The Calendar of New Beginnings

by Ava Miles

  Lucy was watching her with a neutral expression, but he could feel her gathering herself. Talking about photography was probably the last thing Lucy wanted to do outside of the classroom. Not that Moira had any way of knowing that.

  “Let’s give Lucy some time to settle in,” he said, deciding to intervene.

  Moira’s mouth parted slightly, a sure sign she was surprised by his response. “Of course. Any time you’d like, Lucy. I’ll just join the others and let you two catch up.”

  A smile flickered on Lucy’s face. “Andy’s right. I have a lot of things to see to right now, but I’m sure we can chat at some point. Good luck finding a new job, by the way.”

  His sister sought his gaze once more before nodding and darting off in the direction of his family.

  “You need a Jameson after that?” Lucy asked him point-blank. “I guess your sister didn’t realize how upset we both were. Me because of the situation with my eye, and you because of my mistake with your son.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” he told her, trying to be nice. “And I don’t use liquor to handle my stress.”

  She tapped her finger on the table. “Well, I sometimes have a drink when I’ve had a moment. I’m sorry I caused Danny to ask those questions. I would never do anything—”

  “I know,” he said, interrupting her. “He’s smart, and he’s curious. It’s not the first time he’s asked something like that after hearing what should have been a simple story. Kids who lose parents young often have a fascination with death.”

  Whereas all he wanted to do was run as far as he could in the opposite direction. He wanted to believe Kim was in a place called heaven, but when it came down to it, he just didn’t know.

  “I walked right into it with all that talk about mummies and the afterlife,” she said, picking up a cold French fry and throwing it across her plate. “So, if you won’t have a drink with me, what can I do to make up for it? Let’s see. How about we dart over to the ice cream parlor and grab a cone? We can snarf it down before we return so no one will know.”

  Leave it to Lucy to suggest ice cream. A cone share had always been her go-to comforting suggestion when they were at school together.

  “Mocha almond fudge and butter pecan, here we come,” he said.

  “Let’s blow this joint,” she said.

  She rubbed his back, giving him a full-wattage Lucy smile. He shrugged his shoulders to relieve the tension as her fingers worked some magic. Her hands were strong, something he’d never realized. But they were also gentle as they traced the knotted line of muscles running across his shoulders.

  He was about to comment on her strength and skills—and tease her about picking up the latter in a Turkish bath internship overseas.

  And then he noticed her eyes.

  Suddenly he couldn’t speak.

  The color was greener than he remembered. He stared into them, noticing the gold rings around her pupils. She continued to smile at him, kneading his trapezius. There was a light in her eyes, he realized. Even though her right eye had been injured, it hadn’t been dimmed.

  How had he forgotten how beautiful they were? They contrasted with her fair skin and the spattering of freckles she’d always hated on her nose. Good God.

  Lucy’s beautiful.

  He hadn’t felt this intense punch of attraction since high school. Sure, he’d felt a spark for her at her homecoming party, but this was different. This ka-pow was the kind that made everything around him seem to slow down. The fingers massaging his shoulders felt hot all of the sudden. Oh, no. Not again.

  He stumbled back, feeling light-headed.

  She grabbed his arm and eyed him with concern. “Are you okay?”

  His nod was crisp. “Yep.” Not freaking out here. Not at all.

  Of course, Lucy O’Brien had always been bright and beautiful. It was a constant—like the oxygen levels in his blood.

  But she hadn’t been beautiful to him for nearly twenty years, and he didn’t want to be reminded of all that. Not when he’d already decided that their friendship needed to stay that way.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked, tilting her head from side to side, looking into his face. “Why don’t you sit down for a sec?”

  “No,” he said, shaking it off. “Let’s grab that ice cream. Then you can tell me what our mothers are plotting.”

  He waited for Lucy to precede him to the door. People were watching them again. They had been all night. While he wasn’t surprised, he was annoyed. Isn’t that why he’d brought Danny with him even though he had multiple willing babysitters? He was single again, and Lucy was back. The town gossips would wag their mouths anyway, but he didn’t plan to fuel their fire.

  Except a very old flint and steel had sparked a fire inside him. For her.

  His freak-out was in danger of reaching epic proportions if he didn’t rein it in. Outside, the night was warm, and he took some deep breaths to clear his head. After they ordered their ice cream cones, he started to ask for the check, but she cut him off and paid for both of them. Suddenly he felt awkward and unsure of himself. If he had paid, it might have meant something. Like they were going out.

  He tried to tell himself he was overthinking things. This was only an ice cream with Lucy, his childhood best friend. He’d only left his son with his family so she could tell him about their mothers’ latest crazy stunt.

  But as she led the way to one of the corner tables away from the rest of the crowd, he couldn’t suppress the growing awareness inside him. She really was beautiful. This was a hell of a time to realize it again, but he’d managed to push aside those thoughts in high school for the betterment of their friendship. He could do it again.

  Andy wrapped his cone with a napkin like he was wrapping up his feelings and tucking them away. “You might have realized Danny never stops talking.”

  She was studying him in that serious way of hers, like she was trying to figure out why he’d gotten all flustered back there. He scanned the room casually, trying to act cool, something he definitely didn’t feel.

  “He’s different from you that way,” she said, licking her scoop with delight. “You were always a quiet kid.”

  It was hard not to notice how sexy she looked eating her ice cream. “He got that from Kim.”

  An awkward silence descended—as uncomfortable and unwelcome as snow after Easter.

  “I really am sorry about earlier,” she said, fiddling with her napkin. “I talk to kids who’ve lost their parents all the time. You’d think… Well…those kids are used to people dying. They don’t…”

  When she trailed off, he fought the lump in his throat. Suddenly he couldn’t hold back his own sadness—the grief he felt every time he had to tell his sweet little boy about things like angels and heaven when all he wanted to do was see Kim standing right in front of their son, loving him and doing normal things like taking him to school and teaching him how to ride his bike.

  “They don’t what?” he asked, hearing the rasp in his own voice.

  She took a deep breath, lowering the cone. “They don’t ask a lot of questions about where their parents have gone after they’ve died. At least not to me. They…it’s not right or wrong. It’s just the way it is. They’re so concerned with surviving, getting their next meal, maybe getting into a school so they can be educated. I…hate seeing anyone so young lose a parent. I don’t like that part of this world.”

  Her grief was palpable, and the earlier brightness in her eyes faded to something darker. This was the Lucy he sometimes knew online—the one whose inner light was sometimes dimmed by the things she saw, the things she chronicled with her camera. Seeing this Lucy in person tore at his heart.

  How many times had he raved at the injustice of losing Kim before realizing he needed to accept that bad things happened to good people? It sucked, and he didn’t understand it, but Lucy was right—it was just the way things were. Kim had gotten cancer and died. He was alone now, and his job was to raise their son i
n as loving and happy of an environment as possible. And he wasn’t doing a bad job, if you asked him, dammit.

  “On that we agree,” he simply answered, not wanting to debate the big questions of life and death in this ice cream shop.

  He was a doctor, and it was something he dealt with on an ongoing basis. He tried not to let it bleed into his off-time more than it naturally did.

  “How about you spill this secret now that we’ve gotten all deep and everything?” he added, making himself take another taste of his ice cream.

  She stared at her cone. “I hesitate to mention this after our conversation earlier.”

  “Lucy,” he said, gesturing with his hand.

  “My mother bamboozled me into telling you this because April didn’t feel like she could. Your mom doesn’t want to stir up unhappy memories. And after tonight, I can kinda see why.”

  His stomach twisted into a knot. “Just spit it out.”

  “Our mothers have decided to raise money to support breast cancer,” she told him.

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why would that bother me? I think that’s a great idea. If you ask me, we need more money for research and mammograms and the like.”

  “I’m happy you feel that way,” she said, tracing circles on the counter with the tip of her cone. “It’s how they plan to do it that might give you pause.”

  “What are they going to do? Knowing our mothers—”

  “Exactly,” she said, taking a bite of her ice cream. “Ever watch the movie Calendar Girls?”

  “Uh…yes,” he answered with a sinking feeling. Surely they didn’t…

  “They asked me to take photos of them and ten other people who have lost someone to cancer.” She swiped a rivulet of ice cream cresting down her sugar cone. “Here’s the kicker. They’re going to be the humorous, risqué kind. They suggested using cantaloupes to cover their…” She gestured to her own chest, making him super uncomfortable after his earlier awareness of her.

  “Cantaloupes.” And then it hit him. “Oh, no. No.”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, biting her lip. “And they’ve recruited some men too, apparently. Dr. Jeff is one of them.”

  He sat back in the booth. “You’re kidding! What are they planning to do? Buy out all the cantaloupes and hot dogs in Dare Valley?”

  She thrust out her cone. “That’s what I thought at first. And then I saw Jeff’s face when he told me his mom died of breast cancer.”

  He swallowed thickly at the compassion threading her voice now. He knew that face. She could break his heart with that face.

  “Everyone is dedicating their month to the person they lost,” she continued. “Your mom is dedicating her page to Kim.”

  Now it all made sense. “I understand why she was afraid to tell me. We haven’t talked about her recent scare with the lump in her breast. I…couldn’t.”

  She reached for his free hand. “She knows. This is her way of doing something about it all, I think. I’ve come around to the idea.”

  He could see why. It was a beautiful gesture, but also the kind of kooky thing their moms normally got up to together.

  “Andy,” Lucy said softly, bringing him back. “Your mom’s calling it The Calendar of New Beginnings.”

  “Oh, crap,” he said, setting his cone down so he could pinch the one place guaranteed to prevent his tears from leaking: the bridge of his nose.

  He’d learned about that spot while working at the hospital in the weeks after Kim’s death, when anything and everything seemed to trigger an episode. A young woman dying of cancer like Kim. Another who lay still and emaciated in her hospital bed, her family unsure if she’d ever awaken after a car accident. And then there were the ones who’d passed on. Hearing their families weep with abandon had crushed him. But a doctor couldn’t cry in front of his patients, particularly not the ones who were already hopeless and grieving, so he’d learned to pinch that pressure point and keep the tears inside until he could be alone. Later he would release all the pain he’d gathered that day, like rain in water buckets after an afternoon thunderstorm.

  Lucy held his hand while he gathered himself together.

  “It’s okay to cry, Andy,” she said, tightening her grip. “I won’t think any less of you.”

  No, she wouldn’t, although many women might.

  “I can take it,” she added softly.

  He looked up and saw the soft light shining again in her beautiful green eyes. “I know you can, Lucy. I’m glad you’re doing the calendar.”

  “Me too,” she said softly. “Here. It’s time to swap cones like we always used to.”

  They ate each other’s ice cream as she held his hand, and just like that, the sorrow in his chest didn’t feel quite so heavy.

  Chapter 8

  It was a day of new beginnings, and a Monday to boot. In the morning, Lucy was moving into the small rental home she’d dubbed Merry Cottage, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, she would teach her first class at Emmits Merriam’s School of Journalism. She’d accomplished a lot after only a week in Dare Valley.

  Since Lucy didn’t have more than a couple of suitcases with her, she was able to pull off the move without much fuss. Her mother’s cleaning crew had vacuumed and dusted every available space, making the worn furnishings gleam. The air smelled of lemon, and Lucy sneezed as she wandered through the small home. The carpets and the upholstery on the Victorian couch and armchair all showed vacuum tracks. The windows sparkled in the sunlight, showing a rare streak from the cleaner. It was a gesture she’d happily accepted.

  After living in anything from hotels to barracks, huts to compounds, this little cottage made her feel cozy. Even though none of the furnishings were hers, this place was her safe haven for the moment.

  She let herself out the French doors into the backyard. The view was one of the things that had drawn her to this cottage. Mountain peaks rose up all around her, dotted with pines and other conifers. A small pond drew her across the lawn—freshly cut, courtesy of her father. She looked into the water and studied her reflection.

  She did need a haircut, but the world wouldn’t end if she waited a few days. Her face still hadn’t filled in, and the gauntness of her cheeks made them look sunken. Dark circles lay under her somber eyes.

  This was the Lucy O’Brien her students would see, but was this really her?

  Where was her sparkle, her vitality? Seeing Andy’s pain the other night had made the walls surrounding all of her bottled-up emotions start to crumble. She’d experienced loss too.

  And it sucked.

  Her hand unconsciously reached up to touch her right eye. She’d always taken her twenty-twenty vision for granted, and without it, she was floundering. Who would she be if she wasn’t able to take photos, to travel around the world and be an award-winning photojournalist again?

  No one understood the magic, the courage, the technique it took to capture the perfect picture. Sure, Andy was right—if her vision didn’t improve, there were ways she could adjust to her new reality. She could take photos using her left eye, but that would be like asking Michelangelo to paint with his right hand. Would he have been able to paint the Sistine Chapel if his left hand had become useless? She didn’t think so. She could try and switch to taking only black-and-white photos, but again, if Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel in only black and white, would it have been considered a masterpiece?

  When she’d agreed to take photos for The Calendar of New Beginnings, she’d told herself the quality wouldn’t have to be up to her usual levels. She could use it as an opportunity to learn how to take photos with her left eye. But that wouldn’t do justice to the project, not considering the depth of loss Andy, Jeff, April, her mother, and all the rest had been through. She felt the pressure to produce perfect photos for the calendar, and something told her these couldn’t simply be playful, risqué photos. Anyone could do hot dogs and cantaloupes.

  Her new idea was to capture the truth of loss and the courage it took to
keep living after experiencing grief. Maybe each subject could hold a photo of the person they’d lost or a memento from their life.

  Today was as good a day as any to see if she could take photos—any photos—since she’d be teaching young minds about photography later in the afternoon. God, her first class. The thought of teaching something she feared she could no longer do made her sick to her stomach. It actually made it worse that her students were so excited to work with her. According to the administrator she’d spoken with at the school, there was a sizable wait list to get into her class.

  She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket with a trembling hand and brought up the camera function. Maybe it would be best to start out by taking pictures on the simplest mechanism out there.

  But even holding the phone made her miss her babies: an old manual Leica for when she didn’t have access to electrical power and the new digital Leica M9 model—the smallest, quietest full-frame camera on the market. She’d scrimped and saved to buy that camera. Her bag of Leica lenses gave her the versatility she needed for any shoot, anywhere in the world.

  Lucy had bought Leica because her hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, had talked about the camera brand becoming an extension of his eye in his biography, which Lucy had read hundreds of times. The famous French photojournalist had mastered the art of candid photography, and Lucy had pored over his body of work and everything written about his life to search for the secrets of his success. She loved Ansel Adams’ black-and-white landscapes of the American West, but her very soul was touched by Henri’s photos of world events like Gandhi’s funeral and the last days of the Chinese Civil War.

  Henri had claimed his photography style was grounded in the concept of the decisive moment, which was the title of his first book. It was a notion she intrinsically understood. To capture such a moment of pure, uncensored truth, you had to always be present and ready.

  The camera phone didn’t feel right in her hands, but she wasn’t ready to take her Leicas out. Since the accident, she hadn’t touched them except to pack. Hadn’t been able to. She’d captured some excellent photos of the attack on the Congolese village before the explosion that had knocked her out, but she couldn’t bear to look at them yet. At least the soldiers hadn’t stolen or destroyed her equipment in the melee.