Page 118 of Look on the Bright Side

“Oh, gosh. That’s very sweet, Gary, but no.”

“Joy. You were meant to be married. I’m a rich man! Make me happy in my final days.” He smiled at her cleavage.

“I’m pretty flush myself, Gary. I don’t need your money.”

“That makes sense. I mean, you look very well maintained. But don’t you want companionship?”

“I have companionship.”

“Of the male variety?”

“No, you have a point there. But would my life really be better if I married you?” she asked.

“You’d have a husband, so of course!” He laughed.

“And?”

His face fell a little. “Romance?”

That sure had been lacking in her life. Frankie had brought her flowers from time to time. Left her notes and stuff like that. Otherwise, her relationships had been about sex (except for Abdul, of course).

“What does romance actually look like?” she asked.

“Oh. Well, I’d, uh, tell you how special you are,” Gary said. “Give you little gifts and flowers. We could take a cruise and hold hands.”

“You’re not really selling it, Gary. I can buy my own gifts and flowers. And book a cruise with my friends.”

“What about…intimacy?” he asked, raising a sparse eyebrow.

“I have a vibrator.”

“I’m better than a vibrator, I hope.”

She looked at him, amused. Bald, a big nose, small eyes, significant gut, hair springing out of his ears like Spanish moss. Men and their confidence.

She was never going to have what Ellie had described. Maybe, if she’d stayed with Frankie, she could’ve felt that sense of home and safety. She’d been too young to appreciate his love back then, too fixated on her outer self and being anyone but who she was. It was time for her to find love, sure. Find love for her own damn self.

“Thanks just the same, but I’ll pass. I bet you could find someone else, though. Someone you’ve known longer than a few weeks.” She patted Gary on the shoulder and walked down the hall.

Once upon a time, Joy Deveaux needed a man to feel worthwhile, to give her an escape, to fill her life, whether it was a husband or, yes, even her brother. Someone to undo the damage wrought by her father, another man.

She was sixty-seven. Yep, there it was, her actual age, first time she’d let herself acknowledge it in years. For the first time ever, she wanted to be independent, not just waiting for someone or something to fix her.

It was quite a…oh, gosh, what was the word? When you thought of something you’d never thought of before? A revelation, that was it! Quite a revelation indeed.

TWENTY-THREE

LARK

When her shift ended that day at three thirty, Lark quickly finished her notes, got into her car and drove to Boston. Mass General was offering a grand rounds lecture on new tools that measured residual disease in acute leukemia. If tools like that had been around seven years ago, it was possible that Justin’s leukemia could’ve been caught earlier. He would have had a better chance at…

No. Best not to go there. It didn’t serve any purpose.

She’d texted Heather and Theo after Joy’s party, doing her best to explain that she was being a date—not romantic, of course!—for a surgeon she knew. No girlfriend situation there.

Heather’s response was short and polite. Your mom said as much, but if there was a boyfriend, it would be okay, honey. We don’t expect you to be single forever.

That made her feel worse, somehow. She’d responded by suggesting a date for the missed whale watch (not that she had time for one) and asking Heather what she wanted to do for her birthday in September. In the past, they’d gotten pedicures and had lunch…and gone to the cemetery.

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