for it and pick it up before it can ring again. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s me. Can we talk?” Matty’s tone is clipped, but civil.
My heart gives a little hopeful leap. “Sure, maybe we can have dinner?” I glance at the clock, it’s only 4pm, but I’m starving. I came here hoping that Matty and I could repair what was broken between us. I’ve spent the whole day in my room waiting for her to call. Trying to work up the courage to call her.
“Okay, dinner would be good. Are you ready now?”
“I need to shower, but I’ll be quick,” I say.
“Don’t rush, I’ll come up to your room and wait. See you.”
“I look so tired,” I lament to my reflection and skim my fingertips over the shadows under my eyes. I haven’t slept well since Jack died.
“No, you don’t. You always look beautiful,” Matty calls in a monotone that smacks more of obligation than sincerity. She’s waiting in the small sitting area of my suite waiting while I put on a little make up.
I can’t see her in the reflection, but I know that from her perch in the bedroom, she can see me. So, I look directly in the mirror. “Well, you don’t always look beautiful. In fact, right you now, you look as terrible as I feel,” I say with a smile that’s as sincere as her tone was.
A few seconds later she’s standing beside me at the small vanity in my bathroom, scowling at me.
She rolls her eyes and lets out a long, exasperated sigh.“I was trying to be nice, Regan,” she repeats.
I mimic her eye roll. “You don’t have to be nice. It’s okay to be honest with your friends.”
“Here we go.” I mutter and turn my attention back to my makeup.
She glares at me, hands on her hips and fierce frown on her face. “What does that mean?”
“It means that without Jack as a buffer, we were bound to argue.” I keep my expression neutral, but I stop trying to make my trembling hands work and put my mascara away and meet her eyes in the mirror.
I regret my quip about her appearance. She does look worn out. It’s more than fatigue and emotional toll of this trip. What had the last ten years been like for her? I didn’t even know where she lived until Jack told me she was in Maryland. She’s never met my children. Evangeline’s middle name is Matilda.
“I’m going out the balcony to smoke. When you’re done, come join me.” She turns and walks away before I have a chance to respond.
I watch her retreating back. She’s ranged from barely civil to hostile since we met in the lobby to ride out to the boat Jack hired for the ceremony.
When I tried to talk to her, she said, “I’m just here for Jack.” And nothing else.
She brought a bottle of wine on board and drank half of it, straight from the bottle. When the captain of our little boat asked us about Jack, Matty said, “We used to be friends, but now, we hate her.”
Matty and I…we’ve always butted heads. I used to love that about us. It felt like our relationship flexing its muscles when we fought and made up.
I counted myself lucky to have such an authentic, honest friend.
We’re worse than strangers now and I can see clearly, the role I played in that.
What they did was wrong. But, no one forced me to help them. It’s wrong of me to punish them for my choices. It took Jack’s call asking me to come visit her in hospice to see that.
I spent ten years thinking she was angry with me and she spent ten years thinking I was angry with her. But when she called to tell me she was dying, all I felt was grief. I caught a flight the very next day and went to her home Sacramento.
Jack was barely a shadow of the woman she’d been last time I saw her.
Her husband told me that she was having a good day and it broke my heart to think what the bad days must be like. But I only smiled and sat in the seat they offered me.
I began with my regrets. “I was going to call… Six months went by and I didn’t know what I would say. So, I just…never did. I’m so sorry.” It was such a pathetic recitation of excuses
She’d just smiled and patted my hand. “I love you. I’m so glad you