AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I lay against him, smiling. I couldn’t believe I was married.
Like a hot bucket of mud thrown at me, I suddenly remembered Lucy. I hadn’t thought of her once all night.
On Sunday, I finished moving out of the house I had shared with my friends since we graduated from nursing school. Dale had the worst time.
“I feel like we’re being hasty. I know when you come back to visit, you’ll stay at Flynn’s house.”
“He’s probably going to sell it,” I explained. “If we visit, we can stay in a hotel.”
“If you come back alone, you stay with us,” Casey said. “We’ll always have a place for you.”
“We’d better think about getting married, too,” Brian said. “I mean us, individually. Not you and me. We can’t live together forever.”
“Why not?” Dale snapped. “I don’t even date. How am I going to find someone who wants to marry me?”
“Maybe you’ll save their life, like Bellabug did,” Brian said, grinning. “What a love story.”
I was getting antsy. I had more to pack. My flight didn’t leave until Tuesday night. I thought that would ensure I’d sleep on the plane. But I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Flynn. For the first time, he took precedence over my friends. I didn’t tell them, but it made me happy. I was in love with my husband, and he was in love with me.
Looking around to make sure I had everything that belonged to me, I realized I had lived there for two years and hadn’t really made an impact on the decor. My friends had rescued me from having to move back into the house with Lillian and George after nursing school. It was a time in my life I wouldn’t miss, full of disappointments and failures, running from the pain of losing my sister.
“Well, I guess this is it,” I said.
Even though I wasn’t a hugger, my friends were there, waiting, Casey with tears on her cheeks, Dale white and shaky, and Brian hating drama more than me. So I gave in and hugged them, reaching for Dale to pull her into the fold.
“You guys, you’re acting like we’re never going to see each other again. We already talked about you spending your vacay at the clinic.”
“It’s not the same,” Brian said, kissing the top of my head. “I’m going to miss the day-to-day stuff. You’re important here, Bellabug, believe it or not.”
“He’s right. We all looked forward to seeing you every day,” Casey said. “There will be a big void.”
I let them have the last word, letting go and moving to the door with my bags. Standing there longer would not make it easier for my friends.
The ride to Flynn’s altered the way I viewed the city. Measuring distances would no longer be from the old neighborhood. I tried to imagine not having an address in Detroit! That was the moment that my decision to move made its biggest impact. I wasn’t just leaving my friends and my old room. I was leaving my entire life behind.
Even Flynn. If something happened to Flynn in the next weeks so that he wouldn’t come to Lebanon, I wouldn’t move back to Detroit. That gave me the confidence I needed. I had decided to go to Lebanon on my own, for myself.
Once I grasped that, the angst lifted. I’d miss Flynn something terrible in the coming weeks, but it would be tempered by the fact that I was where I knew I should be.
Epilogue
Routine is the solution to every problem. Rising in the morning with the call to morning prayer, meditating, eating a breakfast I had prepared, and making it safely to the clinic to spend the day doing work I loved, that was what healed me.
By the time Flynn arrived two months early, thanks to Ramsen’s generosity, my days had a rhythm that I can only describe as being an elixir to all my past ills. I made Lucy part of my day by honoring her memory for a few moments in meditation.
I’d set up a little memorial for her, with pictures of her and me together through her short life, and then the last school picture of her she had submitted to, with the familiar navy sweater, plaid bow tie, braces, and her hair in a ponytail. And that smile. Her eyes scrunched up, sparkling, clear and healthy skin, chubby cheeks. A spattering of freckles across her nose and over her cheeks. My twin.
Now, two years later, Lucy’s presence in our home was as much a comfort for Flynn as it was for me. I’d grown used to seeing her picture in the morning.
In two days, Margo and Rocko were coming with their families, two-year-old twin girls who my mother had said were terrors, similar in temperament and intellect. Thank God. No repeat of me and Lucy.
Teasing, Margo had already threatened to leave them with us in Lebanon because she was exhausted trying to keep up.
They were staying with us over the holidays. Brian had moved to Lebanon the previous year and was the nurse manager in the trauma department at the largest hospital in Beirut. He would spend the holidays with us.
Fatima Safadi was coming with her judge husband, too. Mr. and Mrs. Safadi had sent enormous boxes of Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, shortly after we moved into our house. Flynn and I had unpacked them and were getting organized. We were having a Nativity scene rather than a tree, using large figures Mrs. Safadi had found in Italy and sent to us.
“Where are we going to put this?” Flynn asked, grimacing. “They’re huge.”
