Chapter 16 #3
“The best.” Alice smiled. “So stop acting like a ‘good soldier’ who’s lost her post. This time, you aren’t the one taking the shots. You’re the leader. You’re guiding me to the win. Can you do that?”
I looked at the straw.
I looked at the wall.
I looked at my hat propped on my knee.
The weight in my chest didn’t disappear, but it shifted. It became a pack I could carry.
I wasn’t helpless. I had a job.
“I can do that.” I squared my shoulders.
She squeezed my hand. “Good. Because there will be days I don’t want to get up. Days I want to stop. And when those days come”—she tilted her head, and the faintest version of her smile appeared—“I need you barking in my ear. I need you telling me to get up and move. I need my Buck.”
A sound came out of me that was almost a laugh.
“Buckshot would kick cancer’s ass.”
“She can and she will. Together.”
The stable door opened again. We heard quiet footsteps, the soft crush of straw, and then Sylvie’s face appeared around the stall, followed immediately by Doris, who held up the skirt of her pink dress to keep it out of the dust.
They took in the scene, and neither of them said a word. They just came in and settled into the stall with us.
The four of us sat there in the straw while the horses breathed and the sounds of the movie set carried distantly from outside, and none of us said anything for a moment, and it was enough. It was more than enough. It was everything.
“I want you all to know something,” Alice said quietly. “I’m going to be okay.”
We all listened, waiting as she gathered her words.
“I know this is frightening,” she said. “It frightens me too, more than I’ll probably ever say out loud.
But I also know I’m not doing this alone.
I have Sylvie, who will organize every appointment and research every doctor and ask every question and make absolutely certain that nobody in that hospital gets away with anything less than their best. The doctors will hate you, and I’m glad for it. ”
She glanced at Sylvie, who pressed her lips together in a smile and nodded. “It’s true. They are going to hate me.”
“They will hate you, but I’ll love you for how much you’re going to ensure I’m getting the very best care. And I have Doris, who will pray for me and feed me and sit with me when I’m too tired to be anything but tired.”
“Oh, I’ve been planning so many recipes. Soups and breads and comfort foods you won’t be able to turn your nose up at. And a quilt! I’ll knit you the prettiest one.”
Alice touched her hand. “I know you will, Doris. Thank you. And I have Marge—”
She turned and looked at me.
“Who will make sure I never forget I’m a fighter. Who will ensure that no matter what this cancer throws at me, I’ll win.”
I swallowed. “Damned right. You’re Alice. You’re always number one. You’re always a winner. And you’re going to beat this thing. I won’t let you fail.”
Doris was crying again, the quiet kind, wiping her eyes with the hem of her dress. Sylvie’s grip on my hand got tighter.
We sat in the straw together, and I thought about the four of us, about every ridiculous and terrifying and wonderful thing we’d done together. About the way we always ended up okay.
How we would be okay after this too.
I got to my feet.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
Nobody asked where I was going.
I walked out of the stable and hurried back to the dressing room where we’d gotten changed into our costumes. I found my Viking hat in my pile of clothes and tucked it under my arm.
When I returned to the stable, the three of them looked up at me.
I crossed the straw to Alice and stood in front of her. She looked up at me with those green eyes that were full of so much more than she ever let on, and I placed the hat carefully on top of the enormous wig.
It sat there—the battered, beloved Viking hat perched on a towering period-accurate confection of ringlets—and the effect was so completely, perfectly absurd that we all burst into laughter.
The soundtrack of our lives whenever we were together.
“Well, it’s official. We’re in the last stretch to Mardi Gras and you’re the captain now. Time to lead us into the next adventure. And we’ll all be right behind you.”
“We’re always behind you, Alice,” Sylvie said softly.
“Always,” Doris whispered.
Alice looked up at me.
For a moment—just a moment—everything she didn’t say lived plainly on her face. And then she lifted her chin, and the captain squared herself for whatever was coming.
“Well then,” she said, “we’d better make this last stretch of our trip a good one.”
“Mardi Gras tomorrow?” I asked.
“Captain’s orders.” She smiled.
And I did too—a real one, bigger than I’d managed in longer than I wanted to admit—because she was here, right now, in this straw, with a Viking hat on a ridiculous wig and her green eyes full of life.
And somehow I knew they would be full of life for years to come. I would make damn sure of it.
We might be in a bumpy part of this crazy life we found ourselves in, but I knew with certainty we were nowhere near done.
The credits hadn’t even started rolling yet.