Page 7 of The Space Between

A slow smile spreads over Jo’s face and she nods. “I’ll bring them next time I’m here.”

It’s gratifying to be able to say she has a story published, and sure, Jo is proud of herself. She was excited to get the acceptance letter, and the money is fun to receive, but if she’s being perfectly honest with herself, Mr. Dandridge’s face when he held the first published story in his hand had made it all worthwhile. Their friendship, which had started when Jo first began volunteering at the hospital, had been a gift to her that she’d never expected—never even knew that she needed. And his loss after his long and arduous cancer battle, while expected, was still hard. It’s been a full month, but it’s as still fresh to Jo as if it had just happened that morning.

With a final glance at the garden that’s taking shape on the grounds of the hospital, Jo walks away to get her cart out of the closet where she stores it. Even without Mr. Dandridge to visit, she still has patients who look forward to seeing her smiling face as she comes in to offer them cookies, juice, or something to read. It’s important work, in Jo’s mind, and she can’t discountthe fact that having something of her own to do and to focus on has made her a much better wife and mother over the past year. In fact, finding her place at Stardust General has not only done that, but it’s made this community and this state feel far more like home.

“Knock knock,” Jo says softly, rapping on the door of a woman who she knows is in the hospital after having surgery on her arm. “Can I come in?”

With a smile, Jo pushes her cart into the room and starts her first visit of the day.

“Mommy!” Nancy says as Jo steps out the sliding door of their kitchen and onto the patio that afternoon. Now that school is out, the kids are spending the afternoons that Jo volunteers at the hospital with her closest friend in Stardust Beach, Frankie Maxwell. Jo loves coming home from the hospital to find them all in the pool under Frankie’s watchful eye, or running around the backyard spraying one another with the hose as Frankie pages through a romance novel and sips a glass bottle of Tab.

“Hello, everyone,” Jo says tiredly, peeling off the cardigan she always wears inside the air-conditioned hospital. “How are we?”

Jimmy, her twelve-year-old son, is floating on his back in the pool, face to the sky, eyes closed. Jo can hardly blame him for shutting out his rambunctious younger sisters, and she watches him, noting that his skin has officially turned a dark, nutty Florida brown after a year of living in the sun. His upturned nose is speckled with freckles, and his hair has bleached out to a rusty blonde.

“Mama,” eight-year-old Kate says, pulling herself out of the pool and standing in front of Jo with water running off her slippery little body. “Jimmy got into trouble.”

Jo runs her hand along her youngest child’s smooth cheek. “Oh, I’m sure everything is fine,” she says. “Go jump into the pool and show me how you swim from one end to the other.” Jo is a master at thinking up tasks that will wear the kids out by bedtime. Kate does as she asks, flinging herself into the water and starting a laborious doggy paddle across the length of the pool.

“So what happened?” Jo asks Frankie, slipping her feet out of her shoes and sitting in the chair next to Frankie’s. She’s still wearing nylons under her skirt and she’d much rather be in a bathing suit right along with Frankie and the kids, but first things first. “Was he being mean to the girls?”

Frankie puts a postcard between the pages of her paperback to hold her spot and sits up straight in the chair. She shakes her head and gives Jo a sheepish look. “No, he wasn’t being mean to the girls,” she says, biting on her lip and casting a glance at Jimmy, who was still floating in the pool and absolutely ignoring everyone.

“Okay,” Jo says, frowning. “Then what happened? Or is Kate exaggerating?”

“She’s exaggerating in the sense that he didn’t get into trouble, but…it’s time Bill had a little man-to-man chat with him.”

Jo’s face burns. “Oh, sweet mercy,” she says. “What happened? Just tell me.”

Frankie leans towards Jo’s chair. “Let’s just say he forgot to lock the bathroom door and Nancy burst in there at an inopportune moment.”

“Oh, no,” Jo whispers, putting a hand to her chest. Jimmy is still her baby boy, and she hadn’t yet thought that they mightbe hitting the point where he was becoming a young man, so to speak.

“Yep,” Frankie says with a nod. “His ‘private moment’ involved the lingerie section of the Sears catalog.”

“No,” Jo mouths, her voice silenced. She’s shaking her head. “I mean, I get it, but I’m not ready for it.”

Frankie lifts one shoulder and gives a smile of resignation. “Ready or not, here we are. Nancy had no idea what he was up to, but she could sense his embarrassment, and I think that threw her off for a few minutes. But she recovered and hasn’t said a word. It’s Jimmy who seems mortified. He hasn’t spoken to any of us all afternoon since it happened.”

“This is definitely Bill’s area, not mine.”

“But it’ll be the girls’ turn soon—to talk about all the big scary things. How do you imagine you’ll handle that?”

Jo had not come home from the hospital prepared for any of this. She lets her arms fall to the armrests of the pool chair and her head leans back as she turns her face to the sun and closes her eyes. “I have no idea. I mean, I’ll tell them all about their monthlies because of course that’s just a part of life. My mother never breathed a word of it, so you can imagine my shock when that first happened.” Jo lifts her head and turns it towards Frankie. “Did your mother tell you what to expect?”

Frankie shook her head. “Nope. Not a word—about anything. I didn’t know where babies even came from until one of my friends got married at eighteen and found out she was pregnant soon after.”

“Same.” Jo rubs her lips together. “I want my girls to have more of an idea about all of that.” She nods decisively. “I do. I want them to know what happens with their own bodies because that’s important. They have that right to know, and then they can make better, more informed decisions.”

Frankie is watching Kate splash Jimmy in the pool. He continues to ignore her.

“That seems fair,” Frankie says mildly. “These young ladies are growing up in a different world than the one we grew up in. They’ll have choices and options, and who knows—maybe they’ll even get to choose whether they want a careeranda family. Or neither. Or both.”

Jo watches the kids in the water and then her eyes land on Nancy, stretched out on a chair on the other side of the pool with a book held over her head so that she can read it while she’s on her back. Her little bookworm. Nancy’s dedication to reading nearly every waking moment makes her smile.

“Frankie, I know you’ve been here all afternoon, but would you mind watching them for ten more minutes while I change? I’m dying in these clothes.”

“Jo, of course! Go change.” Frankie waves her off and pulls the postcard out of her book. “I’ll be right here.”

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