“I’m not saying it is,” I began.
“Yes, you are!” She gripped the steering wheel tightly. “Millie, I know you mean well. But the thing is, you’re pretty goddamn condescending when it comes to me.”
“What?” I gasped.
“You think that if I just hook up with Sam, then everything in my sad little life will be fine. I’ve got news for you, Millie. I’m fine. My boys are fine. My being alone is not sad. Our life is not sad, it’s wonderful! I wish you’d get that through your head and just…just…just be friends with me. Stop treating me like I’m your charity case, okay?”
Tears pricked my eyes. “Katie, I don’t think of you as a charity case. God,” I sniffled.
She stared ahead at the locust trees illuminated in the parking-lot lights. “Look. When Elliott first left me, you were a rock. I’m really, really grateful for all that you did. I am. All those trips up from Boston, all those Chinese-food dinners you’d bring me…” Her voice softened. “You were the best. But now things are better with me. I’m making decent money. The truth is, I probably make more than you, Millie. Chris made me a manager, I make a couple hundred a week in tips alone, and now I’m getting benefits. I’m even saving up for a house. Corey and Mike are doing great. I don’t need you to prop me up, Millie. And I really, really don’t need—or want—a husband. Okay?”
I rummaged around in my purse for a tissue. “Okay,” I whispered. “I never meant to make you feel like that, Katie.”
“I know. And I know you can’t imagine wanting to be single. But you’re going to have to accept that I do want it.”
“Okay,” I said.
She continued looking at me with her lovely blue eyes. “I love you, Millie,” she said solemnly. “I love hanging out with you, I love the way your crazy mind thinks, I never laugh so hard with anybody the way I do with you. I want us to be friends forever, but you have to start thinking of me as an equal. Okay?”
“You’re not my equal. You’re my hero.” I leaned over and hugged her. “I’m really sorry.”
She hesitated, then chuckled and patted my shoulder. “Let’s go out sometime, just the two of us, okay? Maybe we can do an overnight or something. No matchmaking, no Joe Carpenter, just you and me.”
“That sounds fantastic,” I said. And I meant it.
IT’S VERY HUMBLING TO REALIZE you’ve been an idiot, especially to someone you care about. With that in mind, I headed for Sam’s the next day. He and Danny were working in the yard, hefting bags of mulch and looking very sweaty and manly. Both of them were shirtless, and I noticed for the first time that my baby nephew had washboard abs. So did his daddy. Had Sam always been so…built? Very nice.
“Oh, such masculine pulchritude!” I called out, hoping Sam wasn’t as mad as Katie had been. “Clothe yourselves, boys! There’s a woman on your property.”
“Get my gun, Dan,” Sam answered. They stopped their machismo activity and came to greet me, Danny giving me a sweaty smooch.
“Hey, Aunt Mil,” he said. “Dad told me how you tried to fix him and Katie up.”
“And wasn’t it a great idea?” I asked.
“I thought it was,” he replied agreeably.
“Thanks, young man,” I said. “Sorry to say, we’re a minority.”
Sam pulled on an old T-shirt. Without looking at me, he said, “Dan, could you get us something to drink?”
“He just wants me out of the way while he chews you out, Aunt Mil,” my nephew whispered loudly. He grinned cheekily and bounded off to the house.
“He’s right,” Sam confirmed, folding his arms. He gave me the old “I’m disappointed in you” stare. The kind that really works.
“Before you lecture me,” I said, “I want to apologize. I’m really sorry. I just thought…I don’t know, you guys would be so…I’m sorry.” I kicked at his shell driveway, trying to look genuine. I peeked. He wasn’t fooled.
“Uh-huh,” he said. A grin tugged at his mouth, but he tried to look stern.
“Katie reamed me another orifice last night,” I said. “And I’ve sworn off matchmaking, so even though you two would be perfect together, I’ll just leave it alone and let you walk away from what could be the greatest love of your life.”
“Well, you know, in one sense, it was nice of you to think of us. But in the other, you’re a real pain in the ass,” he said, far too seriously for my taste.
“Sam!” I cried. “Come on! I just wanted to help. You’re just too pathetic, sitting around here, mooning over Trish. It’s time you—”
“I think you should shut up now, Millie,” Sam said quietly. Any amusement he’d felt was gone. A warning prickle went through me.
“Sam, it’s just hard to see you—”
“Millie. Stop talking. You’re a great person, and I appreciate your concern over me, but the thing is, you don’t know squat about marriage, or divorce. Or, obviously, how I’m feeling these days. Not to mention how Katie feels about dating. So the best thing you can do is go back to the ‘I’m sorry’ part of your little speech and leave it at that before I get really mad. Okay?”
I swallowed at the idea of Sam not liking me. Bending to pull up a weed, I said—sincerely, this time—“Okay, Sam. I really am sorry. I think you’re the best guy in the world, you know that. I just want you to be happy.”
His hard expression softened, his sad, downturning eyes crinkling with a smile. “I know, kiddo. You’re off the hook, as long as you’ve learned your lesson. Now stop killing my flowers and come have some lemonade.” He took the plant out of my hands and replaced it gently in the flower bed.
Inside the house, Sam went to shower. Relieved that I was forgiven, I made Danny lunch, because the poor boy was weak with hunger, having only eaten, from his recounting anyway, eight pancakes for breakfast an hour and a half before. As I slathered mayonnaise on four slices of bread, he leaned on the counter, nearly drooling.
“Mom wants me to come and visit her for a couple of weeks this summer,” he said.
I hadn’t seen my sister since our brief encounter at our parents’ house. Aside from a couple of perfunctory phone calls and two e-mails telling me about the fabulous parties she’d been to with Mr. New Jersey, we hadn’t really talked. Sometimes I felt that my role of younger sister was just to admire and agree with Trish.
“Are you going to go?” I asked.
“Well, actually, I don’t think I can, what with Appalachia and my job and the baseball team and stuff. But I might go for a long weekend before school lets out.”
“How is it for you when you’re down there?” I asked, layering cheese and turkey and thick slices of tomato on the bread.
“Well, it’s not too bad. A little uncomfortable, a little weird, but mostly okay. She came up to see me a couple days ago, did Dad tell you? We had dinner, just her and me. It was nice.”
“No, your dad didn’t mention it. How is she?”
Danny grabbed one of the sandwiches and stuffed a third of it into his mouth. “She’s good, I guess. Seems happy.” He paused to swallow, Adam’s apple bobbing wildly. “She looks great.”
“She always does,” Sam said, laying a hand on my shoulder as he leaned in to claim a sandwich. The smell of shampoo and soap wafted toward me. I started making two more sandwiches, knowing how these boys ate.
“And how was it for you, seeing her?” I asked Sam, curious.
He ran a hand through his damp hair, making it spike up. “Oh, it was okay. Strange, but not bad. She was just here for a little while to pick Danny up and then drop him off again. It was…fine.” Whatever mysterious emotions Sam had running through him, he seemed to mean what he said. I reminded myself not to assume I knew everything about the people I loved and opened a bag of chips.
Danny inhaled the second sandwich, gulped down some milk and wiped his mouth. “Gotta go!” he announced cheerfully. “I’m helping Sarah’s dad clean the cellar.” He thundered upstairs, thumped around in his room for a minute and clattered back down.
“Bye, Aunt Mil,” he said, kissing my cheek. He one-arm hugged Sam and then banged out the back door. A second later, we heard the car start, and he was gone.
“Noisy little fella,” I said, smiling at Sam. He smiled back, and we shared a moment of silent Danny adoration.
“You want a sandwich?” Sam asked, pointing to the last one.
“No, thanks,” I answered. There was far too much cheese and mayonnaise on that sucker for me. But I poured myself a glass of lemonade and sat at the counter next to him. There were a few catalogs, and I opened one for flowers, idly flipping through the pages, wondering aloud what might look nice in window boxes for my little house. Sam made a few suggestions, and I scribbled down names in the margins.
“What are you doing on the house these days?” Sam asked, ripping open a package of Oreos. I steeled myself against the temptation, forcing a mental image of myself in a bathing suit into my head. Could I actually do it? Appear in public in a bathing suit? It would be the first time in my adult life. It would take a great deal of courage….
“Millie? The house?”
“Oh. Sorry.” I gratefully extracted myself from thoughts of cellulite and pasty skin. “The house is great. Very cute. I’m almost done painting the other bedroom. You should come see it.”
“I’d love to,” Sam answered. He popped an Oreo into his mouth, whole, like a giant black communion wafer, grinning at me as he chewed. “How’s work going?”
“Oh, it’s great,” I said. “I love it. I just hope…”
“Just hope what?”
I drew my initials in the condensation on my glass. “Well, I hope Dr. Whitaker will take me on in the fall. The clinic is only open till October, and if he doesn’t want to hire me, then I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, I think he’ll take me on, he hasn’t said anything negative. But if he doesn’t, I’ll have to think about something else. I just got an offer from a doctor in Wellesley, but I don’t want to live off-Cape.”
The offer had come as a surprise to me. Alan Bernstein was one of the nicer supervising doctors I’d met when I’d been a resident, and he had a growing practice with two other doctors. They wanted to expand, and Alan had called me last week. Wellesley was a lovely, affluent suburb of Boston, and if I hadn’t been so determined to stay on Cape, it would have been perfect.
“You could move, couldn’t you? Come up here on the weekends and stuff?” Sam asked.
“I could. But I just got back here,” I answered. “And I don’t want to live anywhere else. I mean, how could I? You didn’t want to stay out in Indiana, did you?”
“Landlocked? You kidding? I couldn’t wait to get back,” Sam smiled. “Curse of the Cape.”
It was true. Once you’ve lived on the Cape, you’d be hard pressed to move. The natural beauty of the place, the loveliness of so many neighborhoods, the smell of the air, the sound of the ocean…it was unsurpassable. Even when I’d lived in Boston, just a couple of hours away, I’d yearned for Eastham. It was my dream since childhood to be a doctor in my hometown, and I was determined to make that work.
And of course, there was Joe. Even though my plans were going nowhere at the moment, I couldn’t quit now. I had been putting this plan into effect for quite some time, dreamed about it for years. Surely, something would have to give, and he would finally, finally notice me, fall in love with me and marry me. Hopefully before my fiftieth birthday.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BY THE MIDDLE OF JUNE, cars crowded Route 6, people waited at least a half hour at any restaurant, and the T-shirt and gift shops were hopping. Our clinic was quite busy, and though the cases I saw weren’t that challenging, it was great to be bustling around, writing out prednisone prescriptions for the never-ending stream of poison-ivy victims, stitching up booboos, and shipping patients down to Cape Cod Hospital. We had a nice rhythm going, Jill and Sienna and I. The mysterious Dr. Bala was quite cordial, having gotten over his initial formality. Now that it was busy, we really clicked along, and I was more than holding my own.
I loved working at the OCSC, too. Mr. Glover and I had had a little chat, and he’d been quite well-behaved since our initial visit. There, the cases were often more complicated, and with that came the deep satisfaction of really getting to know the patients and their families. Even though I was just covering for Dr. Whitaker, it was an honor to be taken into their confidence, to be trusted with making them feel better, to be a part of their lives.
I was even becoming a better cook. I invited my parents over for dinner and made a vegetable lasagna that did not nauseate any of us. I brought a chicken casserole over to Sam and Danny one night and stayed to eat it with them. But it was no fun cooking for one person. Most recipes served at least four people, and more often than not, I’d end up throwing the leftovers away. I ended up making salads or omelets or quick, one-person vegetable dishes and eating them while I read.
I continued to run; Sam’s athletic advice had come in handy, and I wasn’t suffering quite so much anymore, regularly covering four miles with my sweet black-and-white doggy. And I worked on my house, filling window boxes and putting out little pots of flowers. The lilac trees Sam had planted bloomed, and all in all, it was a lovely time. Except for Joe. Aside from our little moment at the Barnacle, I had hardly seen him.