Chapter 75 2025
It’s the best time of the day, the May sky cloudless and the slowly setting sun a spotlight on the east that’s turned everything golden and lush, like one of those English paintings with hunting dogs that Profe was so fond of.
I’m on the back porch of Meryl’s house, looking at the pond.
The morphine is doing its job, and I drift peacefully in and out of consciousness as past and present swirl.
I think a lot about death these days, its tantalizing pull, now that it’s so close.
Mostly I’m at peace with it, though there’s also deep melancholy, knowing I will miss out on so much.
I think about the people in my life, and sometimes I think about skating, moments on the ice when I was soaring.
I reflect on the remarkable journey of how I got to this place.
A long life, despite how short it was. I think of the wonder of fate.
Nick leading me to the pond. Meryl discovering me.
The wondrous night with Dylan that resulted in the greatest miracle, our daughter.
I said goodbye to her a week ago. Kai came to fly with her to Germany, where she will start the rest of her life with Esma and Heinrich. They have a two-year-old boy and a girl on the way. Ivy will be a big sister, something she’s always wanted.
“Uncle Kai,” she’d squealed when he showed up, then she launched herself into his arms like a six-year-old missile.
He scooped her up and spun her around, then set her down dizzy, and she stumbled a moment as if drunk.
Aside from Meryl and Elwood, Kai is her favorite person in the world.
Forever my hero, he has taken six months leave to help Ivy settle into her new life.
Meryl and Elwood will also be there, but not until after, when I no longer need them here to take care of me.
I often think of all of them together—a unique and beautiful family, knitted together by their love for me, perhaps my greatest accomplishment.
“You know what I need?” Kai said to Ivy with a wink.
“Cookies!” Ivy cried. “You need cookies!”
She ran to the kitchen, and we heard her rummaging around for supplies to make her “secret” recipe, which just happened to be written on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag.
“How you holding up, Patch?” Kai asked, offering a fist bump.
He was the only one who still called me Patch, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
“Dandy,” I said. “My daughter and best friend are leaving for Germany. I’ve been found guilty of murder and sentenced to four years in prison. And I’m dying of cancer.”
He laughed in the way only a best friend can. “At least you’re getting the last laugh on the justice system. Now that I know the secret, I’m going to cause pure mayhem before I die.”
I laughed, and though it hurt like hell, it felt good.
His face still looked like it had been smashed with a fist, and his large forehead still dominated his face. He had a girlfriend now, a fellow soldier. I don’t know how serious it is, but he said they planned to give long distance a go while he was in Germany.
An hour later, when it was time to say goodbye, half the cookies eaten and the other half boxed up for the flight, his tough-guy persona faltered.
His jaw clenched, and his nostrils opened and closed with his breath.
Afraid he might lose it, which would have caused me to lose it, I opened my arms at a diagonal.
With a deep steeling inhale, he forced a stiff smile onto his face, and much to Ivy’s delight, we executed the Goofy-Mickey handshake, almost pulling it off until the last spin, which caused me to stumble.
“Mom, you messed it up,” Ivy said, fists on her hips in the bossy way she had.
“I did, Chicken,” I said, swallowing back the sickness in my throat. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You’ll do it right next time.”
It took heroic effort for me and Kai not to react when she said that.
“Hug,” I said, and Ivy walked into my embrace and wrapped her thin arms around me.
She clung to me in a way that made me believe she understood more than she let on. She knew I was sick and that was the reason she was going with Kai to Germany. But at six, she was mercifully young enough not to fully understand death or the permanence of it.
When I released her, I staggered back a step and caught myself on the wall.
She looked at me with concern, and I did my best to straighten and look stronger than I was. I hated the idea of her last memory of me being that of a feeble, sick woman.
Kai, sensing it, said, “Come on, kiddo, let’s get our giddyap on and go.
” He offered her his back to climb on, and she leaped aboard, then pretended to whip him like a horse.
“Hi-ya!” she whooped, her orange amulet catching the light.
Each time I saw it, I thought of Boodo and the magic of that first amulet and how it protected me right up until the end.
When Ivy lost the gift, Thanksgiving Day, she was very upset. I was upset as well but didn’t show it. I should have made it smaller so it fit better. I told her I would ask Aunt Astur to get her another.
It was only after she went to her room to change into her Thanksgiving dress, a sparkly confection of orange taffeta and brown satin, that Elwood told us the rest of the story.
In place of the amulet, on the bench where Ivy had left it, he’d found a rabbit’s foot, which he hid in his pocket before Ivy saw it.
He gave it to me, and my throat closed. Nearly twenty years old, it was worn to leather in spots, and one of the nails was gone. Meryl and I looked at each other, and that moment set in motion a series of events that, once again, changed everything.
I continued to stare at the beads of orange on Ivy’s wrist as Kai galloped with her to his truck and dumped her in the back seat.
When he reached the driver’s door, he looked over the roof of the cab and lifted his hand in a wave.
I lifted my hand back, and he climbed inside, then turned and said something to Ivy.
And my last sight of my daughter was of her laughing as they drove away.
Gratitude. I’m full of it these days, and I realize it’s what being so close to death does. It fills you with nostalgic thanks for all the blessings you suddenly appreciate you have.
Each night, since they left, Kai has called to give me an update. Ivy’s doing great. There are dozens of kids her age at the institute, and she’s picking up German as well as Albanian and is busy all the time. She asks about me but only in passing.
When I first told her she was going to stay with Esma and Heinrich, she looked at me very seriously and asked, “Is that because I lost your bracelet and it stopped protecting you?”
“No, Chicken. My sickness was written in the stars long before Boodo even gave me my bracelet.”
“It’s not fair,” she said.
No. It isn’t.
Part of me wanted to soothe her by saying “It’s part of God’s plan.” But my relationship with the Almighty was still as murky as it had been when I was a child.
Mostly when I’m feeling sorry for myself, it’s the great chief I think of, his black eyes clear in my mind’s eye as I remember sitting on the dock across from him as he told me about the spirit flame. And I draw on the deep sense of inner strength he gave me all those years ago.
I lift my face to the fading sun to feel its warmth on my skin.
The fragrance of summer fills my nose, a distinct scent of grass and moss and jasmine.
Verdant. Earthy. Familiar. I breathe it in, and my lungs expand as the morphine makes me float.
Fleetingly, I think of the loneliness stone of my youth, but it’s been banished so long it takes effort to remember it existed at all.
The gentle ripples of the water lap at the shore, and I think of Mother and how she liked to sit beside the lake and read the Bible.
I’m not sure why that particular image fills my mind, but the memory is so close I smell the chamomile of her tea and hear the rustling of her turning the page.
She would have adored Ivy. How pretty she is. Love and anger swirl.
I’m less certain how Dylan would feel. Scared, I’m sure.
Perhaps angry that I kept her from him. I’ve left it up to Ivy to decide, when she’s older, if she wants to reach out to him.
It’s always been important to me that she have agency over her life, something I had so little of when I was a child.
The letter I’ve written to her, which I’ve asked Esma to give her on her twelfth birthday, explains everything.
It tells the truth of my life, not what the news has reported or what gossipers on Reddit have written.
It includes the good, the bad, and the ugly.
A large part of that history includes her dad. He was . . . is . . . the single great love of my life. I want her to know that, at least for my part, she was conceived from love. She is my legacy, my everything. The rest of it—the skating, the fame, how the world remembers me—I don’t give a damn.
I hit the button on my morphine pump and close my eyes.
The edges of my mind soften, and in minutes, I am gliding across the ice, the brittle air blistering my cheeks as, around me, the audience cheers.
Flashes of faces race pass—Boodo, Astur, Tiny, Meryl, Elwood, Botan, Profe, Dylan, Esma, Heinrich, Ivy, Kai .
. . Soft memories sifting through my mind like sand in an hourglass as Beethoven’s Minuet in G plays.