Anna comes closer to me, intrigued. She’s still young enough to be friendly and open to other parents. “I think the fairies left me something on the beach. I’m sure of it, in fact. I’m going to treasure hunt. I think maybe they left me a treasure, maybe a piece of gold, or maybe a necklace.” She smiles and claps her mittens together, and I smile at how they are too big and sort of flop like paws.
“The fairies are real,” she informs me in a voice that defies argument, but the narrowing of her eyes and the slight stiffness to her shoulders is a silent plea, and I heed it.
“Of course they are,” I say, as if it were common knowledge. “But I think they only make themselves known to girls, and maybe boys, who are special. The kids they can trust.”
She nods. “Yes! My friend Nidhi said they’re not real, but she’s Indian so she doesn’t believe in things like Santa because that’s only for other religions than hers, like mine. So he’s real but he doesn’t come to her house. But it’s okay because she gets presents for other things, like Diwali. So the fairies are like that too for some kids.”
Her mom shoots me a smile and mouths, “Thank you,” and rolls her eyes at Anna, but it’s a sweet gesture, and I can see how much she loves her daughter. The deception makes me smile and feel uneasy at the same time. For a second I think about the devastating feeling that comes when you lose your magic, whether it be Santa or the Easter Bunny—but I suppose we all go through it, and turn out okay. Maybe this is good practice for later, when she needs to make her own magic. And I’m not going to judge any parent for helping her kid survive.
Anna goes up to Michael by the tree. She asks, “Is your cancer gone? Mine went away but I have to get MRIs sometimes to check. My hair is growing in and soon it will be long enough for a barrette. My mom said I can pick out even the most expensive ones at Walgreens, like that green one with the pink watermelon slice. Have you seen that one?”
I hold my breath. Please, please.
Michael shrugs. “No. I don’t like barrettes.” He pauses, meets my eyes, then says carefully, “That sounds nice for you, though.” Anna smiles and does a little hop.
I feel like jumping myself with pride and triumph. Yes!
Michael adds, “Mine came back but it’s gone again. I have to take stupid medicine now. And I have a stupid teacher who doesn’t understand anything.”
Anna seems to understand. “My teacher asked my mom if the other kids can catch my cancer. She said maybe I should wear a mask so I don’t give them germs.”
“What a dummy.” Michael’s voice is sympathetic. “They should fire her.” I notice immediately how, without talking down to her, he sounds more like a kid than when he talks to me. He’s adapting to his audience, another sign of his vast intellectual ability.
“Yeah. What a dummy!” Anna giggles. “Want to go look for cool sticks? There’s some over there that come off the crabapple trees, and they’re bendy.”
That thought of that teacher makes me tense up. I turn to the mom. “Her teacher actually said that?”
The mom nods. “Yup. The ignorance out there will just astound you sometimes. I had to go to the principal and he wasn’t even that helpful. It was only when I threatened to go to the diocese that they finally caved and said she could be in class without a mask. It was fucking ridiculous.” She frowns. “Our technology is so advanced, so smart. But they you run into a little pocket of ignorance, and it’s a pocket that comprises something critical, like school. Work. Insurance. So you can’t just take off and find a better pocket. You have to stay, and stay, and fight. And it’s so exhausting.”
“I’m sorry.” I touch her arm with my mitten.
“I’m sorry.” She smiles. “I’m Kelsie. Anna’s mom. I guess we never met at the hospital. It was so crazy. All the chemo kids together.”
I shake my head. “I’m Shai. I’m not Michael’s mom. I’m his therapist. He doesn’t have a mom.”
“Oh! Oh. That’s sad. You do—therapy at the beach?” But she looks stiffer, as if she wanted to open up to me because I understood, and now that I’m just the therapist, not the mom, I can’t possibly, and she wants to close back up, a rose against the night storm.
“Yes. Sometimes,” I say. “We’ve been working together for a month now. He’s making a lot of progress.”
She nods. “I’m sure he is. And it’s great that he has such a personal hands-on therapist.” But she’s reserved, a mask unrolling like a shade to cover her expression. “It’s just that if you’re not—family, you’ll just never understand what they go through. What we all go through.”
Then she looks horrified. “I’m sorry I said that. It’s probably not true. And anyway, I-I should be happy that you don’t know. That people don’t know. It’s just… when you go through it personally, you see it from the inside out.” Her voice is bleak. “And it feels so isolating. Like even the people who care, and want to help you? It’s like they’re just looking at you through a thick piece of glass, and they can see you gesturing, but they can’t make out your words.” She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I should stop talking now.” She starts to turn away, her shoulders up, a drawbridge raising.
I like her already, and I don’t want to lose this fragile bond we just formed. “It’s okay. I get it. I know why it matters.” And I do.
I somehow need to convince her, and as I talk, it feels good to let the words out. “I get how you can walk around wondering how the rest of the world is functioning. How you want to kill them and watch their blood run out because they’re considering whether they should get lace-scalloped or plain-edged towels for the guest bathroom in Target, and you are stuck behind them and you don’t care about edges.
“But you have to wait until they are done with their ten-minute giggling discussion so you can get in there, too. Because you have someone coughing up blood and choking on it in the night and all the old towels are stained, and your mom gave you fifty dollars and told you to get the darkest cheapest ones you could find while she waits in the car and smokes with fingers that tremble.”
And as I speak these things I haven’t spoken in years, my voice gains vehemence, fluidity. “Because they have no idea how lucky they are, and they have no respect for what you’re going through, and they give you attitude because you took two seconds too long to order a hot cocoa in Starbucks in the hospital lobby because you were wondering if today is the day your sister is going to die, and whether she’ll do it while they’re putting on the whipped cream, and if it will hurt.
“You want them to hurt, too, so they can suffer like you are. Maybe it will teach them to be kinder. Not even kinder. So they can be human again. So that if you need to take an extra goddamn minute in the coffee line, you can, without getting someone muttering ‘move your slow idiot ass’ under their breath.”
I idly wonder—even as I’m talking, completely focused on my words—if my syllables will freeze in this arctic air, maybe shatter into dust and disappear, taking their pain with them. If only.
Kelsie’s rapt; her face focused. She steps closer.
I pause and add, “And then you have to somehow go to school, and do homework. And you have to mail things at the post office. Buy meat at the deli. All these people who don’t know what you’re going through, and don’t care. You’re an alien on Earth. You look like a human, but you’re not like them. You’re Other. You’re so separate that you can see the millions of miles between you. You’re looking at them all through the small end of a telescope. But you have to interact. And it’s the most soul-crushing, excruciating thing you’ll ever have to do in your life—to live it, when someone you love isn’t able to do the same.”
Tears are in my eyes, and I panic and look down fast—I don’t want anyone to see me looking so sad, especially Michael, but he and Anna are running away together, holding sticks and laughing in the distance. When I lift my head, the wind makes my tears hurt like ice, so I wipe at them with my mittens, and the thick weave does nothing except redistribute th
e moisture in an even less convenient pattern, so I pull off the wool and dig in my pocket, finding a crispy used tissue and dabbing at my face with the clean part.
Kelsie touches my arm, a compassionate gesture. “You do understand.” Her voice is different now; it holds respect and sympathy. “I wish you didn’t, though.”
I take a deep breath. “Wow. That’s something I haven’t talked about in a long time.”
“You can tell me more, if you want to,” she says. I see compassion in her gaze, and even more, friendship. The kind of friendship—sisterhood, maybe—that you only experience with an exclusive and sad group. War veterans. Combat amputees. When you share something so fundamental, it’s like the permafrost topsoil of friendship, the kind that you chip at with a teaspoon when you start making a friend, is blown away, leaving the real you to connect with the real them. It’s a friendship that skips over the social niceties, the first dozen letters, and starts you right in at J or K instead of making you wade through the crippling anxiety and boring crap of A, B, and etcetera.
I manage to laugh a little bit. “It’s okay.”
“So I know you’re a therapist, but do you, you know?” She pauses. “Do you see one yourself? Because it seems like even therapists need someone to talk to. Maybe especially therapists. Because of everything you probably hear and deal with.”
“It’s not a problem for me. I just got caught by surprise by a memory.” I nod, to reinforce my claim. This is a pain I don’t want to feel.
“You know, it’s not a sign of weakness to get help yourself. Even if you’re the one that usually does the helping.” Her voice is kind. “Put on your own breathing mask first, and all that.”
I nod again. “I tell my clients all the time, and it’s great advice. It’s just a momentary thing. I’m past it.” I’m worried that she’ll think I’m not a good therapist if I have such big issues in myself.
She sighs. “I don’t think you can ever get past it.” But she’s not challenging me; she’s looking into the wind, and I think she’s seeing her own bloody towels and coffee line, her own bad memories, whatever twisted wraiths exist in her own brain. Maybe she wishes her pain could shatter in this cold and blow away, just like I did.
“Are you a therapist, too?” I don’t think so, but you never know.
She laughs. “All cancer moms are therapists, too.”
“Not all of them.” A burst of anger, white hot, fills me, for what I never got from my own mom.
She gives me a questioning look, but doesn’t say anything because the kids are back, their laughter a beautiful healing sound, blowing all around us in the wind like flower petals, like glitter.
“Mama! Look! Look at my stick! It’s a perfect stick to make a fairy swing. Michael found it for me.” She looks up at him shyly, her eyes full of reverence, and my heart swells with pride at the way he’s being so kind. I did that—I helped him get here. The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, and it took him a while to adjust to me, but he’s listening. When I talk to him, he listens. And he takes my advice. He’s able to let his kindness out again.
But then I see something else—it’s not just kindness, it’s a desperate need. This ten-year-old genius who can do calculus, who has the vocabulary of a college student and who knows what it’s like to have clear poison drip into your veins, a slow burn that might—if he’s lucky—kill off the more serious poison that’s growing inside him like a sick twisted vine—this boy needs to laugh and play, too. He needs to gather sticks for a little girl, to run in the wind with nobody else judging. He needs to be needed by someone smaller. By someone bigger. By someone who matters.
And suddenly I know what I need to tell his father.
TO CONTINUE READING, please find A Handful of Fire. Thank you!
Table of Contents
Tropical Tryst
Copyright
SEAL My Love – Sharon Hamilton
SEAL My Love
Author’s Note
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Sharon Hamilton’s Book List
About the Author
Reviews
Navy Seal Prayer
Tempting James – Victoria Pinder
Tempting James
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Also by Victoria Pinder
About the Author
Rider’s Fall – LENA BOURNE
RIDER’S FALL
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
About the Author
A Miracle in Hawaii – Fiona Miers
A Miracle in Hawaii
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Epilogue
About the Author
Perfectly Skeptical – Linda O’Connor
Perfectly Skeptical
A Note from Linda
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
About the Author
More about the Perfectly series
Alpha Heat – Mandy Rosko
Alpha Heat
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Tristan – Liz Gavin
Tristan
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Sneak Peek
About the Author
Also by Liz Gavin
Desire a Bridesmaid – Courtney Hunt
Desire a Bridesmaid
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Finding Cory – Caitlyn Lynch
Finding Cory
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
A Note From The Author
About the Author
Other Works by Caitlyn Lynch
Murder w
ith a Kiss – Stacy-Deanne
Murder with a Kiss
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Tropical Tryst: 25 All New and Exclusive Sexy Reads Page 251
