by Anthology
Jacob had said all the right things—you’re beautiful to me, you’re still the sexiest woman I know, I love everything about you, most of all your courage.
She’d loved him for his sincerity, his loyalty. But at the same time, she had found herself wishing she looked the way she had when they’d married, both of them twenty-two and fresh out of college.
Miranda hovered between inviting him upstairs with her or leaving him engrossed in his work.
She decided to compromise. “Wake me up when you come to bed.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The next day, she had a meeting with her boss at Urban Ice, where she had worked in the office since Andrew started school. In Seattle, providing bulk ice and cold storage for commercial operations was a little-known but essential business. With the local and Alaska fishing industries, the need for ice was never ending.
She knocked on the door of Marty’s office and stepped inside. He was meeting with one of her favorite customers, Danny Arviat, a Native American from Sitka, and their running joke was that she sold ice to Eskimos.
“Hey, it’s the ice queen,” Danny said, standing up and shaking her hand.
“That’s me.” She smiled, and Marty gave her a hug. “If this isn’t a good time…”
“I was just leaving,” Danny said. “It’s good to see you, Miranda.”
“Same here.”
Marty gestured to the chair across his desk. “Congratulations on your good news,” he said. “We’ve missed you.” Her boss had shown no sign of impatience when she became too sick to work and requested an open-ended sabbatical. From the start of her ordeal, he had never pressured her. One of the very few gifts of getting sick was that it allowed her to discover how much kindness there was in her life. People stepped up to help, to understand or even just to comfort her.
“I’ve missed you guys, too.” Sort of, Miranda thought. She did enjoy her coworkers, and the company had been supportive through her illness. She was better off than many people. At least she had a job.
Still, it wasn’t the sort of job she couldn’t wait to get to each day. She worked there because it was safe and predictable, not because she loved it.
“You know I’ve always said it’s not the same here without you…” Marty began.
“Uh-oh.” She studied his posture, the strained set to his shoulders. “Why does that sound ominous to me?”
He took off his glasses, rubbed his temples. “Miranda, you probably remember that business has been down. Our balance sheets aren’t looking too good.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me back?” Her stomach constricted.
“Of course we do. But…we’ve budgeted through to the end of the quarter, and…”He shook his head, his kindly face lined with concern. “What I’m saying is, we can’t take you back until next quarter. So if something better comes along, I’ll understand.”
“Oh.” She was surprised to feel a small wave of relief rolling through her. “I see.”
“Listen, if you need—”
“I’m okay, Marty. I appreciate your honesty.”
She left the downtown office feeling supremely…ambivalent. She didn’t relish telling Jacob she wasn’t going back to work right away. On the other hand, the prospect of extending her sabbatical didn’t exactly depress her.
The good news was, she was meeting her two best friends for coffee. Sophie Bellamy, Lucy Rosetta and Miranda had been roommates as undergrads at the University of Washington and they had stayed close ever since. As she walked along First Avenue, Miranda glimpsed herself in the plate-glass windows she passed. Who was that woman? She still didn’t know.
They planned to meet at the Café Lucia, an Italian-style espresso bar that belonged to Lucy. The café was tucked in a cobblestone-paved pedestrian alley near the market. On the way, she stopped at the flower stall and picked up a small bouquet to take to Lucy.
The deep aroma of imported Lavazza coffee greeted her, along with the gurgle and hiss of the espresso machine. Two of the café’s six tables, with majolica-tiled tops, were occupied. Miranda went to the counter and stood before a display of sfogliatelle and biscotti.
“You look busy,” she said.
“Always.” Lucy Rosetta beamed as she stepped out from the work area to give Miranda a hug. “I’ll fix us a coffee.”
Miranda felt better just being in Lucy’s presence. Lucy was an expert at priorities. When a friend dropped in, she dropped everything. She brought a tray with two cappuccinos and biscotti and they had a seat together. Lucy had declared this particular table in the café a worry-free zone. In fact, there was a small sign in the middle, next to the flower vase, with WORRY in block letters and a slash through it.
“Sophie just called,” Lucy said. “She’s running late.”
“That’s all right. Let me put these flowers in water.” Miranda looked around the café. “I’ll divvy them up among the tables.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Lucy said.
“It takes thirty seconds,” Miranda told her, creating a small arrangement for each table. “Look at the difference it makes.”
“You’re right, of course,” said Lucy. “I wish I had your touch.”
Sophie Bellamy joined them, rushing in with her usual burden of briefcase, purse and tote bag. There was a flurry of hugs and greetings, and Sophie requested her usual—a double espresso.
The three of them were an unlikely trio, but their differences made for a lively friendship. Lucy, the creative bohemian, held fast to her dream of running the café. Sophie had the lucrative, high-powered career. Miranda had taken the traditional route to marriage, kids and house with a white picket fence. They used to joke that if they rolled their lives into one, they’d have a woman with a perfect life, living the dream.
They’d stopped joking about that last year. The year Miranda got sick, Sophie’s marriage fell apart and Lucy took out a second mortgage to keep her café afloat. Now when you put them together, they were a Dr. Phil show.
Miranda got up and hugged her friend. “I’m so glad you’re in town.”
“Not for long. I’m flying to New York in a couple of hours.” Sophie’s international-law firm had assigned her to a case that had her commuting to Seattle every other week. “But please,” she said. “Tell me something good. I need it.”
“I’m done with my treatments,” Miranda announced. “The doc gave me my walking papers yesterday. I get to rejoin the human race.”
Lucy’s face lit up. “That’s fantastic—isn’t it?”
“Pretty fantastic. For the foreseeable future, I’m a free woman.” Lucy burst into tears. She buried her face in a paper napkin. “Sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right,” Miranda assured her. “I feel too numb to cry. I might later. The crazy thing is,” she confessed, “now that I don’t have to fight the cancer anymore, I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Anything you want,” Lucy said with an airy gesture.
“I appreciate the thought, but it’s not that simple. My treatment has been my life for the past year now. Now that it’s over, I have no life.”
“Oh, honey,” said Sophie. “You’re just shell-shocked, but this is wonderful. Your treatment is done. You have your life back.”
“Yes and no. I can’t just roll back the past year and go on as if it never happened. I’ve changed. My…marriage has changed. Our family has changed.” There. She’d said it. She had given voice to a dark fear, which, in its own way, was more menacing than cancer.
“So change it back,” Lucy said simply. “Now’s your chance.”
“It’s not like everything was so perfect before,” Miranda confided. “Jacob wasn’t home enough, the kids had their ups and downs, I had the usual troubles with work.”
“So now you have a chance to turn your life into something even better than you had before,” Sophie pointed out.
Lucy nodded. “She’s right, Miss Miranda the miracle girl. What will you do with the rest
of your life?”
“This is what I love about you.” Miranda took a sip of her cappuccino. “You keep things simple. You’re living your dream, Lucy. When we were in college, you always said you wanted a café like the Gambrinus in Naples, and here you are.”
“Bless you for saying that. I’ve got a ways to go before people start comparing this place to the Gambrinus.”
Miranda felt better just being with her friends. She was grateful that they were here to listen and talk, even when Lucy probably had a zillion things to do in the café and Sophie had a plane to catch. Sophie was perpetually busy, always on the run. After college, she’d gone to law school, moved to the East Coast, married, had two kids, made partner—the perfect life.
Last summer, she had divorced.
As always, Sophie was beautiful and dressed for success, but Miranda knew her friend was dealing with the pain and loneliness and upheaval of splitting up with her husband. “How are you and the kids doing?” Miranda asked. Sophie’s children, Daisy and Max, were close in age to Valerie and Andrew.
“All right, I think. Daisy’s busy applying to colleges this fall. Max is actually doing much better in reading. They’re sad about the divorce. What kid wouldn’t be?” She brightened a little. “We’ve got a four-day weekend together over Columbus Day. I’m taking them to this incredible place in the Catskills that belongs to my former in-laws.” She sipped her cappuccino. “Sometimes I miss the Bellamys more than I miss Greg.”
Miranda heard the pinch of hurt in Sophie’s voice when she spoke of her ex-husband’s family. Having almost no family of her own, Sophie used to be close to the Bellamys. “I’m not surprised you miss them, Soph.”
“More than I ever imagined I would. And they’re still so good to me.” She blinked fast, close to tears.
Lucy passed her a plate of biscotti. “Aw, Sophie. There’s only one thing that makes you more unhappy than being divorced from Greg, and that’s being married to him.”
“True,” she said, visibly trying to shake off the mood. She swirled the biscotti in her cup.
“You kept your married name—Bellamy,” Lucy observed.
“With a maiden name like Wiener, can you blame me? Besides, I built a successful law practice around that name and made partner. It’s on the letterhead. And there’s nothing wrong with the name. The problem was with my marriage.”
Miranda felt as if a shadow passed over her heart.
“Sweetie, what is it?” Lucy asked.
Miranda stared at her hands in her lap. These women knew her too well. She took a deep breath and told them what had happened—or, more accurately, what hadn’t happened—the previous night. “He said I was sleeping so hard, he didn’t want to bother me.”
Lucy regarded her thoughtfully. “So how do you feel about that?”
Miranda shook her head. “I feel like a traitor, complaining at all. I mean, Jacob’s been great through all of this. But I’m ready to start feeling like a couple again, not patient and nurse.”
“Although he makes a very cute male nurse,” Lucy pointed out.
“You should tell him,” Sophie said. “Sit him down and look him in the eye and explain what you want and need. And while you’re at it, ask him what he wants and needs. His answers might surprise you.”
“I like that,” Lucy said. “How’d you get so smart, Sophie?”
She smiled a bit sadly. “If Greg and I had followed that advice, we might still be married. I think it’s easier to be smart about other people’s marriages because you don’t have to actually do the work.” She patted Lucy’s hand. “You’re the smart one, staying single.”
“How come I don’t feel smart, then?” Lucy gestured around the café. “I opened this place ten years ago. I know you guys think I’m living the dream, but the truth is, I’m barely staying afloat. Unfortunately, dreams don’t tell you how to take care of details like making the books balance.”
“Oh, Lucy.” Miranda felt frustrated. Here was another thing the illness had taken from her. Forced to focus on her treatment, she’d lacked the time to be a good friend. “Isn’t business picking up?”
“I need to make some changes.”
“What sort of changes?”
“I’m going to have to share this retail space, lease out half the shop. The rent is killing me, so that’s the solution I’ve come up with.”
“Lease it to whom?” asked Sophie.
“Good question. I’ve thought of a few possibilities—a book and magazine shop would be a good fit. Cards and stationery. Yarn, maybe, or quilting.” She glanced at the flowers Miranda had placed on each table. “Hey, maybe a florist.”
When Miranda was young, she used to imagine she had a tuning fork inside her, one that would resonate when just the right note struck. She felt that now, a deep vibration of interest at Lucy’s words. Out of habit, she dismissed the feeling. “I wish I could help.”
“Oh, I’m not asking for help. What I need is a real partnership here. I’m good until the end of the year. Come January, though, something’s got to give. I keep hoping the right person will just walk through that door—poof.”
Miranda smiled. “So what are you thinking? A café-newsstand?”
“Those are a dime a dozen.”
“A café-music store?”
“There’s one less than half a block away.”
“A café-legal clinic,” Sophie said. “That way, I could quit this dumb job and be bohemian with you.”
“Except that it’s not a dumb job, it’s a great one that you love,” Miranda pointed out. “Don’t you?”
“True,” Sophie admitted. “I complain about the travel and so forth, but honestly, sometimes I think it’s the one thing that has kept me from going nuts through the separation and divorce.”
“My job,” Miranda pointed out. “Now, there’s something. It’s the one thing I didn’t miss when I was sick.”
In college she had studied retail marketing, but had found her passion in a fluffy-sounding elective area—floral design. She used to picture herself amid buckets of cut flowers and greenery, surrounded by beautiful glassware and pottery, creating bouquets to brighten some woman’s home, or lift her spirits when she was sad, congratulate her for a job well done, comfort her when she was sick. She would be renowned for her Homecoming corsages.
Unfortunately, self-employment was a dubious prospect, especially for someone with a mortgage and two kids, so the idea remained only a daydream, and a private one at that.
Which was why she surprised herself by saying, “I’m tempted to lease the space myself and open the flower shop I’ve been thinking about since college.”
Sophie and Lucy looked at each other and then back at her. “It’s a crazy, brilliant idea and I think you should do it,” Sophie said.
“I’ve always said we should be partners,” Lucy reminded her.
“You two.” Miranda grinned, grateful to have such wonderful friends. “I’m not even sure I’ll be able to get my grown-up job back.” And then, without warning, she burst into tears.
To their credit, her friends sat patiently by and waited. Miranda finally pulled out a wad of Kleenex and dried her face. “God, sorry. I totally didn’t see that coming.”
“What’s going on?” asked Lucy. “Really.”
Miranda tried to pull herself together. She hoped the other customers and the girl behind the counter hadn’t noticed her outburst. She told them about the meeting with Marty and her feeling that she didn’t belong in her cubicle at Urban Ice anymore. “Lucy. Sophie,” she asked urgently. “What if there was some cosmic reason I got cancer? That reason being I’m supposed to change my life in some way?”
“See, that’s just what I was saying,” Lucy said. “It’s a chance to make a big change.”
“It’s not just the job,” Miranda said. “I suppose the one thing that’s not fixed is what this disease has done to my family. I feel horrible, like an ingrate, because I shouldn’t be thinking about what’s wrong
. But there’s…a sense of loss. I knew this whole experience would change me, but I saw the surgery—the loss of my breast and my hair—coming. I never predicted the loss of my family, though. I mean, we still live under the same roof, but last night it all hit home. We feel like strangers to one another. The kids have retreated, and Jacob’s buried himself in work.”
Sophie took her hand. “Not good,” she said.
“I know. It feels like a hole in my heart.”
“And I’m here to tell you, don’t ignore that feeling. Because one day you might wake up and realize you’ve forgotten how to love that great guy you married.”
Miranda’s blood chilled. Though she realized Sophie was talking about her own situation, she understood the warning.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed to her friends. “I’ve been pretending I’m not, but I am. The thing I fear most is not the disease coming back, but that I’ll never be able to reclaim my family.”
“Take it easy on yourself,” Lucy advised her. “You built that marriage and family over sixteen years. You’re not about to let it be taken away in just one.”
Miranda nodded resolutely. “Easy enough to say, but you know what my family is like. We’re all running in different directions. Getting us together is like herding cats. We’re all on fast-forward. What I need is a Pause button.”
“I think I can help with that,” Sophie said. “I have an idea for you, Miranda. How about taking your family away for a little R & R?”
“I’d love to,” Miranda said. “I can’t remember the last time we went on vacation.” She frowned, feeling a new sort of bleakness unrelated to being ill. Their lives simply weren’t organized for a family vacation, even when she was well. Weekends were for catching up on the things she’d failed to finish during the week. School vacations were simply occasions when she and Jacob had to make child-care arrangements for the kids until Valerie was deemed old enough to watch her brother.
“Sometimes Jacob and I talk about piling everyone in the car and taking them to the seashore for a weekend,” Miranda said. “But frankly, it’s going to take a little more than a weekend. And I know what Jacob will say—we simply can’t afford some big family vacation.”
