LITMIR.BIZ

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laugh with boys but still act like a girl. Her family was from Los Angeles and she wasn’t happy about moving to Port Hamilton, which she considered a hick town that she intended to leave as soon as she could. Elizabeth was always talking about how things were in Los Angeles: the way the girls dressed, the cool places kids hung out, the movie stars all over the place. And when Elizabeth talked, everyone listened, boys and girls.

      Before Elizabeth, Sarah had never given a moment’s thought to her appearance, but Elizabeth’s long silky hair made her painfully self-conscious about her own unruly curls, about the freckles that spattered her cheeks and nose and her skinny, boyish frame. More than that, Elizabeth forced her to acknowledge there really was a difference between the way boys and girls behaved.

      It was also while watching Elizabeth that Sarah first realized she lacked the ability to do what others girls seemed to do naturally. Elizabeth danced with her head at just the right angle to look up into a boy’s eyes. Elizabeth could walk into the Parrot Cage, where the kids hung out after school, and all the boys crowded round her, falling over themselves to get her attention. Matthew included.

      Before Sarah realized what was happening, it was no longer just Matthew and Sarah, the way it had always been. It was Matthew, Sarah and Elizabeth. And then Matthew and Elizabeth. One night he’d started telling her about Elizabeth. “She’s sweet and pretty and…” He’d shaken his head as though words alone weren’t adequate to sum up Elizabeth.

      “Wow,” Sarah had said, “sounds serious. Like you’re in love with her.”

      “I think I might be.”

      And Sarah had forced herself to smile.

      “The thing is, I can’t talk to her the way I talk to you,” he’d gone on to tell her. “She doesn’t get my jokes.”

      “Yeah, but she’s pretty.”

      And then, safe in her own room, Sarah had cried herself to sleep.

      By the time Matthew went off to premed in Seattle, he and Elizabeth were officially a couple. Sarah had immersed herself in her own studies and, for the first time in her life, days and weeks, then months went by when she didn’t think about Matthew. But never, ever, did she stop loving him.

      The night he married Elizabeth, Sarah had wandered away from the reception out to the small patch of beach just past the hotel. Matthew had found her sitting on a piece of driftwood, staring out at the water. Allergies, she’d said when he’d asked about her red eyes. And then she’d hugged him. “I hope you and Elizabeth will be very happy.”

      The following year, she’d gone off to medical school herself and met Ted, a fellow student. Ted, a gentle dreamer who wanted only to help. His death still haunted her dreams.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      LUCY CALLED just as Matthew was leaving the house to pick up Sarah.

      “Daddy.” A pause. “Can I come with you to Frugals?”

      “I didn’t think you liked it,” Matthew said. “You never want to go when I suggest it.”

      “But I do this time.”

      “How about tomorrow?”

      “Daddy.” Her tone turned wheedling. “I’m hungry now.”

      He laughed. “Well, I’m sure you can find something in the house to eat.” He glanced at his watch. “Listen, Lulu, I’m running late.”

      “To see Sarah?”

      “Right.”

      “Why can’t I go?”

      He frowned. “Lucy, what’s this about?”

      “Nothing. I just want to go with you.”

      “Not this time.” He could almost feel the sullenness of the silence on her end and, although she’d never shown any interest in the women he occasionally introduced her to, he sensed something different. “But I do want you to meet Sarah. You’re going to like her a lot.”

      “Yeah, right.”

      “Lucy?”

      “What?”

      “Come on, honey.”

      “I gotta go,” she said.

      He heard the disconnect, debated whether to call back, then decided against it. No real reason she couldn’t come along, but it had been years since he’d seen Sarah and, he reasoned, Lucy would be bored listening to them play catch-up.

      THE TEST OF A TRUE FRIENDSHIP, he later decided was how easily you could slip back into a natural rhythm. Sarah looked like a slightly older version of the Sarah he’d always known. Skinny bordering on scrawny, the small triangular face and shrewd gray eyes that seemed to bore right through any kind of dissembling. Hair always dated people, but Sarah wore her reddish brown hair just as she always had, in a thick, heavy braid that came halfway down her back. The row of small silver hoops in her ears were new, as were a few lines around the eyes. He could imagine her squinting into the bright sunlight. No sunglasses for Sarah. He’d teased her about the sprinkle of gray and she’d done the same to him.

      After they picked up the burgers, they’d driven out to the end of Forbe’s Hook, found a spot on the rocks and watched the sun dissolve into the water.

      “So what are your plans now?” he asked as the sky turned to shades of pink and red. “Are you going to stick around for a while?’

      Head down, Sarah picked at the threadbare knee of her jeans. “Actually, I am.”

      He waited a moment. “And?”

      “I have a plan.”

      Matthew grinned. “You’ve always had a plan.”

      “This is different. This is a grown-up plan. A huge plan. And it involves you.”

      As Matthew dug around in the paper sack for more fries, he felt the shift in her mood. Whatever Sarah’s huge plan turned out to be, he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hear it. Her presence had been a welcome distraction from the looming Compassionate Medical Systems crisis, and he felt a reluctance to be drawn into more serious discussion. He also knew that Sarah in full-steam-ahead mode could be nigh on impossible to stop.

      She shot him a glance. “You want to hear it?”

      “Do I have a choice?”

      “You sound tired, Matthew.”

      “I am.”

      “Work?”

      “Essentially.” In the gathering darkness, he saw the glimmer of a smile flicker across Sarah’s face. “Don’t tell me, your plan is the solution.”

      “It could be.”

      He gave in to the inevitable. “Tell me.”

      “Okay.” She drew in a breath. “Remember when you first started medical school, you used to talk about the kind of medical practice you wanted to have? Not just treating disease and patients who were already sick, but patient-centered care that promoted wellness with traditional healing arts, home mind-body therapy—”

      Matthew groaned.

      “What?”

      “Tell me I was never that hopelessly naive.”

      Sarah turned to face him. Eyes gleaming, body tensed, she seemed a cat poised to pounce. He braced himself.

      “Matthew,” she said, “listen to me. There’s nothing naive about that. It’s exactly what I want to do. What I want us both to do. An integrated approach that doesn’t abandon mainstream medicine. I mean, kids are still going to break bones or need surgery…”

      Presumably where he came in, he thought, as he listened to her describe the practice they would set up together along with herbalists, hypnotherpists and an assortment of other

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