Page 31 of The Calendar of New Beginnings
“Everyone is dedicating their month to the person they lost,” she continued. “Your mom is dedicating her page to Kim.”
Now it all made sense. “I understand why she was afraid to tell me. We haven’t talked about her recent scare with the lump in her breast. I…couldn’t.”
She reached for his free hand. “She knows. This is her way of doing something about it all, I think. I’ve come around to the idea.”
He could see why. It was a beautiful gesture, but also the kind of kooky thing their moms normally got up to together.
“Andy,” Lucy said softly, bringing him back. “Your mom’s calling it The Calendar of New Beginnings.”
“Oh, crap,” he said, setting his cone down so he could pinch the one place guaranteed to prevent his tears from leaking: the bridge of his nose.
He’d learned about that spot while working at the hospital in the weeks after Kim’s death, when anything and everything seemed to trigger an episode. A young woman dying of cancer like Kim. Another who lay still and emaciated in her hospital bed, her family unsure if she’d ever awaken after a car accident. And then there were the ones who’d passed on. Hearing their families weep with abandon had crushed him. But a doctor couldn’t cry in front of his patients, particularly not the ones who were already hopeless and grieving, so he’d learned to pinch that pressure point and keep the tears inside until he could be alone. Later he would release all the pain he’d gathered that day, like rain in water buckets after an afternoon thunderstorm.
Lucy held his hand while he gathered himself together.
“It’s okay to cry, Andy,” she said, tightening her grip. “I won’t think any less of you.”
No, she wouldn’t, although many women might.
“I can take it,” she added softly.
He looked up and saw the soft light shining again in her beautiful green eyes. “I know you can, Lucy. I’m glad you’re doing the calendar.”
“Me too,” she said softly. “Here. It’s time to swap cones like we always used to.”
They ate each other’s ice cream as she held his hand, and just like that, the sorrow in his chest didn’t feel quite so heavy.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was a day of new beginnings, and a Monday to boot. In the morning, Lucy was moving into the small rental home she’d dubbed Merry Cottage, and at three o’clock in the afternoon, she would teach her first class at Emmits Merriam’s School of Journalism. She’d accomplished a lot after only a week in Dare Valley.
Since Lucy didn’t have more than a couple of suitcases with her, she was able to pull off the move without much fuss. Her mother’s cleaning crew had vacuumed and dusted every available space, making the worn furnishings gleam. The air smelled of lemon, and Lucy sneezed as she wandered through the small home. The carpets and the upholstery on the Victorian couch and armchair all showed vacuum tracks. The windows sparkled in the sunlight, showing a rare streak from the cleaner. It was a gesture she’d happily accepted.
After living in anything from hotels to barracks, huts to compounds, this little cottage made her feel cozy. Even though none of the furnishings were hers, this place was her safe haven for the moment.
She let herself out the French doors into the backyard. The view was one of the things that had drawn her to this cottage. Mountain peaks rose up all around her, dotted with pines and other conifers. A small pond drew her across the lawn—freshly cut, courtesy of her father. She looked into the water and studied her reflection.
Shedidneed a haircut, but the world wouldn’t end if she waited a few days. Her face still hadn’t filled in, and the gauntness of her cheeks made them look sunken. Dark circles lay under her somber eyes.
This was the Lucy O’Brien her students would see, but was this really her?
Where was her sparkle, her vitality? Seeing Andy’s pain the other night had made the walls surrounding all of her bottled-up emotions start to crumble. She’d experienced loss too.
And it sucked.
Her hand unconsciously reached up to touch her right eye. She’d always taken her twenty-twenty vision for granted, and without it, she was floundering. Who would she be if she wasn’t able to take photos, to travel around the world and be an award-winning photojournalist again?
No one understood the magic, the courage, the technique it took to capture the perfect picture. Sure, Andy was right—if her vision didn’t improve, there were ways she could adjust to her new reality. She could take photos using her left eye, but that would be like asking Michelangelo to paint with his right hand. Would he have been able to paint the Sistine Chapel if his left hand had become useless? She didn’t think so. She could try and switch to taking only black-and-white photos, but again, if Michelangelo had painted the Sistine Chapel in only black and white, would it have been considered a masterpiece?
When she’d agreed to take photos for The Calendar of New Beginnings, she’d told herself the quality wouldn’t have to be up to her usual levels. She could use it as an opportunity to learn how to take photos with her left eye. But that wouldn’t do justice to the project, not considering the depth of loss Andy, Jeff, April, her mother, and all the rest had been through. She felt the pressure to produce perfect photos for the calendar, and something told her these couldn’t simply be playful, risqué photos. Anyone could do hot dogs and cantaloupes.
Her new idea was to capture the truth of loss and the courage it took to keep living after experiencing grief. Maybe each subject could hold a photo of the person they’d lost or a memento from their life.
Today was as good a day as any to see if she could take photos—any photos—since she’d be teaching young minds about photography later in the afternoon. God, her first class. The thought of teaching something she feared she could no longer do made her sick to her stomach. It actually made it worse that her students were so excited to work with her. According to the administrator she’d spoken with at the school, there was a sizable wait list to get into her class.
She pulled her phone from her jeans pocket with a trembling hand and brought up the camera function. Maybe it would be best to start out by taking pictures on the simplest mechanism out there.
But even holding the phone made her miss her babies: an old manual Leica for when she didn’t have access to electrical power and the new digital Leica M9 model—the smallest, quietest full-frame camera on the market. She’d scrimped and saved to buy that camera. Her bag of Leicalenses gave her the versatility she needed for any shoot, anywhere in the world.
