AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Dorothy gently touched Tully’s cheek. “I know,” she said softly.
It was the touch Tully had waited for all of her life.
* * *
In her dreams, Tully is sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on my deck. I am beside her, of course; we are as we used to be: young and laughing. Always talking. In the branches of that old maple tree, dressed now in the scarlet and gold of autumn, several Mason jars hang from lengths of twine; in them, votive candles burn brightly over our heads, casting drops of flickering light to the floor.
I know that sometimes, when Tully sits in her chair out here, she thinks about me. She remembers the two of us flying down Summer Hill on bikes, our arms outflung, both of us believing the world was impossibly big and bright.
Here, in her dreams, we will be friends forever, together. Growing old, wearing purple, and singing along to silly songs that mean nothing and everything. Here, there will be no cancer, no growing old, no lost chances, no arguments.
I’m always with you, I say to her in her sleep, and she knows it’s true.
I turn—barely a movement at all—just a sideways glance, and I am somewhere else, some when else. Inside my house on Bainbridge Island. My family is gathered together, laughing over some joke I can’t hear. Marah is home from college for winter break; she has made the kind of friend that lasts through a lifetime—and my father is healthy. Johnny has begun to smile again—soon he will find himself falling in love. He will fight it … and he will give in. And my boys—my beautiful sons—are becoming men before my very eyes. Wills still goes through life in fifth gear, loud and booming and defiant, while Lucas slips along behind, barely noticed in a crowd until you see his smile. But it is Lucas I hear at night, Lucas who talks to me in his sleep, afraid that he will forget me. The way I miss them all is sometimes unbearable. But they are going to be fine. I know it, and now they do, too.
Soon, my mom will be with me, although she doesn’t know it yet.
I look away for an instant, and I am back on Firefly Lane. It is morning. Tully limps out into the kitchen and has tea with her mother and they work in the garden, and I can see how strong she is growing. No more wheelchair for her. Not even a cane now.
Time passes. How much?
In her world, maybe days. Weeks …
And suddenly there is a man in the orchard, talking to Dorothy.
Tully puts down her coffee cup and moves toward him; her steps are slow and uncertain on the tilled, rough dirt of the garden. Her balance is still a little tenuous these days. She passes her mother and goes to the man, who holds a pair of—
Slippers?
“Des,” Tully says. She reaches out for him and he takes her hand in his. When they touch, I glimpse their future—a gray, pebbled beach with a pair of wooden chairs set near the tide line … a table set for some holiday dinner, with my family and hers gathered around it and a high chair pushed up close … an aging house with a wraparound porch that overlooks the sea. I see all of this in the time it takes my best friend’s heart to take a single beat.
I know in that moment she will be okay. Life will go on for her as it must; hearts will be broken and dreams will be fulfilled and risks will be taken, but she will always remember us—two girls who’d taken a chance on each other a lifetime ago and become best friends.
I move closer to her; I know she feels me. At last, I whisper in her ear. She hears me, or maybe she only thinks she knows what I would say now. It doesn’t matter.
It is time for me to let go.
Not of TullyandKate. We will always be a part of each other. Best friends.
But I have to move on, as she has.
When I look back one last time, from far, far away, she is smiling.
