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It’s a difficult question: across from me is heartache and hope; Maggie’s health is fading, slowly but undeniably. When she’s gone, Gwen will be devastated. We all will be, actually. Maggie is one woman who comes into your life and lets you know she’s been there, leaving your pride wounded and your heart healed. She’s a force to be reckoned with, and I remember Gwen telling me about her family, about how she’s so much more like Maggie than like her own mother. Heaven help me if that similarity continues.
“Hey.” Mom nudges me with her elbow. “Are you okay?” she asks, always able to read me.
I use her own fitting words in reply. “I’m fine. It’s just actually happening.”
She rubs my back and drops her head to my shoulder, a discreet hug. She understands perfectly.
We leave the restaurant and head back the two blocks toward our hotel. Along the way, I spot a sign, and whisper my plans to Mom. She nods and continues onward with Nan and Maggie for some time at the hotel pool.
I pull Gwen into an indoor glow-golf course. “I believe I owe you a round,” I say, bending to kiss her smile.
“Sure you want to get humiliated on your big day?”
For a second I can’t breathe; I’m choking on her words. Does she know? But then I realize she’s talking about the marathon, and the knot in my gut loosens. “Speaking of getting humiliated…when I walked out of the bathroom in a towel and saw that my mother was there talking to you—what did she say?”
She shrugs and takes a fluorescent pink golf ball. “A bunch of stuff. It was a little weird, if I’m being honest. Something about you guys being a s’more?”
It takes me back to the days of “camping” at home, building a blanket fort in the living room and sleeping on a pile of pillows, trying to roast marshmallows over votive candles, projecting shadow puppets onto the ceiling with a decade-old flashlight. The days when we all lived together, before we lived within a five-minute drive of one another, before—
“You’re up,” she chirps. Her ball teeters on the edge of the hole already, and when mine taps hers in she still writes down a two for herself. “Not to worry, I’ll come by one honestly eventually.”
“Your humility is one of the many things I love about you.” It comes naturally, throwing that word around like confetti (and meaning it, every time), once I allowed myself to say it. Once it was too soon, but not too soon. Once I was sure my options were say it or explode. And here I stand, not exploded.
Back at the hotel, two holes-in-one from Gwen but a narrow victory for me later, Gwen has to meet quickly with her editor, so I grab a drink at the indoor pool where Nan, Maggie, and Mom are relaxing in the warm air.
After an hour I find Gwen back in our room, lying on her stomach on the bed, her bare feet kicked up behind her as she scribbles into a fresh notebook. “Don’t judge me,” she says, “but I’m working on the next one.”
“I’m too happy to judge,” I reply. “But we should get ready for dinner.”
It’s a perfect bookend. Not that this is an ending, by any means. But we’re all together, so a dinner cruise seemed like the most fitting way to wrap up this trip.
“You don’t think the dress is too much? Can I just go like this?”
“No and no.” I pull her sparkling black dress and my gray suit from the closet, hanging them over the door. “Just think of it as another formal night.”
I plug in the curling iron I know she’ll want to use to touch up her hair, then brush my teeth. I’m dressed and waiting while she finishes her makeup.
“This okay?” she asks, emerging from the bathroom, putting the backing on a dangling silver earring. She’s pinned up her curls, save for a few that frame her face, and her eyes have that smokey gray-black look to them, complemented by a softer red-pink lip gloss, nearly the same shade as the shoes Maggie bought her to wear tonight.
Only one word can fit past the lump that forms in my throat: “Perfect.”
She finishes with her earring and tosses the robe on the bed, takes the dress from its garment bag, slides it gingerly over her head, and steps in front of me for help with the zipper. “The shoes are too much, though, right?”
“I think they’re great.”
“They’re so… bright. And super matchy.” She eyes my pink tie, then the shoes again.
“And they’re also from Maggie. Are you willing to risk her wrath if you show up without them?”
She screws up her lips before sitting on the bed and sliding her feet into the shoes. “Good point.”
The boat’s not huge, but the waves seem to be, as if my stomach wasn’t uneasy enough. Maggie, Nan, and Mom are all here. Maggie approves of Gwen’s footwear selection, Mom straightens my tie, and Nan looks happier than I’ve ever seen her. Tables are set up inside, white cloths draped over each one, each carefully set under the weight of centerpieces of pink peonies and poppies. Most people have yet to board or are milling about upstairs, catching the last few minutes of sunset. It’s perfect, because I don’t need a huge audience for what comes next. I pray I don’t need the smelling salts, either.
Gwendolyn
“There’s karaoke?” I ask Nancy as the DJ introduces Sawyer, cutting off a BBMak song that got me through college.
“Apparently there is.” She resumes conversation with Gram, shooting sideways glances toward her grandson as he takes the mic.
