“A sailboat! Ha! That’s just what I need.”
“It’s therapy, Hannah, like getting back on a horse after you fall off.”
So there I was, waiting for Paul to return from the Cooper Island Beach Bar with two piña coladas. He plopped down on the towel next to me and handed me my drink. I took a sip, moaned with pleasure, then set the glass into the sand next to me, twisting it back and forth, digging a little hole so it wouldn’t fall over. Gentle waves licked at my toes. Another day in paradise. I watched our charter vessel, Visage, bob and sway at anchor in water so crystal clear that it seemed to be suspended in air.
“Paul?” He had returned to his paperback book.
“Umm?”
“After I finish my stint at the law firm, do you think I should go ahead and have that breast reconstruction?”
He laid his book open on the sand and turned to face me, sunglasses askew, propped up on one elbow, sand sugaring his knees. He looked adorable. “Do it for yourself, honey, not for me.”
“I was looking in that little shop up there.” I pointed toward an island boutique behind the Beach Bar where earlier I had spent nearly thirty minutes looking at tropical beach wraps and swimsuits. “There are a couple of bikinis I could wear if I had two decent boobs to hang them on.”
“Hannah, you know I love you no matter what. I want whatever makes you happy.” He reached up and touched my hair, which had blossomed, surprisingly, into a profusion of brownish gold ringlets. “Significant change in hair texture,” Dr. Wilkins had written on my chart after my last examination.
I smiled at my husband, feeling waves of affection wash over me. With his finger, he traced a line along my shoulder and down my arm. When he picked up my right hand and gently kissed my fingers, I knew we wouldn’t be sleeping in separate cabins anymore.
Marcia Talley
Marcia Talley lives in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, where she is the systems librarian. Sing It to Her Bones, her first novel, won the Malice Domestic Grant for unpublished writers in 1998. When she isn’t traveling or sailing, Marcia Talley is busy working on the next book in the Hannah Ives series.
