“Oh, I do,” she assured him, accepting what looked like a chocolate croissant with a dusting of powdered sugar. First, she took a small sip of coffee. “Oh, yes, thank you.”
He grinned—he had beautiful teeth under that beard—and reached his hand over the table. “Maggie, you don’t have to hold it together.”
“That’s, uh, what would you say? How I roll?”
He laughed. “Yes, it is. But if you need to break down and cry, go right ahead.”
“I don’t cry.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
She smiled and broke off a piece of the pastry, taking her time to enjoy the bite and dab her lips with the paper napkin. After she had another, she filled him in on the “status,” explaining the procedure and all four possible outcomes. All without even tearing up, only because she spoke as though she were telling him about a character in a movie, not her lifelong best friend.
Brick listened without interrupting. He nodded, ate his own croissant, and never took his eyes from hers.
When she was done, she said, more quietly, “She might not come back, Brick.”
“I heard.”
“She might come back wrong.”
“I heard that, too.”
“And I don’t know which of those is worse,” she admitted.
“No. You don’t. You don’t until you’re in it. But you have a chance, Maggie, and you have got to hold on to that hope for all it’s worth.” He leaned in. “Remember when I met you, right at the end of Alligator Drive where 98 turns north?”
“Of course,” she said, flushing at the memory of how she’d been sure a biker gang was coming to rape and pillage, and all they did was help and save two old ladies in a broken-down truck.
“Remember why we were there, right then?” he asked.
She nodded. “You said you and Angel and Randy ride that road every year on that day, because that’s where you lost…Bear, was it?”
He gave in to another smile. “I wasn’t sure you were listening,” he said. “You were so busy assuming we were going to have our way with you and leave you on the side of the road.”
She blushed again. “I’m sorry. I made a snap judgment.”
“You? Never.”
She laughed, always liking that he teased her like that.
“What were the chances that the very day—Bear’s anniversary—was the same day you and Jo would break down in that beater truck right where it turns off to a road very few people travel? Bear’s road. The place where we lost him. You know, I like to think that ol’ coot set it up for me. So I’d meet you.”
She looked down at her croissant, then back up at him. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he knew, even then, before my wife died, that I’d need a friend.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” she said with a smile. “But that’s sweet.”
“Well, I do think it works that way. I don’t think things happen by chance and, in fact, sometimes very good things can come out of very bad events.”
She took in a deep breath and exhaled, recognizing this philosophy as the secular version of what Eli believed.
“Nothing good is going to come out of this,” she said. “If she’s perfectly fine, which I want to believe she will be, then she’sgoing to have a whopper of a headache, a hospital bill, and won’t ever go out on a balcony again. If she’s not, then…” She bit her lip. “I can’t live without her, Brick,” she admitted in a hoarse voice.
“I’ve thought that myself,” he said. “Then you find out. And, like it or not, little lady, you will go on.” He nodded, his eyes soft. “It won’t be easy, but you will go on. Honey, I’ve been there.”
She groaned and felt her eyes shutter. “But I don’t want to.”
