“The ups and the downs. The hills and valleys.”
She folded her arms across her chest, shivering. “I feel like we’re beginning our steep and steady descent into one of those valleys.”
“Nah. Not the way I see it. I think you’re about to crest the hilltop.”
She wasn’t tracking, couldn’t understand how Skip could be so confident. She was in pieces over this. Lost sleep. Lost her appetite. Feared she would lose her husband altogether, too.
“Mark was your valley, Millie. That deep abyss of helplessness and despair. Foster is your mountain. You two are going to keep climbing up it together, hand in hand until you get to the very top.”
“Unless something shoves us off it completely.”
“You’re a dramatic one, Millie. No denying that. But this is a big moment for the two of you. A turning point in your new marriage. You get to decide together how to proceed with all that life has presented you. For better or worse kind of stuff.”
“So then why did Foster insist I stay here? Why did he go to the hospital alone if we’re supposed to be a team?”
“Because he knows you. Knows what sitting in that waiting room would do to that overactive brain of yours. He’d rather you be here with me than there alone.”
“Did he say that to you?”
Skips shoulders jounced. “More or less. Asked that I look after you today. Keep you company. Keep you distracted.”
If this was the way Camille reacted to some simple tests, she couldn’t even comprehend the worry that would seize her should Foster go under the knife. It was enough to make her sick.
“Did he tell you we had to stay at The Getaway?”
“Not implicitly. Just said that I shouldn’t leave your side ‘til he was back. Why?”
Camille was already shouldering into her jacket with her car keys in hand. “Grab your favorite book and maybe a cushionsince those waiting room chairs are the most uncomfortable thing known to man.”
“We’re going out in this storm?” He gave her a skeptical look. She understood it. She’d been the one telling everyone else to seek shelter.
But she was dealing with bigger storms now, and she would brave them.
“You thinkhe’s going to be mad when he finds out we’re all here?” Edie looked at Camille.
“Maybe.”
“And you’re okay with that?” Tabitha was on a short break, and it just so happened to coincide with the timing of a text from Foster saying everything was done. That had to be serendipity, right?
They planned to intercept him before Foster headed back to the Inn, a plan that seemed like a good one when Camille had originally conjured it up. But now she was beginning to second-guess herself. “I don’t think he’ll be mad. Just confused.”
She wanted to support him, and this was the only tangible way she could think to do that. The people around her were her own pillars of strength, and she knew that over the months they had become that for Foster, too.
At the very least, she hoped their smiling faces would bring some sort of comfort.
But Camille was having difficulty producing that smile. It wobbled unsteadily on her mouth. Trembled along with her choppy breath.
They weren’t in a waiting room, per se, but posted up in a few chairs at the entrance of the building where Foster was having his tests run. It would give them the best vantage point to see him before he set out for his truck. And every time someoneturned the corner toward them, Camille’s heart picked up speed. Her nerves increased tenfold.
“Maybe he went out a back way,” Edie suggested after another fifteen minutes of nothing.
“This is where he would come through,” Tabitha said confidently. She knew every building on the hospital’s campus like the back of her hand.
Suddenly, Camille’s head lifted, sensing her husband’s presence before she could even see him.
Foster immediately met her eyes.
His forehead wrinkled, mouth falling flat.
