Holly was caught off guard. She’d not given her senior prom a single thought. They were eating lunch in the commons area of the high school, rather than in the cafeteria, because it was Senior Privileges Day. “Good question. I don’t know.”
“Don’t you want to go? You used to talk about it all the time.”
“I used to talk about a lot of stuff that doesn’t mean much to me now.”
“But you have a boyfriend. And it is the prom.”
“Are you going to Carson’s prom too?”
“He said it didn’t matter to him which one we went to, and told me to pick whichever one I wanted to attend, because he wasn’t getting into a tux two times in one month.”
Holly smiled. “And you picked ours. How loyal.”
“I don’t like the snobby crowd at Bryce.”
“I guess you’ll be getting a new dress.”
“Absolutely. Mom’s in a great mood these days, what with her engagement and all.” Kathleen rolled her eyes. “I’m buying the coolest dress I can find. We could shop together,” she added hopefully. “Do you want to go with Chad?” Kathleen asked suddenly, having doubts for the first time. “I mean, is there anyone else in the picture?”
“Ben, but I’d have to check him out of the hospital for the night and he’d have to stay up past his bedtime.”
Kathleen took a bite of her sandwich. “Have you, um, kissed him yet? Chad, I mean.”
“Nope. I don’t think either one of us has gotten up the nerve. He’s self-conscious about his CF. And I’m not sure I want to go there with him.”
Kathleen recalled how much angst she’d suffered before kissing Carson. “Well, the first kiss is the hardest. After that, it’s really fun.”
“We’d go together, right?”
“Four peas in a pod.”
“I guess Raina won’t be going.”
“Can’t imagine it. Funny, you know—I always thought I’d be the one sitting home on prom night.”
“Me too,” Holly said.
Chad seemed overjoyed when Holly invited him to her prom, asking her more questions than she’d have thought possible, but she was patient with him, reminding herself that Chad was homeschooled and didn’t know a lot about regular high school life. “Call Carson for more details,” she said finally. “He knows all that guy stuff.”
“I know enough to ask what color dress you’re wearing.”
“I’ll let you know when I buy it.”
He was quiet. “Thanks, Holly. It means a lot for you to ask me.”
“We’ll have fun,” she said lightly, hoping he wouldn’t read more into the invitation than she meant. No use in either of them getting psyched up for more than they might ever be able to give each other.
nineteen
EASTER CAME EARLY, and spring break was scheduled for the last week in March. The prom was set for the second weekend in April. While most of Holly’s classmates drifted farther south to beaches and parties, she intended to spend every free minute at the hospital, along with Raina and Kathleen, who had declined Carson’s invitation to head to Miami with him and some of his friends.
“But what if that horrible Stephanie goes and you’re not there to protect your turf?” Raina asked Kathleen when she told them.
“I guess I’ll just have to trust him,” Kathleen said. “And besides, the party scene just isn’t me. We’d probably just fight the whole time.”
“And—?” Holly asked, sensing there was more to the story.
“And my mom won’t let me go.”
“Aha!” Raina said.
“I’m living at home; Mom still calls the shots.”
“Maybe we can go to one of the big new movies,” Holly suggested. “Some good ones are opening Easter weekend.”
“Suits me,” Raina said. “Nothing else to do.”
So they agreed to spend the holiday attending one movie after the other.
Holly was relieved because she had been dreading the Easter holidays. Easter Sunday had always been celebrated with new clothes, a sunrise church service and breakfast in the church fellowship hall served by the youth group, followed by the regular church service and then a huge meal at home with her family and many invited friends. Her mother cooked for days, preparing for the big feast. This year, everything was going to be different. Holly was too old for chocolate bunnies and baskets of colored eggs. What she wanted was for things to be the same as before Hunter’s death. What she wanted was to not repeat the disastrous Christmas holiday.
When she drove home after her day-long shift on Thursday, she was surprised to open the front door to the aroma of cooking food. She found her mother in the kitchen busily preparing supper and putting away sacks full of groceries. “Good. You’re home,” Evelyn said. “Dinner’s just about ready.”
“You’re cooking?”
“Don’t looked so shocked. I still remember how.” Evelyn lifted the lid on a frying pan and stirred the contents. “Help put things away. We’re having Kevin and his wife and a few others over on Sunday. I got a huge ham, so you’ll have to move things around to get it in the fridge.”
Kevin was the youth director at their church and had been a good friend of Hunter’s. Holly started unloading the bags. “You’ve got a lot of food here.”
“It’s going to be a big meal. Don’t make plans on Saturday. I’ll need your help.”
“Um—what’s happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You—you just seem … different.”
Evelyn slid a wooden spoon onto the stove-top. Her expression looked solemn but serene. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I think it’s time I returned to the land of the living.”
This was the mother Holly had been missing. “What … brought you back?”
Evelyn held Holly’s gaze. “A moth. And you.”
Holly almost said something flip, but the look on her mother’s face was serious. She couldn’t imagine how either she or a moth was relevant to her mother’s change of heart, and couldn’t quite decide on the explanation she wanted to hear first. After a second, she said, “Okay, I’m curious—how did a moth change you?”
Evelyn turned down the flame under the frying pan, went to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. “Sit.”
Holly settled across from her mother and waited patiently while Evelyn gathered her thoughts.
“I was standing at my bedroom window the other day. I was alone and the house was quiet. Like a tomb. And then I heard this tapping sound and I looked down. I saw a moth frantically flapping its wings against the glass pane, trying to get outside. And I thought, ‘Stupid bug. You can’t go through solid glass.’ I told the moth that it was useless; it would never get out that way.” She half smiled. “Stupid me, huh? Talking to a moth. The moth was destroying itself, Holly. The fine powder of its wings was coming off on the glass, collecting on the windowsill, and without the powder, it wouldn’t be able to fly, even if it got outside, which it wouldn’t.” Evelyn paused. “Then I realized that I was like that moth.”
The image burned vividly in Holly’s mind—the flailing moth, the sunlight pouring through the glass, beckoning to the bug’s primitive instinct to soar toward the bright light.
Moisture filled Evelyn’s eyes. “All these months, I’ve been beating my wings against the glass, trying to find a way out of all this pain, and blaming God for taking away my son. I can’t bring Hunter back. Hating God won’t do it. Isolating myself from my family won’t do it. He’s gone from this life forever.”
She took a deep shuddering breath. Holly’s eyes filled with tears of empathy. What her mother had said was true. Hunter would never return to them. “But,” Evelyn added firmly, “although I won’t see him here, on this side of time, I still believe that I will see him on the other side. In heaven.”
The room went quiet until only the bubbling of the pan on the stove could be heard. Outside, a car horn blared. Across the room, the refrigerator hummed. For her mother,
nothing had changed and everything had changed. Holly longed to feel the same kind of revelation, but she was confused. Was heaven even real? Could she believe in such a place again? It seemed so childlike, so much like a fairy tale.
Evelyn said, “Ironic, isn’t it—how the most ordinary things in life can shine a spotlight into the darkest places of a person’s heart and bring understanding.”
“And what about me, Mom? What did I do to change things for you?”
Evelyn plucked a napkin from the holder on the table and blew her nose. “After we talked that day you told me about Ben, I realized that I had given you a wrong impression.”
“What was that?”
“I haven’t lost my faith in God, Holly. But I did lose my way to him. In spite of how I’ve acted, I still believe in him. I’m mad at him—furious—but I still believe. God is my only hope for going on with this life, in order to enjoy the next one. I—I don’t want you to lose your faith because of me.”
“I’m not so sure I feel the same way as you do, Mom.” It was a difficult thing for Holly to admit, but she wanted to be honest too. She expected a lecture, and braced for it.
Instead, Evelyn said, “I can’t give you faith, Holly. I can raise you in faith. I can teach you what I believe, but faith is for you alone to discover.”
“I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”
“That’s fine. You will eventually.” Evelyn reached across the table, clasped Holly’s hand. “I love you, Holly. With all my heart. I’m so sorry I checked out on you and your father for so long.”
Holly shrugged self-consciously. “I knew you were hurting. It’s okay.”
“We all were hurting.”
Holly searched the raw exposed emotion etched into her mother’s features. She saw tiny lines at the corners of her mother’s eyes and mouth. She saw gray hairs nestled in the mass of dark hair around her face. When had that happened? Holly cleared her throat. “What happened to the moth?”
“I caught it in a plastic cup, opened the screen and tossed it at the sky. It seemed the right thing to do.”
For days, Holly thought about their conversation, long after Easter was gone and April had come. She was glad that her mother had found a way out of her self-imposed exile and pain. But for Holly, it was more complex. The loss of Hunter had shaken her world in more ways than just the horrible loss of her brother. She no longer felt safe with the things she had believed in while growing up. She no longer felt protected and comfortable with her parents’ values, or their beliefs. The fact that she attended church with God-fearing parents did not shelter her from evil. That childhood world was gone now. In its place was uncertainty, a sense of indecision, of being stalled, of wanting to know what to think and believe, but of being unable to figure out where all the pieces fit that shaped the new and unexplored configuration of her life.
twenty
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL.”
The expression on Chad’s face as he said the words made Holly blush. Dressed in her floor-length prom dress of midnight blue, she felt beautiful. She took the corsage he held out, a cluster of pale pink baby roses, and handed it to her mother so she could pin it onto the tiny strap of the dress.
“Stand here,” her father said. “Let me get another picture.”
“Daddy! We’ve already taken a ton of pictures. Carson and Kathleen are waiting.”
“One more won’t hurt.” Mike focused the lens and fired off two shots. “Be careful,” he added as Chad reached for the door. “And call us when you get to that party.”
“We will,” Holly sang over her shoulder. Once the prom was over at midnight, a “safe” party was being sponsored out at the lake house of a senior’s parents. A hot local band had been hired, and chaperones would be highly visible to make sure that no one drank anything stronger than soda. Breakfast would be served too. Plenty of kids were skipping the party, but it was the only way that Holly would be allowed to stay out all night, so she and her friends were going.
Outside, Chad took her hand. At the end of her driveway, a white limo purred, courtesy of Carson. The driver opened the door and Holly and Chad climbed inside. “Wow,” Carson said. “You look great, Holly.”
The couples were sitting across from each other on plush white leather seats in the air-conditioned car. Soft music played. Kathleen said, “Fabulous, girlfriend.”
“Right back at you,” Holly said. Kathleen was dressed in a long pale aqua satin sheath, her red hair piled atop her head and sprinkled with glitter, and she wore pearl drop earrings. She looked sleek and sophisticated.
They had bought their dresses together during a marathon day of shopping, with Holly shuttling them to small, trendy boutiques instead of the big department stores.
“Cool wheels,” Chad said.
“It’s ours until the sun rises,” Carson said. “Let’s make the most of it.” He dimmed the interior lights, opened an ice chest and extracted a bottle of sparkling cider. “I would have brought the real bubbly, but Dad went over the car with a microscope and then threatened the driver with a lawsuit if any booze appeared.”
Kathleen patted his leg. “We’ll survive, party boy.”
He found glasses in a console and poured them each some of the sweet carbonated drink. They raised their glasses in a toast. “Here’s to the most famous night of senior passage—the prom.”
Holly locked gazes with Kathleen, and each knew what the other was thinking—if only Raina and Hunter were with them, the evening would be absolutely perfect. Hunter should have been there. If only …
Raina had signed on for an all-nighter at the hospital, going in at seven with the graveyard shift. A macabre way to spend prom night, she thought, but it was the way she’d wanted to spend it. The hospital was like a different place at night, amazingly busy, with staffers getting patients medicated and settled and making sure that all nonessential visitors were gone. By ten o’clock, the rooms were dark, hall lights had been dimmed, and nurses’ stations glowed like small islands in a sea of semi-darkness. Vicki had told Raina that if she got sleepy, she should go to her office and nap on the sofa. She’d left a soft throw and a pillow, but Raina knew she wouldn’t be using them.
She thought about Kathleen and Holly, pictured them having fun, and was glad for them. Two different boys had asked her, but she’d simply shaken her head. She’d not gone to Hunter’s prom either because he’d taken early admission and had been away at college when his prom night rolled around. “We’ll go to yours next year,” he’d promised. Except, of course, they couldn’t. No matter. She thought the event highly overrated anyway. And without Hunter—well, it mattered even less to her.
The prom was being held at the Don CeSar, one of St. Petersburg’s oldest and most prestigious hotels, overlooking the bay. The main ballroom had been transformed into an undersea fantasy world with giant clamshells that opened and blew streams of bubbles high into the air. Tables draped in blue linen and lit with votives lined the room and clustered in a circular arrangement at one end. A dance floor filled the other end. A live band and DJ worked in the stage area. “Who picked these guys?” Carson asked, frowning.
“The prom committee, but they were closely supervised, and anybody with a nose ring was automatically disqualified,” Kathleen said with a shrug.
Carson looked disgusted. “They’re not very good.”
“Ambiance,” Kathleen joked, kissing his cheek.
A giant movie-style screen provided a backdrop on one wall. Underwater scenes floated past, showing bright schools of fish and forests of coral. “So when does Nemo arrive?” Holly asked.
“Good one,” Carson said, giving her a high five.
“Will you two make an attitude adjustment?” Kathleen said.
Chad hooked his arm around Holly’s waist. “Let’s dance.”
She was nervous about dancing with him, but they went onto the floor and he took her in his arms because the band was playing a slow song. He nuzzled her ear, sending shivers up her
back. “I think everything looks cool.”
“You’re just being nice.”
“Nothing could bother me tonight. We’re together.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she skirted the topic. “How’s your sailboat?”
“In dry dock for a coat of paint. Me and my dad are doing it because she’s small and we can work on her together.” He pulled back. “Would you like to sail with me again when she’s back in the water? You’re good at the tiller.”
“We’ll see. Maybe,” she added when he looked disappointed.
“What about next year? Will you stay in Florida?” He sounded hopeful.
“I’m not sure yet. Acceptance letters are arriving, but I haven’t decided where I want to go to college. How about you? You going to college?”
“Probably USF, St. Pete campus. I might get an apartment because the commute’s too far for everyday driving. I can manage my CF without my mommy, you know.”
She felt her cheeks redden. He wasn’t an invalid, and she might have given him the impression that she thought so.
“If we both stay in state come this fall, maybe we can see each other. On occasion,” he added quickly. “I know you don’t want to be tied down.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she said truthfully as the song ended. “I’m still looking for what it is. When I find out, I’ll let you know.”
By midnight, the hospital was very quiet for the most part, and Raina was drifting from floor to floor trying to figure out where to spend the rest of the night. The emergency room was full, but she didn’t like hanging there. Nor did she like the ICU floors. Too much life and death going on. She ended up on the floor with the labor rooms and was walking the hall toward the newborns’ nursery when a woman called to her from a doorway. “Hey, you, Pink Angel.”
Raina turned and saw a woman wearing scrubs. “Yes?”
“Raina?” The woman didn’t wait for confirmation. “I remember you from when you helped in the nursery. I’m Cathy, a midwife. Listen, this place is hopping tonight and we’re short-staffed. Must be a full moon. Every room is full, and this gal is about to deliver. Can you help?”