Cynda and the City Doctor - Theodora Taylor Page 0,59

going to do without a house and a job?”

It starts to rain outside right after she says that. And I try not to take it as a bad omen, as I answer, “I’ll probably move to St. Louis. Or maybe even Atlanta. Someplace with more hospitals and more nursing jobs. From what I’ve been reading, there’s plenty of RN jobs available other places for people who want them. Just not in Guadalajara.”

E shifts, her expression shadowing over with guilt. “You love this town. I wish there was a way for you to stay and us to go to CMU without you having to sell the house.”

“You don’t think Dr. Prince will give you back your job, now that…?” A trails off, but he and I both know what he’s talking about.

“No,” I answer. “That was just...temporary. After this, we’ll both be moving on.”

I wait to feel a surge of anger over what he’s done: buying my dad’s practice and turning it into an DBCare. Taking the small town doctor out of medicine and pushing our country even further into a health system with jacked up prices and less humanity. And for what? Because some messed up girl dumped him three years ago?

All of those things should make me furious. But I only feel sad.

So sad.

It was only six months but memories of that time keep flashing through my head. The laughter. The dates. The lazy mornings when we both had the day off. The amazing sex.

And the quiet afterward as we lay in each other’s arms.

“Derick Miller just asked me to Zoom Prom,” E announces later that night, interrupting the relentless highlight reel.

We’re supposed to be watching the fifth and final season of the She-Ra reboot together. But I’m all caught up in the past and E’s been texting on her phone the entire time.

A, who decided to re-watch the season with us, pauses the TV to ask, “The quarterback?”

“Yep, take that, August Brandt, you Lacrosse Asshole!” E says, raising her phone triumphantly.

I smile and laugh along with her and A.

However, weird feelings stir inside of me even as I pretend to be happy for her. E’s only eighteen. But I’m already relating to the regret she’ll feel in ten years when she learns the same lessons I have. The hard way.

The rain has turned into a thunderstorm by the time I crawl into bed that night. Lightning flashes across my window followed by muted booms a few seconds later.

Maybe that’s why I can’t fall asleep that night. Why my emotions eddy and swirl until there’s nothing but a pool of muddy thoughts inside my head—

Thunder booms again. This time so loud the house shakes, and I hear something drop to the floor with a muffled thump.

I sit up in bed, breathing hard.

And wait for the twins to come running in. They grew up in California before moving to St. Louis. So they didn’t understand anything about real weather until they came out here. When the thunder gets too loud, I sometimes end up with two teenagers huddled in my bed. And we watch Netflix on my computer until the storm passes.

But I guess they really have grown up. My door remains closed, even as my heart beats wildly.

Eventually, I turn on the lamp and get out of bed to investigate whatever made that thump.

The answer is scattered across the floor of my closet.

My keepsake box lies sideways along with its contents: my Queen America participation trophy, my father’s notepad, the one Dansko shoe, and the two letters from my biological mother….

They’re all spread out on the closet’s carpet. Separate, but somehow part of the same big mess.

My first instinct is to shove everything back into the box, then return it to the shelf where it belongs.

But then suddenly a memory flashes into my head, clear as a bell in a sea of forgotten things.

My mother singing, “I Told the Storm” when we went to church with my grandparents in St. Louis.

She wasn’t part of the choir at the Lutheran Church we went to in Guadalajara. But once when we visited my grandparents in “Beverly Hills,” we went to the church she grew up in for Sunday Service. The old pastor said, “Why is that Lil’ Marilee Smith in the back of the church? Come up here, girl, and join the choir for a song.”

My mom, a proper doctor’s wife, had, of course, demurred. But the pastor, who apparently didn’t care that the service had already clocked two hours, insisted