Between Friends (37 page)

It was what she’d felt when she and Aunt Cora watched the pregnancy tests show up negative, one after another, and she realized what she had risked, and how her life was her own to pilot.

She still felt the same way every time she flew, every time she took control and felt the air beneath her, allowing her to use it to leave the earth and gain the sky.

Laughter filled the cockpit, and though she knew she couldn’t possibly hear them over the roar of the engines, it sounded like BJ and Seth, and her mom and Cora, and as she winged her way out over the Gulf of Mexico as if she owned it all—the beach, the water, the sun, the wind—her father’s laughter joined them.

She banked hard right, grinning like a madwoman at Emily, making her friend scream in delight and fear, and then there was nothing left beneath them but the Gulf of Mexico stretching to the horizon, a limitless blue sky above, and she realized the laughter was hers.

As the plane disappeared over the horizon, Cora sat back down next to me on the quilt, and I reached in my bag.

“Guess what I got in the mail this morning?” I asked.

“A big fat check from Publishers Clearing House?”

“Try again.”

“A love letter from Simon?”

I slapped her lightly on the shoulder, my face burning red. Simon, the music teacher who used to flirt with me at the store, had taken me by surprise last year and asked me on a date. I said no for months.

But then I said yes. And now we were moving very, very slowly, seeing each other a couple of times a week at the most. There had certainly been no declarations of love, and no love letters either.

“Okay, what?” she asked, her eyes on Seth trying to teach BJ how to hold his breath underwater.

“A letter from the heart.”

She gasped and sat upright, turning toward me. “Really? What does it say?”

Benny had saved four lives. His liver had gone to a twenty-five-year-old man in Arizona, one kidney went to a Florida man, and the other went to Georgia, to a sixty-year-old woman.

His heart went to a man in Kentucky.

Over the years we had received three letters, all forwarded from the organ procurement organization, all heartbreaking and thrilling with their reports of changed lives. I had answered each of them. So far none had rejected that we were aware of.

Of course I had wondered about the one I hadn’t heard from. I did not begrudge him his silence; I just wondered, on Benny’s birthday, on the anniversary of his death, and at other completely random moments over the years, how he was. And I said a little prayer of hope that his heart was helping another man take care of his own family.

And then this morning it had arrived.

I slid it out of the envelope and began to read to Cora.

“Dear donor family, forgive me for taking so long to write this letter, but to be honest, I never expected to live this long. After my diagnosis of acute idiopathic cardiomyopathy, my whole life seemed like it was over. I was prepared to die, and when they told me I could have a transplant, everyone in my family was hopeful but me. I didn’t think it would come in time. I wrote letters to my wife, my two daughters, and my son and put them in the safe deposit box where I knew my wife would find them after my death. And then somewhere out there, another man lost his life instead of me, another family—yours—cried instead of mine, and yet you were able to think of me, to think of my family, and to try to save me, even though you had no idea who I was.”

I stopped to take a shaky breath, and Cora reached out to take my hand.

“Now, after five years, I’ve lived long enough to see my first grandchild, Tanner, a boy, and to see my youngest son graduate from college. I’ve gone on trips with my wife, and started a new business. I jog every morning. I’m not the fastest guy on the block, but then I never was.

“And my gratitude to your family is long overdue. Thank you for making the incredibly difficult decision to save my life. My wife thanks you, my children, my grandchild, and my future grand-children thank you. We would enjoy hearing back from you if you would like to be in touch. You’ve already been family for five years, and whether you write back or not, you always will be. In deepest gratitude.”

“Oh my God,” Cora breathed. “Can I see?”

She held her hand out for the letter, and I gave it to her and lay back on the quilt, feeling the Florida sun on my face. I smiled, thinking of Benny’s heart out there, doing its job. And in the same thought I cursed that he was gone; I always would.

I would place the letter with the other three in a box I was keeping for the kids. Letty went through it often with BJ, showing him pictures of his father, the father he would never know, but whom he looked more like every day.

My decision to go ahead with in vitro had not been reached lightly. Cora was worried that we wouldn’t escape her bad gene one more time. Letty was sure I was just trying to replace Benny, as if I could clone him somehow. But I had never stopped thinking about them, the embryos we had created with such hope, that had been so precious.

I could not abandon them, try to pretend they didn’t exist. I didn’t want to allow them to be adopted, to have a child of Benny and Cora’s out there somewhere, unknown to me. In truth, my desire for another child never waned.

So I argued my case with Cora, explaining that we would genetically test the embryos if any even survived the thawing process. And I was patient with Letty, and eventually she was patient with me, too, even if she didn’t completely understand, and I received both their blessings.

There were nine embryos left.

Three were viable after thawing.

Two tested negative for PKD.

They both made it to the blastocyst stage and were transferred.

One implanted . . . and stayed.

And our second miracle, BJ, was born three years ago.

I didn’t call him that—
miracle
—except in my heart. Letty had shown me that the burden of being a miracle was too much for any child to bear. And although the story was worthy of being on the cover of
People
magazine again, we kept it within our family. And I took down everything on the Miracle Wall.

Everything except the
People
cover. I couldn’t bear it; it was simply too pretty. The marvels of professional hair, makeup, lighting, and youth should never be boxed away. But now it was merely one of many photos throughout the house, a broad, all-encompassing representation of everyone we considered family.

Photos of Benny, Cora, Drew, Letty, Seth, me, and BJ filled the walls now, though I saved everything from the original Miracle Wall for Letty, because one day, when she’s ready to have her own children, I am certain she’ll want it.

I’m sure there was plenty of talk around town about BJ, but nobody had ever said anything to me about it. He learned how to walk by hanging on to the shelves in the store, and he teethed on musical scores, and was quite possibly the most loved child in the world.

He didn’t have his father, no, and that would always break my heart, but he had a full and adoring family.

Cora finished reading the letter again, put it back in the envelope, and slid it into my bag before lying down beside me with a deep sigh. We were still, listening to the sound of BJ squealing out his joy, the Gulf of Mexico slapping gently at the edge of our world, and the fading drone of a distant plane.

“I guess I’ll have to start working on my own letter soon, won’t I?” Cora asked softly.

“I guess you will,” I replied with a laugh.

“Will you help me?”

I turned my head, opening one eye to squint at her. Her head was tilted back, her eyes shut against the light, and in her profile I saw the girl she’d been when I first met her, and I saw Letty, and I saw a little hint of BJ there, too.

I closed my eyes again and turned my face back to the sun, taking a deep breath of clean air.

Would I help her?

I answered as we’d answered each other, in word and deed, throughout our lives, the way we answered family.

“Always.”

1. The author has used alternating points of view in her previous novels as well as in this one. Why do you think she makes that choice here?

2. Benny and Ali’s relationship takes a nasty turn during the long drive out to northeast Golden Gate to pick up Letty. Do you think Benny has issues with the decisions that Ali has made as a mother and a wife? If so, what are they?

3. Discuss Ali’s strong desire to have a second baby fifteen years after her first child. Is it selfish for one spouse to adamantly oppose having another child when it’s clear that the other truly wants to have one?

4. Benny tells Ali, “I’m willing to at least talk about it if you really want another baby.” Do you think he is being earnest or is this a manipulative ploy to get Ali to return home?

5. After Letty hears her parents talk about having another baby, she accepts Seth’s invitation to go to Venice Beach. Do you think her decision to skip school with Seth is partly motivated by a need for attention from her parents? Does Letty strike you as a typical fifteen-year-old girl?

6. Do you think it was appropriate for Ali to hold off sharing the news with Benny that their daughter is sexually active? How would you handle a similar situation?

7. Would you want to know if you or your child had a gene that carries a life-threatening disease?

8. Ali admits, “I wanted to believe that I brought something to the table, and I thought I’d gotten the opportunity. The only person in the world who could have stopped me from lying right down on the table and insisting they take my kidney now was Letty.” If you were given a gift like the one that Ali received from Cora, short of giving her a kidney, would you feel like you could never fully repay your friend?

9. Cora says about Drew’s proposal, “If I were going to commit to a friend, then I had a friend with a tighter grip on my heart and history than Drew.” Do you think she would feel the same if she were truly in love? And is she thinking of Ali or Letty? Which one of them holds the tighter grip on Cora’s heart?

10. Letty tells Cora, “[Mom] is right. He was there because of me. I
asked
him to go. This is, I mean, it really is my fault. It’s my fault.” Do you think Letty will carry this guilt forever? Or do you think she’ll most remember her last conversation with her dad?

11. At the conclusion of
Between Friends
, what is revealed about Cora and Benny’s relationship?

12. The struggle for control is a constant theme throughout this novel. What do you think is the author’s final message on this topic?

13. Aside from Ali and Cora’s, what other friendships illustrate the book’s title?