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Their initials were carved in the trunk facing the street along with the year that they turned sixteen, got their driver’s license and in Micki’s case fell in love with Richard, her first husband father of her six boys.
Sophie put her arm around her girls. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“You can by making it the success we know you can. This is what you need Sophie. This is why, Hannah quit her job. She wants to be somewhere she can be a mom like you,” Kai explained. “She misses Joshua and she can work with you when you start managing the business on your own, but I’ll always be happy to help. I might enjoy myself getting out a bit.”
“I’m so happy, you guys.”
“I’m starving, let’s get lunch,” Micki suggested.
Sophie passed by the glass jars again and had an idea for her cancer friends. Pink jars where they could whisper their fears and seal them for another day. She tucked one the jars that would be perfect for this into her pocket. No one questioned her. She would talk to Jason at Cooper Glassworks about it later.
Outside, she gazed at the house where her memories were overwhelming her. She was done with chemo. She just had the surgery to face. After chemo, that seemed to be a cake walk.
Kai slipped her arm around her shoulders, “Are you ready?” She asked Sophie.
She glanced at her friend, feeling like her life had started anew the day her diagnosis came. “I am. Let’s get lunch.”
Epilogue
Five Years Later
Sophie
Angel’s Arts was closed for the first time in five years, but it couldn’t be helped. Their thriving business was popular in Cooper. Housewives enjoyed the Wine and Art nights. Teenagers enjoyed their Wild About Art night. Young children enjoyed Painting with Parents.
Her bottle idea was sold mainly off the website that Heath had created for her. It was so popular that Cooper Glassworks had to hire another glass blower, which wasn’t an easy task. Glass blowing is an art and finding a glass blower artist isn’t easy.
So much to do with so many different options had pulled people in. Just like Micki suggested, the beautiful atmosphere of the place, the handy kitchen made it popular for renting on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon.
Today, there was somewhere they all had to be. It was the fifth year that they had all walked in the Race Against Breast Cancer. This year was so important because Amy and Sophie were cancer free for five years. Their risk of their cancer returning was substantially diminished. Deandra had excee
ded Doctor Roberts expectations for survival but she was a fighter with a spirit that couldn’t be broken.
The event was a marathon that had different, levels of fitness. They all met at Yeatman’s Cove along the river in downtown. Some ran for miles across the Purple People Bridge. Some just did a three mile walk and there were others that only walked a mile. Team Sophie met Team Amy and Team Deandra each year and did the walk together.
Amy was engaged now. Her Team’s shirts were hot pink with black writing on the front and back. Her fiancé, Allan was the kindest man and treated her friend well. Amy had met him at her the church she attended, the White Oak Baptist Church. Sophie was happy for her and was invited to her wedding next month.
Deandra was in a wheel chair again this year but she had survived her second bout of cancer to see Clair graduated from college. Sophie and Josh had attended the wedding of her daughter to her fiancé, Daniel. Clair was expecting their first grandson any day. She was also walking this year, unwilling to not walk by her mother’s side as Will pushed the wheelchair for her. Team Deandra’s shirts were a soft pink with white writing.
Sophie always had to be different. She, Micki, Hannah, Kai and Ally were dressed in pink tutus and had on dove gray shirts with hot pink writing proclaiming them to be TEAM SOPHIE. With them, was her brother Ross and his family. Heath and Hannah who was expecting their second child. Joshua who was now six. Josh. Both sets of parents. Kai and Roman, their beautiful red-haired girls, Zoya and Chloe who had just started kindergarten and Alexander who was in the first grade with Joshua. Micki, John and their entire brood came. She was surrounded still by so much love.
Driver escorted Sophie to the Ring of Survivors. He was eighteen now. On his way to Ohio State, his foray into the priest hood forgotten as Ross thought it would be.
Each lady got a pink rose who was going to be in the picture. Will parked Deandra at the edge of the ring. Amy and Sophie took her arms and helped her from the chair. They walked her into the ring and supported her, so she could stand tall as she wouldn’t have it any other way during the photo opportunity.
Sophie’s hair had grown back although now she wore it in a shorter, layered shag cut. Amy’s haircut was long, well past her shoulders and no longer straightened. She wore it wild and curly and both women loved her new, style. Deandra’s was in a pixie cut. She said she was too tired to care for it anymore.
Sophie looked across the sea of various hues of pink shirts; her gray one standing out in the crowd. She felt tears welling in her eyes. She got this way each time that she stood with these women and faced the camera.
They were all fighters of different, backgrounds, race and religions. Women who came together to celebrate their victory over cancer. Some it hadn’t been long but for others the battle had been over for years yet the memories and sometimes the fears trickled down to their guts like raindrops on a cool spring day. You just never knew when it was going to strike again like it had Deandra. Never, they all hoped.
Sophie sighed.
“How do I look, honey?” Deandra asked her.
“Just gorgeous,” she replied gazing at her friend, a new friend but one that was just as important to her as Kai and Micki.
“Ladies,” the cameraman shouted. “Say Survivor.”
