“The day I fell. The hospital called him—against my wishes, I might add—and he hopped in the car and made it here from Madison before they were done with all the poking and prodding.”
Though Darlene had talked about her only child before, I’d never met him until now. “Is he taking good care of you?”
She nodded and sipped her coffee, rolling her eyes a little in approval. “Too good. He has firm instructions to move me into a darling little nursing home I’ve found so he can go back to his life in Wisconsin.”
From what she’d mentioned before, I knew that life included a second wife Darlene didn’t particularly appreciate—a feeling that was apparently mutual—and a career in the insurance industry.
“Darlene . . . isn’t it a bit too soon to be looking for a nursing home?” I couldn’t picture this woman with the vitality of a twenty-year-old confined to such a diminishing place.
She set her cup on the console behind the couch and smiled for a moment before speaking. “This isn’t a rash decision, honey. I’ve been looking for a place with a good Zumba class for months. This—what do the French call it?—this contretemps didn’t exactly come as a surprise.” She hunched a shoulder. “The pain’s been there for a while. I knew what it was. Doesn’t take a genius, right? I just opted to live around it for as long as I could before . . .”
She took a deep breath and smiled. “I’ve been ready for it. And now it’s time for me to take a bow. However—” She smiled in an enigmatic way and wiggled an eyebrow. “There’s one more thing I need to do before I fly off to the land of milk and honey. And by milk and honey, I mean Milk Duds and honey-glazed donuts. I’ve got an order pending with whatever angel’s guarding those pearly gates.”
Her willingness—her readiness—to die stood in stark contrast to everything I knew about this feisty, fearless fighter. “This doesn’t sound like you, Darlene.”
“The Milk Duds or . . . ?”
I sighed and shot her my I’m-serious look. She countered it with one of hers. Then I saw her expression soften as she scrutinized my face. “We can talk about me later,” she said after a moment. “Tell me.”
I felt a flutter of resistance. “Oh, there’s nothing much to—”
She interrupted with a laugh. Some of the old Darlene was in it. “Honey, you have a lot of really impressive skills, but putting on an act does not figure among them.”
“Darlene . . . ,” I tried again. My mind still hadn’t fully recovered from its two-day pause.
“Tell me.” Her tone was firmer this time.
I wrestled with myself, desperately needing to tell someone about Nate, but determined to protect my friend from worrying about me too. “It’s nothing,” I murmured. “Nothing for you to be concerned about anyway.”
She gave me the look that always preceded a pseudo-magical reading of my mind. “Nate?”
I looked around the room, inventorying the garden gnomes that lurked on every surface. There was one that seemed strategically placed under a lamp. He stood there, smiling as if he was enjoying the spotlight, a giant brick clutched to his chest.
Delaying the inevitable, I said, “What’s with the gnomes?”
She laughed. “That’s a skillful dodge, my friend.” Her eyes on me were loving and compassionate. “I’m going to answer your question, but don’t you think we’re not circling back to mine.” She waved around the room at the collection of brightly painted, pointy-hatted figurines. “Angus and I started collecting them—what—twenty years ago? Maybe more. We saw them in gardens over in Germany when we took a Rhine cruise and liked them so much we brought a bunch back with us. And of course, because I’m such a restrained person, we just kept on collecting these little guys and little ladies who tickle my funny bone.”
“Clearly.”
“They were all over the yard for years, to my neighbors’ displeasure,” she went on. “Right around the time Angus—bless his heart—passed on, I decided that a little bit of cheer might do me some good, so I brought them all inside. The neighbors considered throwing a parade. It was just for a little while . . . That’s what I told myself. But the longer they lived in here with me, the more accustomed I got to their company, and the thought of banishing them back out to the yard again was just unbearable.”
From the kitchen, Justin said, “Only to her. I’ve been plotting their banishment for years.”
She caught me looking at the brick-holding gnome. “My plastic surgeon’s assistant got him for me when she found out I had this collection. Construction Gnome is what they officially call him, but we named him Masto-Gnome on account of how my post-surgery chest felt.”
I shook my head. Oh, to be able to find the giggle in the grim, as Darlene always did.
“He’s also a reminder to build something on the rubble of all of this.” She glanced down at her chest and winked. “The surgeons did it, right? Built these jaunty B cups on what was left of saggy me. I vowed to do the same with my future—right there in my pre-op room.” Darlene reached for my hand again. “And you, my dear, are a bright and shining star in my reconstructed life.”
I blinked back tears. Tears of gratitude. Tears of confusion and devastation.
“Now.” Darlene gave my hand a firm squeeze and held the pressure, drawing my eyes to hers with the intensity of her stare. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I didn’t know how to put words—out-loud words—to the unthinkable. Not when the first person I was going to share them with had just declared that her life was drawing to a close. But with her hand still pressing mine, I articulated the reality that had paralyzed me for days. Looking down—away, anywhere—I said, “Nate left me.”
A sob bubbled from my lungs to my throat and I swallowed hard to hold it down.
Darlene released my hand and said nothing. She said nothing for so long that I glanced up, wondering if she’d heard me. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were pinched. Her hands were clasped so tightly in her lap that her knuckles were white.
I let the silence stretch a little longer, listening to the slow, deep breaths entering and exiting my friend’s lungs, and was about to say her name when her eyes opened again.
“It is a very difficult thing for a spontaneous person to keep from blurting out obscenities when something this unjust happens to a friend.” I thought I heard a tremor in her voice. Her eyes were shiny with emotion. “So forgive me for choosing my words very carefully, my dear. I know you love that husband of yours and wouldn’t want me to speak ill of him, but he’s an—”
The word she used to describe Nate had the dual effect of making me feel loved and making me smile in spite of the agony of his abandonment. Yes, I loved my husband—but the person who had left me so suddenly seemed to have earned Darlene’s epithet.
“He just . . . walked out,” I said.
“When?”
“Monday. After I rang the bell at the Cancer Center.” I told her about the Shake Shack, Nate’s almost casual statement that he was done, the way he’d packed up a few basics like he’d thought it all through in advance.