The Perfect Stranger (19 page)

Forcing her thoughts to what lies ahead, she feels her pulse quicken.

I can’t believe we’re really going to meet each other in person at this time tomorrow,
Landry had e-mailed yesterday afternoon.
I just wish it were under better circumstances.

Meredith would be glad we’re going to do this,
Elena responded, and Kay wrote,

I know she’ll be there in spirit.

Elena didn’t respond to that particular comment. What could she do—argue?

She’s done it before, against her better judgment, both with online friends and in real life. That never ends well.

It’s surprising how many people out there disagree with her personal belief that when you’re dead, you’re gone. Period.

None of this afterlife mumbo jumbo for her.

Her argument: if that were possible, then her own mother—who had loved her dearly—would have been with her in spirit for all these years, instead of abandoning her to a miserable, lonely childhood and a life-threatening disease.

Believers have all kinds of responses to that theory. Usually, spirituality comes into it. They’re never particularly pleased to learn that she is almost as fond of religion—of God, really—as she is of cancer.

“Ma’am?” Someone touches her shoulder, and she turns to see the flight attendant, reaching past the man in the aisle seat, who is now wide-awake. “Please return your seat to its upright and locked position.”

She does.

“Did you have a nice nap?” asks the chatty passenger, then proceeds to tell her about all his health problems that make it impossible for him to get a good night’s sleep anymore.

As he talks, Elena tries once again to push her thoughts to what lies ahead, but this time she can only think of what happened earlier, right before she got out of the car at the airport.

First, Tony asked her again whether she wanted him to come to Cincinnati with her.

“Thanks,” she said, “but no thanks.”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

Then, his last words to her, right before she slammed the car door, were chilling: “Have it your way. And listen, don’t worry, Elena—your secret is safe with me.”

He waved and pulled away, leaving her to wonder just what he meant by that.

The turtle that started it all had meandered—as turtles have a way of doing—out of a pond on a hot summer’s day.

It looked like a scum-slicked rock, lying there in the sun in the mucky high grass at the edge of the green water. Like a rock that just begged a romping kid to pick it up and throw it into the water, providing a welcome disruption to the late afternoon torpor and making a nice big splash that would cool things off.

That was the plan, anyway.

When you’re five or maybe six years old and you pick up a rock, and a reptile head pokes out at you, hissing like a snake and gnashing teeth strong enough to sever bone and tendon . . .

The power wielded by that snapping turtle was somehow simultaneously terrible and wonderful.

I thought it was some kind of monster.

In a way, it was. The most frightening monsters of childhood imagination lurk in places you’d never expect: beneath the bed, behind the door, inside the closet . . .

It was an important lesson learned, early on: monsters really can cross the threshold of your safe haven and jump out at you when you least expect it, so you’d better keep your guard up and develop some coping mechanisms.

I was lucky that day.

Lucky I didn’t lose a finger . . .

Lucky for a lot of reasons.

Turtles, as it turned out, are viewed in many cultures as harbingers of good fortune.

The incident spurred a lifelong fascination with the fabled creatures, which led, eventually, to
Terrapin Times
.

That was the name of the first blog, the one launched years ago, before many people even knew what a blog was.

Terrapin Terry was the perfect screen name to use for that one. Terry—or T2, as online followers like to say—is an expert on all things turtle-related, comfortably ensconced in a world populated by people who are equally fascinated by the creatures, some to the point of being addicts.

It was positively intoxicating to find so many kindred spirits. But the best was yet to come.

Other blogs.

Other screen names.

Other identities, really, if one chooses to look at it that way. Each a fully formed character with a separate circle of friends.

Online, you can be anyone you want to be.

I have been so many different people . . .

Eventually, it became too exhausting, too complicated, to keep up with them all. Now, the only blogs that are still active are the turtle one and the breast cancer one . . .

And never the twain shall meet.

It’s safe to imagine that the circle of breast cancer bloggers have never heard of Terrapin Terry, and that the turtle fans have never heard of—

Then again, you never know.

Maybe somewhere out there a fellow cancer blogger is following the turtle blog, posting comments under another screen name, with no idea that Terrapin Terry is really—

Probably not. But anything is possible on the Internet. That’s the beauty of it.

The beauty . . . and the danger.

I Get By with a Little Help . . .

After I was diagnosed, my oncologist’s nurse told me that it wasn’t a good idea to keep my feelings bottled up inside. She said it might help to talk to others who were going through the same thing, and that she could put me in touch with a local network through the cancer center.

I said thanks, but no thanks. I was sure I’d be just fine dealing with it on my own.

But I wasn’t. As my treatment progressed—surgery, radiation, medication, reconstruction—I felt more and more isolated.

My family was there for me, of course. They were willing to listen, and I tried, in the beginning, to express my fears and frustrations. But I couldn’t bear seeing uncertainty and dread reflected back at me on their faces.

My father was still alive then. I’m an only child, and I was always Daddy’s girl. Now he was so worried about me that I usually wound up trying to reassure him instead of the other way around. The same was true with my mother, and with my husband. It was hard enough to be strong enough for myself, let alone for everyone else.

Plus, I felt guilty dwelling on my cancer as a constant and depressing conversational topic—not that I had the heart or the energy to discuss anything else.

Finally, I gave in and attended a support group meeting up in Mobile. The other women in the room were in various stages of breast cancer treatment—some, it was obvious, in the final stages. At the first meeting, I listened in silence as the others talked about their own situations, and ranted, and cried.

At last I was surrounded by people who understood what I was going through because they had dealt with—or were dealing with—the same thing. Or worse.

For some, much worse.

At the third meeting, a particularly vocal woman I’d met at the first group session and noticed was conspicuously missing at the second announced that she’d just been given months, maybe just weeks, to live. She was a perfect stranger, but there I was sobbing along with her and the group members who took turns comforting her and each other.

I decided I was never going back there. It was too sad. I couldn’t take it. It made me feel worse, not better.

And so I returned to shouldering the burden in solitary silence. I told myself that I could get through on inner strength, a positive attitude, and faith alone, as my grandmother had forty years ago. Again, I thought I was going to be just fine on my own.

Again, I was wrong. I needed someone. I needed all of you. This is my virtual support group, blessedly free of eye contact and tears. I can show up on my own time and I don’t have to speak if I’m not in the mood, or make excuses if I feel like fleeing abruptly. This is my haven, my home. I thank God every day that I eventually found my way here, and I thank you for being my friends.

—Excerpt from Landry’s blog,
The Breast Cancer Diaries

Chapter 9

Riding the elevator down two floors to the hotel lobby, Landry smooths the skirt of her black dress. It wrinkled pretty badly in her suitcase, and she didn’t dare use the iron in the room. As soon as she plugged it in, she smelled something burning and noticed scorched fabric stuck to the bottom.

She called down for another iron, but it didn’t arrive by the time she had to leave for the funeral, so here she is, rumpled and running a few minutes late to meet Kay and Elena. She feels better, though, every time she looks down at the onyx bracelet Addison made for her. And no matter what happens today—this weekend—she’ll be back home tomorrow night, and everything will be back to blessed normal.

With a ding, the elevator arrives in the lobby and she takes a deep breath as the doors slide open. She’s jittery—in a good way—about the prospect of coming face-to-face at last with friends who’ve been lifesavers in the most literal sense of the word, if positive energy really does have healing powers, as Meredith believed.

Stepping into the lobby, she glances around. It’s not a true budget hotel, but not fancy, either. This is the kind of place frequented by traveling salespeople, families with kids, senior citizens . . .

Bloggers coming face-to-face for the first time . . .

Landry passes the front desk, manned by a young woman reading a paperback romance, and the computer station occupied by a teenage boy, and the darkened dining alcove blocked off by a sign advertising the hours for the free breakfast. Just beyond is a large seating area where she, Elena, and Kay agreed to find each other.

Well, she and Kay agreed, anyway, in text messages exchanged after she checked into the hotel. Elena hasn’t been in touch since before she left Boston, saying her phone battery was almost dead but she would check in with them when she got to the hotel and could plug it into her charger.

The seating area is empty, other than a frazzled-looking young mom sitting on a couch. She’s trying to feed a fussy baby a bottle and scolding a toddler for noisily pushing a luggage cart across the tile floor. In the far corner, a man—probably her husband—has a cell phone clasped against one ear and a palm covering the other ear, as if to tune out the commotion behind him.

Realizing she’s the first to arrive in the lobby, even though she’s late, Landry perches on the arm of a chair perpendicular to the couch and exchanges curious glances with the young mother, wondering if it’s possible . . .

No. No way. The woman is a blonde, and anyway, neither Elena nor Kay has children.

Unless one of them does and didn’t mention it.

But if this woman happens to be one of the bloggers, wouldn’t she be expecting Landry? Wouldn’t she speak up and introduce herself?

What if she doesn’t recognize me? After all, I was younger in my picture, and not nearly as weary, or frumpy, as I am now . . .

And what if . . .

Suddenly, Landry’s situation seems to have gone from promising to precarious. Rob’s warnings—months, years of warnings—fill her head.

You never know who you’re dealing with online. It could be anyone . . . People can make up whatever they want . . . Men can pass themselves off as teenage girls—predators do it all the time . . .

Elena and Kay are her friends, just as Meredith was her friend, and yet . . .

There’s no getting around the fact that they’re strangers. All of them. Strangers, lifesavers . . .

They know her deepest, darkest secrets. They know where she is, and that she’s all alone in a strange city, and what if . . .

What if none of it was real?

She nervously toys with the bracelet, rolling the two silver beads etched with Meredith’s initials between her thumb and forefingers.

What if none of her friends even exists in real life? What if all those personalities were made up; figments of some twisted imagination? Even Meredith?

No—Meredith was real. She has to be real. She was in the newspaper.

But what if—

Behind her the elevator doors ding open.

A woman steps out.

Middle-aged, tall and heavyset, she has plain features and graying shoulder-length hair parted on the side. She’s wearing a black pantsuit that’s a little on the dowdy side for a woman who’s at least a decade shy of her retirement years. With a tentative expression, she looks toward the seating area.

Kay.

It’s her; it has to be her.

Paranoia evaporating, Landry utters the name impulsively, punctuated by an exclamation rather than a question mark.

The woman breaks into a relieved smile and walks toward her in sensible shoes most likely bought on sale at Kohl’s, plus an additional thirty percent off with a coupon, knowing Kay, Landry thinks affectionately.

Getting to her feet, she realizes belatedly she doesn’t know how to greet her friend for the first time.

Handshake? Hug?

Hug, she decides in the last moment.

Kay’s stocky frame seems to stiffen for a moment, and Landry thinks she’s made the wrong choice.

Kay has intimacy issues. Anyone who’s read her blog knows about that. All those years spent with a cold, unfeeling parent, and working in a federal prison, hardly a cozy environment . . .

But then Kay relaxes and she hugs back. Hard. And when they pull away to regard each other at arm’s length, Landry sees tears in Kay’s eyes and can feel them in her own.

She hastily wipes them away with her sleeve, as does Kay.

“Sorry—I didn’t mean to jump on you with a big ol’ hug like a long lost friend without even introducing myself.”

“It’s all right.” Kay smiles, shyly, but warmly. “Landry, right? BamaBelle?”

“That’s me. I was beginning to think no one was going to show up!”

“I thought the same thing! I had to force myself to come down here. I’ve been up there in my room for hours, pacing and trying to convince myself not to turn around and drive back home.”

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Me too.”

They smile at each other, and Landry is suddenly conscious of the young mother watching them, listening with interest, oblivious to her toddler rolling the luggage cart away again, this time toward a corridor lined with first floor rooms.

“Have you seen Elena?”

Kay shakes her head. “I just saw the texts she sent before she took off, saying that her phone was dying.”

“Hopefully she made it here.”

“Hopefully she did.”

There’s a crash down the hall. “Mommy!”

The woman on the couch jumps up, thrusts the baby and its bottle on the man with the cell phone and heads in the direction of the noise.

A split second later a woman in a black dress—Elena, is it Elena?—appears in the hallway, shaking her head as she strides toward the lobby.

Spotting Landry and Kay, she breaks into a smile and calls out, “Is that you, guys?” Without waiting for a reply, she adds, “I just had a close call! I nearly just got run over by a luggage cart.”

Cart
is pronounced “caht,” New England style. Landry grins. Definitely Elena.

This time a hug feels right from the start.

As she and Elena embrace, Landry catches a whiff of alcohol on her breath. She must have had a drink on the plane, or maybe after she landed. Probably nerves. Who can blame her?

Elena steps back to take a better look at them. “You’re both just the way I pictured you.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” Landry agrees. “I’d know y’all anywhere.”

“Me too. I just wish . . .” Kay trails off, shaking her head.

Remembering Meredith, Landry touches Kay’s hand. Her fingers are icy. “I know. It’s hard.”

Kay moves her hand away to look at her watch. “We should go. It’s late. Can one of you drive? I . . . I forgot to fill up the gas tank after we got here.”

“I will,” Elena offers, but Landry is already pulling her own rental car keys out of her pocket.

“That’s okay. I’ll drive.”

“I don’t mind. I’m parked right out front.”

“I’ve already got the address plugged into the GPS,” Landry tells Elena firmly. “Really. I want to drive.”

“That’s fine if you’re sure you really want to. Just so you know you don’t
need
to,” Elena says, and for a moment Landry is taken aback.

Then she sees Elena’s smile.

“Remember that blog Meredith wrote?” Elena asks them. “The one about the difference between wanting something and needing something?”

“I remember it,” Kay says as Landry nods. “It was one of her better blogs. But there were so many good ones. A lot of the things she wrote keep coming back to me now. It’s kind of comforting. Almost like she’s still talking to me, you know?”

“Sometimes I feel the same way,” Landry says, and Elena agrees that she does as well.

As they head out into the bright June sunshine and across the parking lot, Landry can’t help but think that she really doesn’t just
want
to drive—she
needs
to. After all she’s been through—and all the lectures she’s given her teenagers—there’s absolutely no way she’s getting into a car with a driver she suspects has been drinking. Elena doesn’t seem the least bit inebriated—for all Landry knows, that was just mouthwash she sniffed on her breath—but there’s no need to take chances.

As the rental car comes into view, Landry aims the electronic key and presses the button to unlock the doors. If she were back home with her kids, this is the point where they’d both yell, “I call shotgun!” and race each other for the front passenger seat.

She turns to Kay and Elena to joke about it, but quickly changes her mind. Elena has stopped in her tracks behind them, frowning as she looks at her cell phone. Her energy is completely different now, Landry notices; not a hint of the bubbly, upbeat woman who burst into the lobby a few minutes ago.

“Everything okay?” Landry asks her.

“Hmmm? Oh . . . yes. It’s fine. I was just getting a call from a friend back home that I’d rather not answer right now. Some people will drive you crazy if you let them, you know?”

Landry thinks of Barbie June. “I know.”

“I’m just going to turn off the phone.” Elena holds down the power button. “I didn’t have time to fully charge it back up anyway, so I might as well conserve battery power for now.” She shoves it back into her purse and looks up.

“Okay—I’m good to go,” she says brightly, and resumes walking toward the car at a jaunty pace.

Noticing that Elena seems to have bounced back just as quickly as she’d faltered, Landry can’t help but wonder about the friend who’d tried to call her just now.

The drive to McGraw’s Funeral Home takes less than five minutes, though there’s more traffic now than when Kay did her morning drive-by.

She’s glad to see that although the bowling alley parking lot looks busy, no one is using the swimming pool at the duplex next door, as she’d feared. It would be disrespectful to Meredith if people were splashing around and having a good old time in their bathing suits just a stone’s throw from her remains.

“Oh my goodness, the parking lot is completely full,” Landry murmurs, slowly driving past rows of occupied spots. “Do y’all see anything?”

“I think you’d better follow those signs for the overflow lot,” Elena advises, pointing.

“Wait—is that a space?” Landry hits the brakes.

It isn’t.

“Let’s just go to the overflow,” Elena urges again, checking her watch.

There’s no denying she’s a bit of a backseat driver. If she were at the wheel, Kay thought, she’d be intimidated by Elena’s control freak tendencies, but she notices they don’t seem to bother Landry. The two of them have kept up a steady stream of conversation on the way over. Kay couldn’t get a word in edgewise—not that she’s tried.

Most of the chatter was about kids—Landry’s two teenagers and Elena’s first grade students.

Having never had children—or, really, even known them in the course of her adult life—Kay has nothing to contribute in that regard. But lack of conversational connection isn’t her sole reason for keeping quiet. Mostly, she’s preoccupied with what lies ahead.

In her opinion, Landry and Elena aren’t quite mindful enough of the reason they’re all here: to say good-bye to Meredith.

The solemn nature of the occasion does seem to sink in as they walk toward the funeral home, though, as the other women fall silent at last.

That Meredith left behind dozens—no,
hundreds
—of people who loved her is obvious the moment they cross the threshold into the large chapel adjacent to the foyer. An endless line snakes through the hushed room, weaving up and down rows of folding chairs.

She, Elena, and Landry join the mourners gradually making their way up to the bereaved family standing beside the large urn that holds Meredith’s remains.

As they await their turn, Kay studies the Heywoods.

She’s heard so much about them over the years that it’s easy for her to tell them apart. Gray-haired Hank, of course, is obviously Meredith’s husband. But Kay can easily see which of the three young women is her daughter—Beck looks a lot like her mother.

She can tell the two daughters-in-law apart, too: Teddy’s wife, Sue, is pregnant; Neal’s wife, Kelly, is the redhead.

As for the brothers, they look quite a bit like each other and their father, but Kay remembers that Neal, the middle son, is the tallest one in the family, much to his older brother’s frustration when they were growing up. Meredith blogged about that once.

By default, the fourth man in the family—the serious-looking bearded fellow—would have to be Meredith’s son-in-law, Keith.

Only the grandchildren—her beloved “stinkerdoodles”—are missing.

So these are the people Meredith lived for, the people she couldn’t bear the thought of “abandoning,” as she put it.

It’s not that I don’t think they’ll survive without me,
Meredith wrote to her on the day they both confessed that their illnesses had progressed.
In fact, financially, they’ll be better off, that’s for sure. I’m like George Bailey.

Kay didn’t understand that reference, not even after she quickly Googled the name and found that George Bailey was a character in the old movie
It’s a Wonderful Life.
She’s never seen it. She isn’t big on movies; hasn’t caught a film or even turned on the television in years.