Tales From Sea Glass Inn (29 page)

Maggie nodded weakly. That was all she was
getting from him? She’d expected an outlined lesson plan, some diagrams on a
whiteboard, or a PowerPoint presentation. Maybe a quiz at the end to make sure
she had assimilated the information. She sighed and followed him and the others
as they trudged toward a teeny plane. Everything but the two front seats had
been removed, leaving a small empty space for them to sit. A hole in the side
of the plane, presumably where she’d be making her exit, was covered by a piece
of canvas they kept insisting on calling a door. Doors, in Maggie’s mind,
should be solid and not flap in the breeze.
She wedged herself in front of Mike’s knees and scrunched in a ball.

Maggie let her mind wander back to Tam as the
plane taxied to the runway. Two days, and she still hadn’t heard from her. She
couldn’t interfere beyond giving her and Markus the facts about his prognosis
and the transplant procedure, but she hoped for Tam’s sake that she’d make the
decision to go ahead with the initial tests. She’d witnessed it
firsthand—rarely, but enough for it to make an impression on her—when long-lost
relatives refused to help and then changed their minds after it was too late.
She couldn’t bear to have Tam go through the emotional trauma it would likely
cause. Better to do what she could to keep her dad alive, even if she never
moved beyond hating him to forgiveness.

Maggie’s throat felt paralyzed as the plane took
off, bucking in turbulence as it climbed, and she fought down panic as she
tried to swallow and couldn’t. She forced herself to relax, recalling her
conversation with Tam. She hadn’t been able to stop herself from stretching her
boundary of acceptable interference just a little. Tam was pushing her away,
pushing her father away, but Maggie sensed she wasn’t as unmoved by his
situation as she pretended to be. She seemed to be someone who felt deeply,
whether it was anger or defiance, and Maggie wanted her to make a decision that
would bring her peace of mind, not the opposite.

The plane gained altitude in large, lazy
circles. When she thought they must certainly be high enough to jump, she
checked the altimeter on Mike’s wrist, where it rested on his knee. Twelve
hundred feet. Only eleven thousand eight hundred to go. If she lived through
this delightful adventure she’d gotten herself into, maybe she’d hear good news
from Tam next week. Maybe she’d agree to start the tests. And then, Maggie
would have a chance to see her again. She wanted to see her again, almost as
much as she wanted to get her feet back on solid ground. She usually didn’t
feel this way about the people she met while on the job, no matter how
attractive or interested in her they seemed to be. Tam was different somehow.
She’d been on Maggie’s mind since they’d met. Maggie had to keep distance
between her personal life and the people she met through work. She used to
pride herself on finding balance between maintaining a necessary detachment and
still caring deeply about her patients, but lately she’d been listing
dangerously close to an excess of the latter. The internal turbulence she’d
been feeling since Gem left had weakened her defenses, and she’d realized she
had to make some changes. She had to face her personal fears before they took
control. Otherwise, she’d be consumed by the fears of her patients and their
families.

Maggie reached under the collar of her
jumpsuit and fiddled with her locket, suddenly ready to jump and have the wind knock
some of the painful memories she carried with her out of her mind. Too many sad
stories for one person to bear. Sure, there were recoveries, both miraculous
and expected, but sometimes the sad held more weight in her heart.

Mike tapped her on the shoulder, and Maggie
moved in front of him as he buckled her to his own harness. The next minutes
were a blur as one by one the other student-and-instructor pairs jumped. She
was just about to say she’d changed her mind when they were out of the plane.

In the video, the skydivers had wafted
through the air with upbeat background music, but in reality, Maggie was flung
into chaos. The rushing sound reminded her of plunging into the ocean. Hearing
and not hearing at the same time. Her cheeks lost all tension and flapped in
the wind. Did she bend her arms and knees and keep her head up? She had no idea
since time seemed to blur as she tried to reconcile the feeling of
motionlessness with dropping out of the sky at a tremendous rate.

She yelped when the parachute opened and
broke their fall with a sudden jerk on the harness between her legs and under
her arms. She was going to feel that tomorrow. She caught her breath as they
floated toward the ground in a more controlled manner, and she managed to enjoy
the swing of her legs every time Mike corrected their course.

One last turn, and they swooped down to the
gravel landing site. A whole lot of scary preparation for a few seconds of
cacophony. Had she changed anything about herself, or proved anything? She
didn’t feel different, just a little more battered. She ran a few yards once
her feet touched the ground, trying to get her balance back, and she would have
fallen on her face if Mike hadn’t held her upright. Once they were standing
still, he unbuckled her and Jocelyn bounded over with a big grin.

“You were so tiny up there when you jumped,”
she said, squeezing Maggie tightly. Jocelyn’s girlfriend, Ari, stepped up next
to hug her.

“What did you think?” Jocelyn asked. “Was it
fun? Would you do it again?”

“I’m not sure to the first, and no to the
second,” Maggie said, pulling off the leather helmet and running a hand through
her damp, flattened hair. She felt as if her body had been put through some
daunting ordeal, like running a marathon, when all she’d really done had been
to dangle in the air. “I think once is enough. Where’s the champagne?”

“Back at the car,” Jocelyn said with a laugh.
She tucked her arm in Maggie’s and leaned her head on her shoulder as they
walked. “I was worried about you.”

“So was I,” Maggie admitted. They stopped to
drop off her jumpsuit and helmet before going to the car. An indifferent clerk
tossed the suit on top of a pile behind her in what seemed to Maggie to be an
anticlimactic ending to her afternoon. “I guess it was worth doing once.”

“Can you describe what you were feeling when
you were on the plane?” Ari asked, pulling a notepad and pen out of her back
pocket. “What did it sound like? What were you thinking?”

Maggie wasn’t about to admit she’d been
thinking about Tam to her sister’s author girlfriend. “Are you interviewing me
for a book?”

Ari shrugged. “Maybe, or a story. I wanted to
get your impressions while they’re still fresh.”

Maggie looked at Jocelyn for support, but she
was gazing at Ari with a look of absolute adoration. Maggie rolled her eyes.
“Why don’t you go in and sign up? You can jump today and write your own notes.”

“Are you kidding? I saw your face before you
went up, and you looked even worse when you landed again. I’m staying on the
ground, thanks.”

Jocelyn poured them all some champagne, and
they leaned against her bumper and toasted Maggie’s step toward bravery. She
fended off Ari’s questions and watched the two of them snuggled up against each
other and felt something lacking still. She’d jumped out of a plane, she’d been
scuba diving, and she’d gone on a miserable spur-of-the-moment trip to a
Mexican resort. She didn’t feel any different, any more fulfilled. She was no
closer to feeling unbound and fearless than she’d been before Gem left.

Maggie drained her paper cup and let Jocelyn
pour her another. She sighed. On to the next adventure. Maybe this one would be
the key to changing her life.

*

Tam went to the hospital and stood outside
her father’s room, leaning against the wall and not making a move to either
leave or go inside. She kind of wanted someone to call security and have her
ass hauled out of the ward, but the nurses and other patients walked past her
as if she belonged there.

She’d called Maggie and told her to go ahead
and schedule the tests. Maggie had sounded relieved over the phone and hadn’t
wasted any time getting Tam’s appointments set up. She was right. Tam didn’t
have anything to lose at this point. She could always say no before anyone
started to cut her open. Besides, she needed to figure out why she had accepted
the job at Cannon Beach after getting the letter about his cancer. The new
field office had been created after the oil spill, and Tam was offered the job
since she had ties to the community from her past and from the work she had
done here in the aftermath of the disaster. She’d turned it down, preferring to
stay in the more neutral town of Newport. She’d never been there as a child.
But as soon as she’d heard about her father, she had applied for the new post,
barely making the deadline. Why? Why hadn’t she just tossed the letter in the
trash and forgotten it?

Tam opened the door and walked in without
knocking. Her father was lying in the same position as before, eyes closed even
though the television was turned on. She hadn’t made any attempt to be silent
like she had the last time, and he opened his eyes as soon as she got close to
his bed.

“Hello, Tam,” he said. He’d always called her
Tamsyn, but he must have listened when she gave her shortened name to Maggie.

“Where were you?” she asked instead of
returning his greeting. What a strange question, spanning over thirty years. It
might take hours to answer, and Tam wasn’t going to hang around that long.

“All over the place. Nowhere important.” He
paused, as if those few words had worn him out. “Fishing in Alaska, oil rigs
off the coast of Louisiana. Kuwait for a few years. Wherever the money was, I’d
follow. I was young and foolish, Tam. Not ready to settle down and have a
family. I made a mistake leaving you after your mom and I split up, but I
didn’t realize until too late.”

“And you didn’t try to contact me until you
needed something.” Neither of her parents had been ready for family life. Tam
had been a mistake, and her dad had been the first to leave. Her mom was next,
leaving Tam with her grandparents while she pursued second-rate acting and
modeling jobs. At least she would visit every once in a while.

“I thought about you all the time,” Markus
said.

“Oh, okay. That makes it better. Is this
where you pull out the scrapbook with photos of my first piano recital and my
graduation and tell me you’ve been secretly keeping track of my life?”

He sighed and his fingers moved on the sheet
again, as if he was winding a rope. Tam had a sudden flashback to her first
lesson in a sailboat, a year before her capsized rowboat incident. Her dad had
taken her out on the ocean, and she’d laughed at the breeze and the powerful
swells. She’d forgotten that day, mistakenly remembering another time as her
first sailing experience.

“I don’t have a scrapbook, Tam. I don’t know
where you went to college or anyone you’ve dated or what you do for a living.
Yes, I only contacted you because of this damn cancer, but it’s brought us here
together. We’ve got a second chance, no matter how it came about. I don’t want
to blow it again.”

“Too late,” Tam said. She turned and walked
out of the room, leaving him there alone. She could have left the hospital,
too, like she had last week, but instead she consulted a directory and found
Maggie’s office.

“Tam, come in,” Maggie said with her
wonderful smile when she saw Tam standing in her doorway. She pulled a file
across her desk and opened it. “Thank you for being here today. We’ll pull some
blood and have you fill out this questionnaire, and then a coworker of mine
will give you a physical. Nothing major, just a general health check.”

Tam wondered why Maggie wasn’t doing the
physical, but she didn’t dare ask. She wouldn’t lie and say she hadn’t pictured
Maggie’s hands on her, but she’d prefer it to happen somewhere outside of a doctor’s
office. She’d be less awkward having someone else see her naked and prod her
stomach and glands.

“I saw my father,” she said. She’d guessed
Maggie wouldn’t ask, but she wanted her to know.

Maggie closed the folder and rested her
clasped hands on it. “How did the visit go?”

Tam shrugged. “He didn’t apologize or
anything. Just said he hadn’t wanted to be tied down, and he told me some of
the places he went after he left us.”

“Do you still want to go ahead with the
evaluation today?” Maggie fingered her locket and Tam watched the patterned
gold reflect the light from Maggie’s desk lamp.

“Yes.” Tam hesitated. She wanted to talk more
about her past and about her confusing feelings toward her father, but she
changed the subject instead. “You play with your locket sometimes,” she said,
her eyes on Maggie’s hand and the delicate pendant cradled in it. “Is it a
family heirloom?”

“Hmm, I suppose it is,” Maggie said, glancing
down at the necklace. She lowered her hand to her lap. “My twin sister had
cancer when we were children. Leukemia. There were times when we didn’t think
she’d survive the night, let alone make it through childhood, but she did.
During one of those bad times, an aunt gave me this locket with a tiny braid of
Jocelyn’s hair in it. She said I should have something to remember her by if
she died.”

Tam shuddered at the misguided and callous
words. She could see the residue of young Maggie’s reaction in the expression
on the adult Maggie’s face. “How cruel.”

Maggie touched her locket again, running her
thumb over the gold. “I agree. I’m sure she meant well, but what an awful thing
to say to a child. I wouldn’t leave Jocelyn’s side for weeks after that.
Whenever someone tried to get me away or put me in my own bed, I’d scream and
cry, so they let me stay with her.”

“And you still wear it?” Tam asked. She was
amazed by Maggie. Her decision to specialize in oncology had to have roots in
her sister’s illness. She was helping other families through the very situation
she’d experienced as a child.