up, and fall asleep, too?
Camilla perched at the edge of a plastic chair and waited. The clock on the wall seemed to mock her. Midnight would soon arrive. Still, wasn’t she accustomed to this life? Her hours were strange; normal schedules had no meaning for her. She would stay up all night and into the morning if she had to; she just wanted to hear his voice for the first time. She wanted him to say he was going to be all right.
When his eyelashes flickered up, Camilla leaped from her chair. She gripped his bicep gently as his eyes adjusted to the light. She knew this look well. It was a slow calculation of “where am I and what’s happened?” When his eyes found hers, she swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded.
“Hey, Jon.”
“Hi, Camilla.” He clenched his eyes shut for a moment, then re-opened them. “Wow. I feel like I got hit over the head with an anvil.”
Camilla chuckled. She certainly hadn’t expected a joke, first-thing. “Apparently, you had a pretty bad accident.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I seem to remember that, too. Lots and lots of blood.” Jonathon scrunched his nose and turned his eyes toward his hand. “Did they save everything? Or have I dropped from ten to nine?”
“The doctor said everything is accounted for,” Camilla said.
“Great. I guess I don’t have to kiss my piano career goodbye,” Jonathon returned.
Again, Camilla laughed. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Joke about it.”
Jonathon puffed out his cheeks. “Right now, I don’t know what else to do.” He studied her for a long moment, then added, “Thank you for coming. I feel so delirious that I’m not actually sure it’s you. You’re probably a figment of my imagination.”
Camilla’s voice caught in her throat. “It’s really me, Jonathon. Really.”
Silence found them. Camilla’s heart seemed louder than ever; it pounded away with resentment toward everything, toward how things changed and how little control she had over any of it. Why had he done all those things? Why had he lost all their money? Why had he stepped outside of their marriage when she’d given him her entire life?
“Camilla. Will you please listen to me about something?”
Camilla’s nostrils flared. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. Then will you just stand there while I say it? You can either take it or not.”
“Okay.”
“The money. Andrea’s money—”
“Don’t, Jonathon. I don’t want to talk about that now.”
“You have to understand. I was trying to set us up for retirement, for life. I had a plan, Camilla. I wanted us to retire earlier. I wanted Andrea to have funds for decades. I met with an investment broker—in secret.”
“What are you talking about?” Previously, Camilla had thought he’d just lost the money in bad stocks, bad investments. She hadn’t known about any “strategy.”
“He set me up on this whole plan. He said I had to put it all in, all of it—every cent I had. But he showed me all these graphs; I spoke with all these prosperous businessmen. I met with people in New York City and in Boston. It all seemed so foolproof. So I sent it all, every cent. And then, before I knew it, it was gone.”
Camilla gaped at him. “What the hell are you talking about?” She removed her hand from his bicep and let it fall to her side.
“I know. It was risky. But I calculated everything. I was on the phone with the guy all the time.”
“Whatever it was, you should have told me. We should have done it together.”
Jonathon nodded. “I know that. I am so sorry, Camilla. Somehow, I wanted it to be some kind of surprise.”
“It was a surprise. That’s for sure.”
“I destroyed everything.”
“Damn right you did.”
Jonathon closed his eyes again. His good hand stretched across his chest as he exhaled slowly. “You worked so hard over the years. You were always so tired but always so eager to be selfless. I just wanted us to have some quiet years at home. I wanted us to be free.”
Camilla furrowed her brow. This information swarmed her mind like a dark storm. “I still don’t understand,” she breathed. “Who was this investment broker? How did any of this happen?”
“Maybe he didn’t even use his real name. I don’t know. All I know is, Casper Jennings from Montlake Investments set me on a path to supposedly endless riches. And now, I’m getting divorced, and I’m in a hospital bed, and my daughter won’t speak to me. So I guess nothing really works out the way you plan.”
One of Camilla’s friends, another nurse at the hospital, entered the room after that to check on Jonathon. Camilla’s heart performed a horrible dance across her chest. She excused herself and stepped out into the hallway. It was like, no matter how much she inhaled, she couldn’t get enough oxygen.
Camilla lifted her phone from her back pocket and typed the investment firm Jonathon had mentioned into a search engine.
But Montlake Investments didn’t bring up any results on the east coast.
This meant that Jonathon had either lied to her again, or he’d fallen into an enormous trap, one that had ruined their lives.
Chapter Eleven
About a week later, Camilla stood
dressed in only her bra and underwear, her hair drenched down her back. The beats of a pop song poured out from Andrea’s room down the hall. It was the day of Emma’s wedding, Jennifer’s boyfriend’s daughter and Camilla had been invited, as had the other Sisters. Andrea had weaseled her way in for a catering job, telling Jennifer, “I will do anything for a buck right now. Let me feed Derek’s rich friends an endless array of appetizers. Please.” Jennifer had, of course, agreed.
Andrea appeared in the doorway in her catering uniform, an outfit of thick white fabric that covered her from neck to ankle. The black buttons were cartoonishly large, and they dotted up the center of the uniform. She scrunched her nose at her mother and said, “I look like a clown.”
Camilla chuckled and tilted her head. “An adorable clown.”
“The amount of torture I’ve been through this summer, just on a fashion level, is ridiculous,” Andrea affirmed. “If there’s a fashion police, they’re bound to cancel my spot from fashion school for good.”
“Or maybe they’ll follow your lead? This time next year, we’ll all be wearing big white outfits with monster-sized buttons.” Camilla stepped toward her closet and fished out a dark blue dress, which swept down over her breasts beautifully and highlighted her slender waist. Jonathon had never been able to keep his hands off her when she had worn the thing around him.
“That dress is hot,” Andrea said as Camilla slipped it over her shoulders. She walked forward hurriedly and helped her zip up the back. Her eyes connected with Camilla’s in the mirror as she said, “You’ll be the belle of the ball!”
A blush flashed over Camilla’s cheeks. “Please don’t tease me. At forty-one, I’m just about washed up.”
“Yeah, right.” Andrea stepped to the side; her eyes were contemplative. “Have you talked to that doctor anymore since your date?”
In truth, Camilla had tried her best to side-step Brett Oliphant since the night she had avoided his after-date kiss. She’d, of course, passed him in the hallway but always mid-rush to someplace else. He’d winked at her twice, and each time a shiver had snaked down her spine.
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