“Do you ever wonder about what might have been?” Mason asks.
“Who doesn’t?” She collects her shawl, her bag, the kaleidoscope. When they say goodnight at the hotel room door he touches her face.
She goes back to her room, kicks off her boots, falls back on the bed and calls Andy. She needs to hear his voice.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yes…but I miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
“See you tomorrow,” she tells him.
“I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“But I left my car there.”
“So what?”
She tears up.
“Ask me about the snow on the mountain,” he says.
“How was the snow?”
“Perfect.”
—
SHE MEETS Mason for breakfast the next morning, then he drives her to the cemetery to visit Irene and Ben. The cemetery is close to Newark Airport, not exactly a peaceful site, but it’s where they wanted to be, with their families and old friends. She places a stone on top of each headstone. Ben Sapphire, the stepgrandfather she came to admire, and Irene Ammerman Sapphire. She misses Irene, her nana, who loved her unconditionally, who taught her, by example, to take another chance on love. Miri wipes the tears from her eyes, then blows her nose.
“She gave me her recipe for brisket,” Mason says.
“No.”
“Yeah, she did. And I passed it on to Rebecca. Every Friday night we have Irene’s brisket. It’s not exactly the same, not quite as good as I remember, but it’s good. I look forward to it.”
“Irene would love knowing that.”
“She knew.”
“You kept in touch with her?”
“Holiday cards, the occasional note.”
“She never told me.”
“She didn’t want to upset the cart. One summer, when she and Ben were vacationing down the shore, she invited me and Rebecca and our kids to lunch.”
“I can’t believe she kept you a secret from me!”
“She wanted to see for herself that I was happy. She already knew you were.”
“She never stopped trying to rescue people, to fix what wasn’t right.”
“Rebecca fell in love with her.”
“Who didn’t?” She stops, then asks, “You and Rebecca?”
“Up and down. But I think we’re going to make it.”
“I hope you do.”
He checks his watch. “I have to get you to the airport…if you’re really going.”
She gives him a you must be kidding look.
He shrugs and smiles. They walk back to his car. “I’m glad we got to spend time together.”
“I’m glad, too.” She feels satisfied, happy.
At the airport he kisses her goodbye in the car. “If someday…” he begins.
“Yes, if…But for now…”
“I get it,” he says, kissing her one last time.
—
SHE’S MADE A PLAN to meet Natalie for coffee in the first-class lounge at the airport before their flights. How long has it been since Natalie visited them in Las Vegas? She gave a lecture at the library on “channeling your past lives” during one of her book tours, but that was years ago, and she flew in and out of town quickly, with no time for family. Fern, who’d come in from Shiprock with her girlfriend, Ora, also a doctor on the Navajo reservation, had been disappointed. Now the two of them run a family clinic outside of Las Vegas.
Natalie spies her first. “Hey, Brenda Starr…how’s it going?”
“Not so bad.”
“You look better today. Yesterday, you looked like a corporate executive in that suit.”
If Miri thought Natalie would be different now that she’d achieved fame, she was wrong.
“How was it seeing Mason again?” she asks.
“Like seeing a long-lost friend,” Miri tells her. “Like seeing you.”
“I saw your goodbye kiss. I doubt if that’s how you’d say goodbye to me.”
Miri feels her face flush. “It didn’t mean anything.”
“If you say so.”
Change the subject before this escalates, Miri tells herself. “So, Warren Beatty?”
“You like that story?”
“It grabbed my attention.”
“He was great.”
“So, it’s true?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
“We’re back to that?”
“Ask me another one, Girl Reporter.”
“How did you know Kathy Stein was on that plane?”
Natalie pauses for just a moment. “Ruby told me.”
“No, really…how did you know?”
“Sorry if you don’t like my answer but it’s the truth. Next…”
Miri reminds herself not to push it. “Corinne?”
“She and her hubby spend winters in Palm Beach, summers on Nantucket. They play golf. I don’t know how they can stand it. But, then, I never understood my mother. I suppose you see a lot of Fern.”
“I do. It’s nice for Dr. O.”
“You still call him that, after all these years?”
“I tried Arthur but it never felt right.”
They get their coffees, carry them to a quiet corner, where Miri says, “He’s sick.”
“I heard.”
“We’re hoping you’ll come to see him.”
“I was waiting for his eightieth birthday.”
“You probably shouldn’t wait that long.”
“August? Are you saying August is too long to wait?”
Miri nods.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
—
ON THE PLANE Miri is seated next to a young girl. “I’m Lily,” she says. “I’m nine. My dad is a pilot.”
“Is he flying this plane?” Miri asks, sure that if he is he’ll be extra careful with his daughter on board.
“No. He flies to Europe,” she says, kicking the seat in front of her. “I just came back from Portugal. Have you been there?” She doesn’t wait for Miri to tell her she hasn’t been to Portugal. “You should go. They have a lot of tiles there. Do you like tiles?”
“Yes.”
“Everything is tiled except your toothbrush.”
Miri laughs.
“You think I’m joking but I’m not,” Lily says. “Are you going to Vegas to gamble?”
“No,” Miri tells her. “I live there.”
“Me, too. With my mother. My dad lives all over the place. Do you think it’s weird?”
Does she mean weird that her parents live in different places? “Vegas,” she says. “Do you think it’s a weird place to live?”
“I’ve lived there since I was fifteen. My children grew up there.”
“And they turned out okay? Because my dad thinks it’s not a good place to grow up.”
“They’re fine.” Well, she thinks, two of them are anyway, but she’s not getting into that.
“What were you doing in New Jersey?” Lily asks.
“Visiting old friends.”
“Was it fun?”
Miri thinks before answering. “In a way it was. Yes.”
The flight attendant stands at the front of the cabin. “May I have your attention?” She demonstrates the proper way to fasten your seat belt. Then she says, “In the unlikely event…”
Lily leans close and says, “This is the part I don’t like. Why do they have to say that?”
“It’s just a safety rule,” Miri tells her, trying to sound as if she means it.
“Are you scared?” Lily asks.
“No. Why would I be scared?”
“You’re digging your fingernails into your armrests.”
Miri tries to laugh. “Just an old habit,” she tells Lily.
But Lily can see right through her. She reaches for Miri’s hand. “Will you hold my hand until we’re up?”
“Sure,” she says. Lily reminds her of Fern on their first flight to Las Vegas. But she doesn’t tell her that. Instead, she says, “I have a daughter. She’s fifteen. Her name is Eliza.”
“Do I remind you of her?”
“A little.”
“Is she dead?”
“What? No! Why would you say that?”
“Because you seemed sad when you said her name.”
“I’m not sad. I just miss her. She’s at school. I’ll see her next weekend.” Miri closes her eyes. Who is Lily, really? What are the odds that the two of them would be seated together on this flight? In the unlikely event…she hears the flight attendant saying in her head. Life is a series of unlikely events, isn’t it? Hers certainly is. One unlikely event after another, adding up to a rich, complicated whole. And who knows what’s still to come?
Lily looks out the window, then back at her. “My dad says unlikely events aren’t all bad. There are good ones, too.”
“Like meeting you on the plane,” Miri says, making Lily smile.
—
DAISY SPENDS TIME with Dr. O every day. An hour here, an hour there. Sometimes they tell each other jokes. Sometimes they reminisce. Other times they’re quiet. He sleeps, she reads. Rusty says it’s such a help to be able to call on her, to count on her. She still goes to the office three days a week. She still looks good, maybe because she gave up smoking when she moved to Las Vegas, maybe thanks to her condition. Who knows? That was so long ago.