Crawfordville, Medart, Panacea, and Ochlockonee Bay were small towns meshed together on Highway 98, and if you weren’t familiar with the area, you wouldn’t know that you’d passed into one from the other. For me, it was the best of both worlds—small-town country living with a beach hidden well behind the oaks and pines. And if I wanted something more, I could drive the thirty minutes into Tallahassee.
“You’re letting a lot of dust and pollen into your shop.”
I looked up from the counter where I was weaving one of the prettier shells that I’d found on the beach into a necklace and smiled at Miranda as she walked in. “No lives to save this morning?”
“Actually, I’m fresh off an abdominal pain call, my first of the morning.” Miranda grimaced. “She threw up on my shoes. It’s not ten o’clock, and I’m already in my spare uniform.”
I wrinkled my nose and kept my distance.
“I showered, too, you weenie.”
I looked around for her. “Where’s your partner?”
Miranda grinned. “He’s sleeping off a hangover in the unit. Got into a fight with his girlfriend again and drowned his anger in a bottle of vodka. Needless to say, our patient’s stomach issues took a toll on him. In all my years as a paramedic, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of green on a human.” She leaned on the counter and toyed with one of the necklaces I’d already finished. “So how’d it go with Jade last night?”
I kept my focus on my project. “She offered to write up a workout plan for us. According to her, we’re not going to see results if we keep doing the same thing every time we go to the gym.”
“So you made a move.”
“Yep, and she’s as arrogant as you assumed.” I looked up at Miranda and grinned. “You won’t be able to live vicariously through me with that one.”
“Shit. Marty is going to be so disappointed. I told her you were working your magic. You’re slipping, little player. There was a time your charm was irresistible. But that one, well, she’s a tough ticket even for you.”
I laughed. “Yes, the kid was shot down, but she lives to ride another day.”
“You’re a complete womanizer. Don’t you ever get tired of that?”
I shook my head and continued weaving. “If I settled down, I wouldn’t be able to entertain you with my exploits.”
Miranda tugged on the loose end of the necklace I was working on. “I’m serious. Don’t you ever think about having someone to share your life, your secrets with?”
I sighed and sat back on my stool behind the counter. “This is one of those conversations, isn’t it?” Everyone in our group of friends was a part of a couple. I was the exception. “Sometimes I wonder if y’all want me to settle down and be happy or if I pose a threat to your coupledom. You all see me going out and worry that maybe you or your partners might be tempted to want to enjoy the lifestyle I do.”
“That was bitchy.”
“You’re right, I apologize.”
“You’re thirty-eight, it’s a reasonable question.” Miranda didn’t look at me. Instead she scratched at a piece of clear tape stuck to the glass top of the counter with her thumbnail. “Why are you afraid to commit? What is it?”
“I have no idea,” I answered truthfully. “I don’t dwell on it.”
“Self-preservation. It keeps us from doing or thinking about a lot of things, doesn’t it?”
I tilted my head as I regarded Miranda. “You sound like a shrink.”
She tapped the counter with her thumb and pushed back, looking at me. “Because I’ve been seeing a therapist. I started after we got back from vacation. After you…” She looked away with discomfort showing plainly on her face.
The revelation stunned me. “Why?”
Miranda folded her arms and stared at something on the wall. “I froze up out there. I…couldn’t do CPR on you…I forgot how.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “When we got you out of the water and I saw your face, my mind went blank.”
I felt detached like Miranda was talking about one of her patients. My only recollection was waking up in the hospital. “Well, you were in shock. That makes sense, right?”
Tears filled Miranda’s eyes as she finally looked at me. “You’re my best friend, a sister, really, and I couldn’t save you. Some stranger fresh out of Advanced First-Aid had to start what I couldn’t. All the years of training and experience trickled out of my ears, and I was useless.”
“Hey, look—”
“And you won’t talk about any of it,” Miranda said angrily as she wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “We talk about everything. I’ve lost that connection with you.”
“I don’t remember anything. I don’t—”
“But surely, it changed you, impacted you in some way.” Miranda clenched her fists and stopped short of pounding them on the counter. “You were dead, no pulse. A person doesn’t come back from something like that without being affected in some way.”
All the air in my lungs felt like it evaporated. I couldn’t speak. For the first time since we’d returned from West Virginia, I couldn’t ignore the pain on Miranda’s face. I couldn’t form the lie that I’d told countless times since the accident. I sat mute while Miranda stared at me, waiting.
“Good morning,” a woman said as she poked her head in the door. “Everything okay in here?”
“Ah, yes.” I smiled weakly. “The driver of the ambulance out front is a friend of mine and just visiting.” I pointed at Miranda, who did her best to smile. “Come on in and look around. If you have any questions, just let me know.” I looked back at Miranda when the customer disappeared among the rows of shelves. “We’ll talk about this later, I promise.”
Miranda made another attempt at a smile. “I’ll come by tomorrow after my shift. I’ll bring breakfast.”
*******
I couldn’t sleep that night. When I closed my eyes, I could see the misery on Miranda’s face, and the guilt that followed consumed me. I knew she was struggling. I sensed it whenever we were together. She’d tried many times to talk about that day, but I’d always changed the subject, never considering that she needed to purge her soul.
We weren’t the affectionate type of friends who hugged often or draped an arm around a shoulder unless one of us was really hurting. Marty told me that before I had awakened in the hospital that Miranda had nearly crawled up in the bed and held me as she cried her eyes out. The only affection I’d seen from her since was a fist bump after I came to and got my wits back. For that, I was grateful.
Had the contact been any longer than that fleeting touch of fists, I would’ve seen and felt what she had witnessed that day. I’d caught glimpses from the others when they hugged me or touched me. Through their eyes, for the briefest moments, I saw my lifeless body lying on the ice staring back at me.
Chapter 2
I didn’t open the shop at the usual time. Instead I put the plastic clock on the door indicating that I would open at noon. Miranda would see this and know to come around back to the house. I knew the conversation we were due to have would be emotional, and for me, showing emotion was a rarity. I had learned at a very young age to hide my feelings. As a grown woman, I was a master. I’d spent most of my life behind a mask of stoicism. There was only one person who had seen beyond it, and I watched as she walked up on my porch and let herself in as she always did.
“I have doughnuts and chocolate milk. We’ll work it off tonight, no worries.” Miranda walked past me where I was sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and went into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with two glasses and a roll of paper towels.
“How was your shift?” I asked as I watched her pour the milk.
“Mercifully quiet.” Miranda wiped her hands on her pants. “We had a total of three calls and all before ten last night. I’m rested and ready to go to the gym tonight and work off the fluff this breakfast is sure to cause.” She dipped her hand into her shirt pocket and pulled out a handful of pictures. “I meant to give these to you yesterday.”
I took the prints and thumbed through them until I came to one of Miranda and me sitting side by side at a table. Miranda’s hair bright red and spiky stood out in contrast to my shoulder-length brown, her eyes bright and blue and mine dark. Her skin tone pale and mine olive. It was apparent we weren’t blood related, but we were sisters nevertheless.
“I’m gonna frame this one.” I took it out of the group and laid it on the coffee table.
She smiled. “I framed mine, too.”
I set my coffee aside and picked up my glass of milk. As I downed half of it, I was reminded of when we were kids. We shared a chocolate milk the first day we met. We were twelve, and my aunt had just moved us into the neighborhood. Aunt Judith was not particularly pleased with her new digs. Her two-bedroom condo wasn’t large enough for her and two kids she never expected to have. The house was bigger and afforded us another bedroom, but it wasn’t in an area she would’ve chosen if she had a choice. “I always thought I’d move up, not down,” she would complain.
She and my mom weren’t close, but after my mother’s death, she was the only option. Our father had long since gone, and no one knew where to find him. Judith was not comfortable with the role of mother and often spent her evenings in her bedroom with the door closed after dinner. Five years my senior, Colin, my brother, didn’t have to stay long. On his eighteenth birthday, he went into the military, leaving me alone with an aunt who was biding her time until she could kick me out of the nest and get on with her life.
Cecilia Donahue, Miranda’s mother, adopted me as her own, though not legally. I spent more time in the Donahue home than I did with Judith, especially after Colin left. Momma Donahue, as I called her then, simply became Mom over the years. She and Miranda were there for me through every achievement and disappointment, and had it not been for their love and acceptance, I was fairly certain I would’ve never made it to adulthood.
“Talk to me,” Miranda said without preamble.
I felt my mouth go dry. It took me a while to say, “It has affected me.”
“Bad dreams, or do you contemplate your mortality more?”
“Neither.” I tried to muster a smile, but the muscles in my face wouldn’t comply. I had always trusted Miranda with my innermost secrets, but this…made me question my own sanity. Miranda would respect my wish to keep it between us, I knew that. She’d give advice without judgment, but…
“Just tell me.”
I looked into her clear blue eyes and chewed my bottom lip. “The effect the incident had on me,” I began, sounding clinical to my own ears, “left me with an odd byproduct.”
Doughnuts and chocolate milk momentarily forgotten, Miranda sat literally on the edge of her seat waiting.
“I’ve done some research. It’s not really all that uncommon for people who have had near-death experiences. People come back with all sorts of oddities, then some have nothing at all. I think—”
“Quit with the foreplay and let me have it,” Miranda said impatiently.
I held up my hand and looked at it. “If I touch you, I can see…things.”
Miranda’s pale brows rose. “What things?”
“After we came home from West Virginia…I met a woman online.” Miranda rolled her eyes at this. I met most of the women I dated on the Net. “We met at a restaurant in Tallahassee, and everything was going great until I touched her hand while talking. And then I was in her car, felt the wheel beneath my hands and her frustration with the traffic that was making her run late.” I laughed. It sounded so strange in the retelling. I had trouble believing it myself. “It was like I was in her body as she walked into her house and changed for our date. Jeans or skirt, blue or gray? And then I heard a voice, and it felt familiar. Her husband was in the kitchen, and when she kissed him, I felt the brush of stubble against my lips. The lie was so easily delivered, ‘I’m going out with the girls, remember? Don’t wait up.’” I looked at Miranda, who sat quietly, stunned. “I’ll never forget what her face looked like when I stood, tossed a few bills on the table, and walked out of the restaurant without another word.”
Miranda cleared her throat. “Was this an isolated incident or have there been others?”
I nodded. “Deb, she hugged me when I got out of the hospital. I felt the ice against her stomach, felt the coldness of her hands while she held on to your boots. The shock, the confusion. It was so strong I had to pull away from her. I think maybe she thought I blamed her.”
Miranda exhaled loudly and leaned back in her chair. “This has been going on for two months, and you haven’t said a word.”
“I thought I was going crazy. I needed time to cope with it on my own before I could tell you about it.”
“I knew you were keeping something from me. I felt like there was a wall between us.” Miranda nodded as though everything was beginning to make sense. “The others have noticed it, too. You’ve never been really affectionate, but lately, you’ve shied away from the group. Marty says she noticed how you deftly avoid being hugged. We all figured that maybe you were riding the razor’s edge of emotion, and affection would cause it to spill over.”
“Y’all have spent a lot of time talking about me.”
“Because we care,” Miranda said pointedly. “Don’t mistake that for going behind your back. We’ve just been trying to figure you out. You would do the same, you know it.”
I nodded. “I don’t want them to know, not even Marty.”
Miranda stared at me, her eyes narrowed from time to time. A few minutes passed before she spoke. “Do you think that’s fair? They don’t know what you say you can do. If you touch them, you’ll be invading their privacy. Your closest friends should at least have the option of whether they want their secrets exposed to you or not.”
It was my turn to stare. I dissected every sentence carefully in my mind, reading into what she said and the underlying meaning. “You don’t believe me. You think I’m using this as an excuse to avoid everyone while I deal with the supposed ‘razor’s edge of emotion.’”
Miranda shot me that narrow-eyed look she used when her defenses were up, then she smiled. “When you don’t want to have to deal with something, you shut it off. You pack it in a box and store it in the deep recesses of your mind.” She cocked her head to the side. “I’ve never known you to deliberately lie to me, though.”