Twenty-One
THE NEXT DAY was Friday. At last.
My last day of pretending.
Also known as the anniversary of the accident.
Sullivan’s sunburn was better by Friday, and she ventured out that afternoon to sit in the shade and enjoy the breeze. The Gals surrounded her and asked her all about how she was feeling. When she heard that Hutch and Cole and Rue were headed out to dinner that night, she tried to invite herself along, but The Gals dissuaded her—saying it was family only.
Which was why she made a not-pleased face when Rue, right in front of her, invited me to join.
Rue had sent Cole to pick up flowers, and after he got back, she sat at a poolside table, dividing up the bouquets.
“Who’s the fourth one for?” I asked.
Rue looked at me over her glasses. “ You , sweetheart.”
“Oh, no,” I said, glancing toward Sullivan. “This is a family day.”
Rue turned back to the flowers. “You’re close enough.”
I looked over at Cole just as Hutch walked up. He had dressed for the occasion, wearing gunmetal-gray dress pants that fit like he’d just stepped out of the pages of GQ . If he was hungover from the drinking contest, he was hiding it like a warrior. A freshly shaved warrior in a slim-fit button-down.
Though, to be fair, he was also wearing his standard-issue concerned frown.
“She’s close enough to what?” Hutch asked, in response to Rue.
“Family,” Rue and Cole said, in unison.
Hutch looked down to count Rue’s bouquets. “She’s not coming with us, is she?”
“Of course she is,” Rue said, like he was nuts to ask.
“But it’s our first time back together,” Hutch said.
“He’s right,” I said, trying to join Team Hutch.
But Rue wasn’t brooking any nonsense. “She’s important to Cole, so she’s important to us. If you ever get a girlfriend, she can come, too.”
Hutch gave Rue a look, like Thanks a lot.
He wasn’t wrong. I was a total interloper.
But I couldn’t think of a way out. If I feigned an illness, Rue might worry about me. If I suddenly had an “important meeting,” she might feel like my impending new family didn’t matter. If I “forgot something” back at the Starlite, she’d be waiting for me to return. All I could do was go—and make the best of things.
The Starlite was right off Duval Street, which is one of the main drags in Key West, so we left Sullivan and The Gals behind, gathered up our bouquets, and walked along the bustling sidewalk, handing out flower after flower to tourists, and shoppers, and passersby.
Despite everything, it was fun.
Rue and I paired off, leaving the guys to do the same. They looked companionable—from a distance, at least. Rue and I cradled our bouquets like we were prima ballerinas about to take our bows. Before we began in earnest, Rue snapped two of the flowers’ stems short and tucked one behind her ear, and one behind mine.
“Whatever happened to the flower hair clip I gave you?” she asked.
“Lost.” I shrugged. At the back of Hutch’s closet.
She nodded and said, “We’ll snag you another one.”
But I shook my head. “Maybe it was for the best. I’m not sure flowers are for me.”
But Rue just looked appalled. “Flowers,” she declared, “are for everyone.”
We’d barely gotten started when we saw Cole, across the street, raise his arms in victory after handing out his last flower.
“It’s not a race, Cole,” Rue called.
“What do I do now?” Cole answered. “I’m all out!”
“Go get some more!” Rue called back. “We’re not done until we’re done!”
If it had been a race, Rue and I would’ve come in dead last.
The flowers were so unexpected—and so lovely. Person after person reacted with blinks of surprise, then bewildered acceptance, then shy smiles. Highly recommend if you ever want to spend an afternoon lifting people up.
While Hutch and Cole were trying to maximize efficiency, Rue and I wanted to maximize joy. “This is a dahlia,” Rue would say to a mom with a baby. “They were originally classified as vegetables.” Or, “This is a lilac. They’re from the same family as olive trees.” Or, “This is a peony. The plants can live for a hundred years—and outlive the gardeners who planted them.”
“This is my best day of the year now,” Rue said to me as we strolled along. “Isn’t that something? It started out as my worst day of the year. I’d walk along handing out flowers, wiping away tears before the boys saw. People must have thought I was crazy. But now, after all this time… it’s become a joy.”
Rue held out a lilac to a girl going by on a skateboard, who took it without slowing, calling “Thank you!” behind her.
“I used to dread it,” Rue continued, “but now I look forward to it. The flowers, the food, the big, astonishing tip for the waiter at the end. I always drink a glass or two of Robert’s favorite cabernet. I wait for it all year in some compartment in my heart, thinking about how nice it will be to do all these things again. It’s good before, and it’s good during, and it’s good after.”
“Rue,” I said then. “Cole told me something about you when he first showed up.” I met her eyes to see if she could intuit what I meant. “And I’m not sure if I believe it. But maybe that’s only because I don’t want to believe it.”
I let that sit.
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “It’s just a touch of heart failure.”
“Can you have a touch of heart failure?”
“It’s just stage one,” Rue said. “If I take good care of myself, I could last a long time—years! But it’s not technically curable . It will be the thing that gets me, that’s pretty clear.” Rue gave me a wry smile. “Unless a runaway bus comes along.”
“You told Cole,” I asked then, “but you didn’t tell Hutch?”
Rue nodded. “Well, Cole needed a kick in the pants. He’s always been a little too self-focused for his own good.”
“And Hutch?” I prompted.
“Hutch doesn’t have that problem. The opposite, in fact. He’s not nearly as invincible as he seems.” Rue sighed. “He had such a hard time after he lost his mom. He really struggled a lot.” She looked at me. “That’s why he hums all the time.”
“It is?”
“Have you noticed he does that?”
“Of course. It’s a whole thing.”
“I had a therapist friend who told me that humming was soothing to the vagus nerve.”
I shook my head, like Not sure what that means .
“That’s a nerve,” Rue explained, “that calms and regulates your system. The vibrations of humming stimulate it. So does laughing. So do deep breaths. And gargling, of all things. So when Hutch was having a hard time when he was little, I taught him about all those things—but humming was the one that stuck.”
“That’s why he hums? To feel better?”
“It’s such a habit now, I’m not sure he notices he’s doing it. But that’s where it started.” Rue patted my hand.
“And ‘Heart and Soul’?” I asked.
Rue shrugged. “It was my husband’s favorite.”
We gave that a moment.
“Anyway,” Rue went on at last, “I will tell Hutch about me, of course—but this is always a hard time of year for him. I might wait a little while.”
We’d run out of flowers, so we sat on a park bench to wait for the boys.
Next, Rue said, “I was just reading that old people are happier than young people. Do you want to know why?”
I nodded.
“Because old people,” Rue said, “don’t have as much time left. And they know it. It’s called a time horizon—a sense of how much time we have remaining. For teenagers, it’s vast. It’s infinite . But as we get older, it shortens and shortens—and we can’t help but feel it. As it shrinks, it makes everything more precious. We appreciate the days more because there are fewer of them to come. And it’s really true. I felt it so much today. How fast it all goes. How much we have to be thankful for. What a miracle each breath is.”
Without meaning to, I leaned my head against Rue’s shoulder.
“We don’t last forever, sweetheart. We’re not supposed to. It’s okay. It’s part of it all. I’m good for now, and that’s enough.”
Across the street, the boys were headed our way, waiting for the light at the crosswalk to change.
As we watched them start toward us, Rue said, “Do you know what my favorite flower is?”
I shook my head against her shoulder.
“Daisies,” she said. “The cheapest daisies you can find. So you can hand out lots and lots and lots of them. Anytime you feel like it.”