Jenna tasted several comments, but the one that kept surfacing was, “I grew up wishing I could know my dad.”
“You didn’t miss anything, believe me.”
“So you lived with your mother after the divorce?”
The laugh was bitter. Swift. Frail as her limbs. “Mom couldn’t take care of a parakeet, much less a nine-year-old child. A year after the divorce, she was institutionalized. I still have nightmares of my visits to that awful place.”
Jenna found herself intensely drawn to this fast-talking woman. And something more. She sat there, stared into the laptop’s screen, and felt a new presence filter into her life. Soft and gentle as the dusk. She fought a sudden urge to weep. “So life with our father . . .”
“He was okay, in a cold and distant sort of way. Dad is basically the same guy who fled the scene when your mother got pregnant. Ambitious, greedy, totally caught up in climbing the corporate ladder. But the two stepmoms who entered my world and then left with some of dear old Daddy’s money, they were both fairly awful.”
Jenna flattened the pages that were now spread out to either side of her computer. The woman’s birth certificate, naming the man whose name her mother had always spoken with fury and bitter sorrow. “We were born on the same day.”
“Can you believe it? Three thousand miles apart, popping into the world at basically the same minute.”
Jenna turned the page, bringing up the genetic confirmation. “My mother always blamed your mom for ruining her life.”
“I can only imagine. I grew up hearing my mom’s version of that tune. Crazy, right.”
“What is he like? I mean, really.”
“Oh, Dad can be a real charmer. Magnetic. Great smile. Big, booming voice. Strong arms. I loved crawling into his lap when I was a kid. Feeling like he could keep out the whole world.” Millie had a face that was made to smile. Even when she was bitterly sad. Like now. “That was before he became another fatality in the #MeToo movement. Too many women came forward, too many accusations, too many voices that wouldn’t be silenced by payouts and confidentiality clauses. He was forced to take early retirement. The civil cases basically wiped him out. Now he’s living in a fifties-and-up Tampa Bay community. Licking his wounds. Looking for a way to get back in the corporate game. Desperate. Broke.” A pause, then, “Okay if we stop talking about Daddy?”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“For what?” As Millie waved it aside, Jenna caught sight of dark, coin-size bruises tracking their way up the inside of a too-thin arm. “How do you like living in Miramar?”
“It’s the only home I’ve ever known. I like it here. A lot.” It was then Jenna realized this stranger who was fast becoming a friend struggled not to weep. “Millie, what’s wrong?”
“Everything.” She angrily swiped at her face. “I promised I wouldn’t do this. Trademark of my family. Breaking promises.”
“Millie . . .”
“I’m dying. I’ve been a diabetic ever since I can remember. The doctors have tried to write me off four times before. But this one is different. I know it, the docs know it, the nurses treat every appointment like they’re all saying goodbye. Basically my heart isn’t in it anymore. Bad joke.”
Jenna found herself wanting to cry. Which, of course, was ridiculous. Feeling sorry for a woman she had met only ten minutes earlier. Even so, her voice sounded choked. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m lonely and I’m scared and I need a friend for the end.” Two more swift swipes. “If that sounds like I’m begging, tough.”
“No man in your life?”
“Men. Huh. What about you?”
Jenna loved the bond. The sense that here before her was a fragment that came close to making her life whole. “Men. Huh.”
Millie took a big breath. Became the other woman. The determined fighter who had defied the medical world for years. Clinging on to a life that had clearly never treated her well. “It’s crazy, I know. You’ve got a job you probably love. Forget I asked. I’ll just—”
“I’ll do it.”
Millie pierced the distance with the look she gave Jenna. “I can pay. My mom’s family left me a trust. Not big, but enough.” When Jenna did not respond, Millie began her matter-of-fact farewell. “Look. I’ve already made arrangements with an in-house hospice nursing—”
“I said I’ll do it, and I will.” There was a weightless moment, knowing her monster of a ward doc would never in a million years grant her leave. Which meant quitting a job she had struggled and strived and gone into major debt to obtain. “What do we do? I mean, if you’re that sick . . .”
“I am.” Millie pulled an invisible cord. “This train is leaving the station.”
“So you’re living in—”
“I’ve rented a condo in Cape Canaveral. Bird’s-eye view of rockets heading into the great unknown. Hoping they’ll point me in the right direction.”
