Chapter forty-five
Ben
Four weeks later.
We brought one car today. Sometimes she insists on driving her own. Antonia sits in the passenger seat as I turn into the retreat through the black gates that lie permanently open these days.
The protesters are gone. Only patients come and go. I like to think it’s respect, but I guess the PR has died down and the publicity’s faded. Most have lost interest. They’ve moved on to something else to be angry about.
Patients wander in the gardens with their families as we pass.
A mother, head wrapped in a silk scarf, plays with her young toddler on the grass. It looks like they’re playing tag. It’s slow, but full of love. The little boy pauses to give her time to catch him. She goes to pick him up, then stops halfway, as if remembering she can’t. Her body won’t allow it this time.
Antonia glances over. Her smile is sad, but present.
The retreat is full. It has been since we opened. It’s a depressing but real truth to admit: cancer is everywhere.
With the sun shining, there are plenty of volunteers on hand to help.
And we need them with so much to do around the place.
I haven’t even turned off the engine, and Antonia is out of the door before I can stop her. She’s already amongst the flowers, speaking to the chief gardener about a bed she’s not happy with.
When I join them, she’s shaking his hand and smiling, telling him she’ll be pleased once the situation is rectified.
“Is it how you imagined?” I ask her.
She turns to me, wraps her arms around my neck, and pops a kiss on the end of my nose. “This is your retreat,” she says.
“Ours,” I correct. “And theirs.” I gesture to our guests, living the best life they can right now.
Antonia and I are a couple. A team. It’s not like back in the boardrooms at Opengate, where she fights board members via spreadsheets and profit margins. The retreat is so much more than a bottom line.
This place means so much to both of us.
I take her hand, then lead her over to one of the benches.Jeannie’s bench. It’s become our favorite.
We sit there often. In fact, every time we come here, just to talk. Most likely we’ll sip a coffee we’ve picked up at the coffee shop. Our fingers tangle together, minds everywhere but here. There’s so much happening in our lives between my work, Opengate, my kids… the retreat.
Never mind my family and Antonia finding her place in my life. It’s amazing how much she does, how well she does it, no matter if it’s personal or work related. She gives everything one hundred percent.
When I think back to March, at our dinner table, when Savannah and Antonia… All I want to do is block it out, pretendit never happened. But it did, and I can’t believe how well she fits in now.
How well my children have adapted yet again to a change in their lives.
They love her.
I love her.
And I believe she loves us.
A young couple appear from one of the rooms. They wander across the grass, hand in hand, husband and wife, possibly in their late twenties. I haven’t seen them before, but I’m not here every day, even though I’d love to be.
It’d be my dream to be available all the time and not at the hospital.
Hopefully, one day.
They wander through the pathways, chatting. Looking at them, it’s hard to tell who’s ill. But then he turns, and I see it. The gash snakes up the side of his skull. Red but healed. A war wound from a battle fought.