Wish Upon a Star (17 page)

My search complete, I headed for the bathroom. Her
medications were the only things that were missing. Of course, she
could pick up things like a tooth brush and body lotion anywhere.
Further inspection of the condo revealed she'd taken her phone,
laptop and purse. Her car was gone, too. Annie had done all this, and
I'd never heard a sound.

I debated calling Miranda, but decided against it. I didn't
need her freaking out. She and Annie had become such good friends I
didn't want to pull her into the middle of something. At least until I
had clue as to what that something might be.

She'd left almost everything behind. So did that mean she'd
taken off for good? If so, why write the note? I rubbed the back of my
neck. She'd have to come back. She had further treatment to
complete—unless she wanted to get new docs out there. Hell, it'd
been easy enough to transfer her medical records from California to
here. A phone call could just as easily send the new records
there.

To keep from crumbling into a blind panic, I kept busy by
looking for anything else Annie may have left. There were no text or
voice mail messages on my phone. The only new message in my
email was a request for volunteers to help out with the upcoming
Ride Across Indiana. Desperate, I made a return trip to the garage
and looked through my car for a note or...something.

There was nothing.

I needed to get out of the condo, but I was too frazzled to
drive or ride, so I walked into Broad Ripple. After debating my next
step over some frozen yogurt, I finally called Miranda.

"Annie what?"

"She left me a note this morning that she was heading back
to California and wanted me to leave her alone."

"Oh my lord, E.J. What did you do?"

The accusatory tone in Miranda's voice raised my hackles.
"Nothing. We were having breakfast yesterday and were talking
about the wedding invitations, and she got mad at me and the next
thing I know, she's gone."

"What were you talking about? I mean specifically."

I ran my fingers through my hair. "I don't know. I think I
mentioned that it might be a good idea to postpone the wedding, or
something like that, and—"

"No, please don't tell me you did that."

I got up and threw my empty yogurt bowl away. "Didn't do
what?"

Miranda let out along breath. "Did you suggest postponing
the wedding?"

"Well, yeah."

"Oh E.J., why would you do that?" Her voice carried more
disappointment than my mom's ever did.

"Maybe because she's just coming off eight rounds of
chemotherapy. Maybe because she still has to go through a double
mastectomy and reconstruction surgery in the same day. Maybe
because she still might have a bunch of radiation treatments after
that. I don't know Miranda, with all that on her plate, I can't imagine
why postponing the wedding to give her a little time to recover from
everything would come up."

There was silence on the line. My anger and confusion made
me want to lay on the sarcasm even more, but Miranda's history as
Mom's nurse kept me from saying anything stupid. I'd called her,
after all.

"We need to talk, face to face. There's something I need to
explain to you. I'll come by your place after work. In the meantime,
promise me you won't try to contact Annie."

"Why? Miranda, I don't—"

"Just promise me. I'll explain everything tonight."

The call had left me even more frustrated, so I trudged back
to the condo, kicking every pebble I saw off the trail. I wondered if G
might know something since she'd just visited. I didn't want to add
another person to this witch's brew of turmoil though, so instead, I
paid a visit to my Fluid Druid therapist and spent the afternoon
touring the counties north of Indy on two wheels.

As was always the case, the ride calmed my haywire nerves
and cleared my muddled head, so by the time Miranda rang the
doorbell, I was reasonably calm and collected. We munched on the
pizza I'd ordered while we got caught up. After her second piece she
went to the couch and patted the spot next to her.

It was time.

I joined her, dragonflies buzzing around in my gut. My hand
went to my knee to keep my foot steady on the floor.

"E.J., I want to start off by letting you know that I haven't
spoken to Annie, so everything I tell you is my opinion only. As you
like to say, I don't have any inside information."

We both chuckled, which brought the tension down a notch
or two.

"I know Annie means a great deal to you. And I know you've
been through your own version of hell these past few months. I can't
imagine how difficult it's been."

With a nod, I looked at my friend. "You know what's been
the worst? Watching her get sick, lose her hair, lose all that weight,
and not being able to doing a damn thing about it. Do you have any
idea how helpless that feels?"

The corners of Miranda's lips quivered just a fraction and
she nodded.

Mom.

"Yeah, I guess you do."

She patted me on the arm. "I'm not here to talk about your
mom. I'm here to talk about your fiancé. What you just said bears
greatly on the situation, though."

"How so?"

"You said you felt helpless watching Annie get sick, lose her
hair, lose weight. After all that, how do you think she feels?"

I recalled the conversation we'd had on the patio. "She said
she was scared."

"Scared, yes. You need to realize she's feeling more
vulnerable than you can possibly imagine right now. Whether we're
willing to admit it or not, we all base some of our self-worth on our
appearance. And in the span of just a few months, bam, out of the
blue, Annie's gone from a glamorous, self-assured rock star to a
woman who barely recognizes herself when she looks in the
mirror."

"Okay, I get that."

"That's only part of it though. As hard as the chemotherapy
has been, its effects will eventually go away. The hair will return and
the weight will come back. What's she's facing next is permanent,
though. When she undergoes that double mastectomy, she's going to
lose a part of her that can never come back. A part that plays a role in
who she is as a woman.

"Even if she hasn't said a word to you about it, I can assure
you that losing her breasts has Annie absolutely terrified."

"Which is why I want to delay the wedding." I got up and
stomped into the kitchen. "I'll freely admit, I have no idea how hard
this is for her. But I want her to get better. And because of that, I
want her to be able to focus on her health without worrying about
things like invitations and the decorations and catering."

I pulled a beer out of the fridge and popped the top. "Once
she's recovered from all this, then we pick up where we left off. It's
not like I was thinking years, I was only thinking a couple of
months."

Miranda smiled, the indulgent smile of one who has great
patience. "I understand. I think it's a testament to your commitment
to Annie that you want to do what you see as the right thing. What
you need to understand though, is that from Annie's perspective,
delaying the wedding, even for a single day, is not the right
decision."

"How the hell can that be?"

Miranda joined me in the kitchen. "It's like this. You're
approaching this from a very concrete—dare I say male—perspective.
You think the logical thing to do is remove as many distractions from
Annie's life as possible so she can focus on getting better. If I recall,
your mother called it compartmentalization."

I nodded.

"From Annie's perspective, this is not a matter of logic. Right
now she feels like she's damaged goods. She's using the wedding as a
goal to help get her through this. It's her podium ceremony. In her
mind, she can tolerate all this pain and all this suffering because she
knows on Saturday, October Thirteenth, her cancer will be behind
her and she'll be walking down the aisle in that gorgeous dress to
marry the man she loves.

"By even suggesting you delay the wedding, she thinks
you're rejecting her."

"But I'm not." It was taking all my willpower to keep from
shouting.

"I know that, and logically she probably knows that, too. But
we're not talking logic here. We're talking emotion.

"On an emotional level, she hears you say let's delay the
wedding and she thinks that's your first step in looking for a way out.
After you've postponed the wedding once, how hard will it be to
postpone it again, indefinitely? She's afraid you'll look at her and
think, 'This is way more than I bargained for. Instead of getting the
whole package, I'm only getting part of a woman.'"

I slammed the beer on the counter. Foam bubbled out the
top. "That's bullshit. I would never think that about her. I love who
she is, on the inside. Hell, back when we were in the park in Malibu
when I asked her to give us a chance, that's what I said. It's her heart
and her mind, the stuff on the inside, that matters."

Miranda took a deep breath. "I know this is hard, E.J., and I
believe you. I'm just telling you this is how I'd bet Annie's feeling
right now. I'm not saying it's right, or fair, to you. I'm just saying it is
what it is."

"So what the hell am I supposed to do now?"

"You need to think about her behavior and be
understanding. Let me ask you this. Has she ever talked about any
big break-ups in the past or any times some guy dumped her that
was really traumatic?"

I racked my brain, trying to find something along that line
that Annie would have mentioned. There was nothing. I shook my
head.

"Well, what about being rejected? Was there ever a movie
role she wanted that she didn't get, or—"

"When her stage play got shut down. She talked about not
being able to handle the all the rejection from the reviews and bad
ticket sales."

"And what did she do when that happened?"

"She told me that she'd holed up in her New York condo for
a few days. When it got too much for her, she panicked, her words
not mine, and headed for L.A."

Miranda put her hands in her pockets. "She went
home."

"Just like today."

Damn.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. A major stress
headache was steamrolling its way into my brain.

"So what do I do now?"

"Talk to her. She may be hurting right now, but you're still
the person she trusts more than anyone. And she loves you. So do
what she loves best about you and speak from your heart."

"How will I know what to say?"

Miranda chuckled and put her arm around me. "Let me offer
you a piece of womanly advice. Start with three words women love
to hear from their men. We love these words because we so rarely
hear them."

"I love you?"

"Nope." She flashed a wide grin. "I'd suggest 'I am
sorry.'"

After Miranda and I said our goodbyes, I dropped into my
man chair. With the remote in hand, I surfed for a while, but the
greens and reds and blues on the screen barely registered. They
couldn't compete with this latest crisis.

How had an innocent, well-meaning suggestion managed to
wreak so much havoc? I traded the remote for my phone and stared
at the screen.
To call or not to call
. My finger had almost
reached the send button when something held me back. I tossed the
phone on the couch and growled.

No, calling her tonight would be a bad idea. First, I didn't
even know if she was home yet. Second, I wasn't sure if she even
wanted to speak to me. Third, even if she was willing to speak to me,
I wasn't sure I wouldn't end up getting mad at her because, despite
Miranda's advice, it still seemed like Annie was overreacting.

In the end, I grabbed another beer and polished off the
left-over pizza feeling sorry for myself. I'd tried to do everything right.
When she'd needed to vent, I'd listened. When she'd wanted a task
taken care of, I'd done whatever she'd asked. Yet here I was.

In limbo.

Before heading to bed, I checked my calendar. My headache
ratcheted up another notch when I saw the appointment to
volunteer at the Bike Co-op in the morning. It was going to be
so
much fun telling Gloria about all this.

When I got to the Co-op, I spent some time visiting with
Aidan to see how things were going for Velo Messenger &
Delivery, the bicycle messenger service I'd founded that was housed
in the Co-op. While the Company was legally mine, in practice it was
Aidan's. Since I'd handed the reins over to him a little over a year
ago, I'd kept my nose out of it.

It felt good to hang out for a while and chat about business.
Aidan was a sharp guy and as I left his office to check in with Gloria,
VMD's future looked bright.

I don't know if Miranda had spoken with G or not, but she
gave me a pretty wide berth after I checked in with her. Other than
asking how it was going with my brake pad inspection when she
dropped off a large sized iced tea, she left me alone. The look on her
face when she gave me the drink spoke volumes, though.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I'd sorted the brake pads
into three groups—use, clean and pitch. After throwing away the last
group and showing one of the teen volunteers how to scrub the
middle group, I gathered up my tools to leave.

"You going without saying goodbye?"

I stopped and turned around. Gloria was leaning against a
wall, arms crossed, and tapping her left foot. "I have a few boxes in
the truck. Will you haul them in for me?"

When we got to the truck, nothing was there. I leaned on the
side of the truck bed and raised my eyebrows at G.

"It was just a little white lie. I'll do my penance tonight. You
want to talk about it?"

With a sigh, I walked to the back of the truck and lowered
the gate. I sat and swung my legs back and forth while I put my
thoughts in order.