The Last-Chance Maverick. Christyne Butler
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much less inked her body. “Okay, let’s see. We did go to Disney World on our senior class trip so that counted for number five. I was lucky enough to visit the White House and shake hands with the president during an art exhibit a few years back. Number six. I attempted to learn to scuba dive while visiting Australia the summer before my mother—well, before she got sick, so that covers numbers seven and eight.”
“That’s right. So you swam in the Pacific Ocean, too.”
“Well, technically, it was the Tasman Sea. It doesn’t count. So, other than the first eight, we haven’t managed to accomplish the rest of the 2001 list.” While Vanessa was sure that flying among the clouds (and not in an airplane!) was a childish wish that would never come true, she guessed moving out west, learning to ride a horse and the last goal, kissing a cowboy, were still possible. At least for her.
She swallowed hard again, but the unfairness of it all kept the lump firmly in place. “You know, judging from the last few items, I think we watched too many old Westerns back when we were twelve.”
“I always liked John Wayne. The strong, silent type,” Adele said. “So how many...do we have so far now? With the new ones included?”
“The original twelve and the eight we added while in New York.” Vanessa read through the rest of the list. When her friend had insisted on updating it with new goals that weekend, they’d truly believed both of them would have time to accomplish things like going skinny-dipping, being part of a flash mob or dancing in the rain. Knowing now that her friend was never going to be able to accomplish any of them... “I think twenty is a good number.”
“No. Need four more. Twelve old and twelve new.”
“Well, number twenty is to see an active volcano. I don’t know how we’re—” Vanessa’s voice caught again, but she pushed on. “How we’re going to top that.”
“Number twenty-one—take a bubble bath...with a man.”
She couldn’t help but smile at her friend’s words as she propped her sketchbook on the edge of Adele’s bed, using it as a base to write on. “How do you know I haven’t done that already?”
“Because you would’ve told me. Best friends tell each other everything.”
Vanessa nodded. “You’re right. And I think that might top the volcano experience.”
“Number twenty-two—kiss...Prince Charming and number twenty-three...” Adele’s voice fell to a whisper, barely heard over the steady beeping from the row of machines on the far side of her bed. “...have a baby. Or two. Or three.”
Vanessa blinked rapidly against the sting of tears, struggling to see clearly enough to add them to the list. Adele’s words brought back the memory of how each of them, being only children, had always wished for younger siblings. That shared secret, revealed on the day they first met when Adele’s mother had come to work for Vanessa’s as a social secretary, had sealed their lifelong friendship. She still remembered the afternoon she’d returned from a ballet lesson and found a scrawny girl, her flaming red hair in braids and wearing a hand-me-down dress with dirt on her knees, sitting on the silk tufted bench in the grand foyer of Vanessa’s home reading Little Women.
“And number twenty-four...fall in love forever.”
Vanessa’s fingers tightened on the pen until she was sure it would break. She tried to write the last goal, but the page was too blurry.
Then Adele’s fingers brushed against the back of her hand. She latched onto her friend’s cool touch and pressed Adele’s hand to her heated cheek. “That’s...that’s quite a list.”
“It’s not a list. It’s a life. Your life.” Adele’s voice became strong and clear, more than it has been in days. “It’s time for you to get back to it.”
“Adele—”
“You’ve been with me constantly over the last year. I’m surprised you’ve found time to get any painting done, not that I want you to jump back into your crazy work schedule.” She paused for another breath. “And I know it’s you I have to thank for being as comfortable with this outrageously expensive hospital room. My mom and I are so grateful—”
“Oh, shut up,” Vanessa admonished her friend gently, her gaze still on the blurred list. “You know I would pay anything—do anything—to have you well again.”
Adele jiggled on Vanessa’s hand, signaling she wanted her attention. Vanessa brushed away the tears before looking at her friend who’d tugged the plastic mask from her face.
“What’s that saying? We only have one shot at life, but if we do it right once is enough? You know better than most—especially now—how quickly life can be taken away,” Adele said, her voice low and strained. “Don’t get so lost in your art after I’m gone that you forget about all the wonderful things waiting out there for you.”
“I still have three pieces to finish,” Vanessa said, the familiar argument returning once again. One that had started years ago between them when she’d spent her thirteenth birthday working on a painting instead of attending a school dance. “You know how I get before a show. This is an important one, too. People are coming from Europe, the Far East—”
“You’ve been painting since you were a kid,” Adele cut her off. “You were a star in the art world at seventeen and we both know that’s because you buried yourself in your art after your mom died. Please don’t do that again. Thanks to your gift and your trust fund, you’re set for...life. It’s time to live it.”
“You make me sound like a nun or something.”
“You’re not too far off. What happened to that fun-loving girl you were a few years ago?”
Vanessa’s memory flashed back to her time in Paris. “That was college, Adele. Being foolish and wild was part of the curriculum back then. Now, it’s about my work.”
“There’s more to life...than work. Than art.”
Vanessa had heard all of this before. Adele had always been supportive of her career, especially during the darkest moment in her life after her mother died when Vanessa was only sixteen, but she also constantly reminded her there was more to the world than her beloved brushes and paints.
“Art is my life, Adele. It’s what got me through the pain and the heartache last time.” She pulled in a deep breath, but her eyes filled again. “I’m counting on it to help me again.... Oh, how am I going to...”
Adele tightened her hold. “Please, don’t be sad...for too long. We’ve talked about this. That’s why I insisted we finish our list. I want you to go out there and experience all the things we’ve dreamed about. I want you to put check marks by every single one of those items.”
The fact that her friend was spending her last days thinking of her made the constant ache inside Vanessa fracture a bit more, sending icy tentacles deeper and further, their frozen tips scraping at her heart. The feeling was a familiar one, felt for the first time since almost a decade ago.
The time from her mother’s diagnosis to her death had been less than eight months, barely any time for them—her or her parents—to come to terms with the illness that would take her life. While her father had thrown himself into his work after the funeral, Vanessa had done the same, her art allowing her a way to express her pain and grief.
Back then she’d poured all her fears onto the canvas in the back of her mind, she too worried that she might die young. Though genetic testing reassured her she was unlikely to develop the same disease, and her time in her studio produced magnificent pieces of abstract art that made her famous, for years, Vanessa had been unable to shake the feeling that something bad was about to happen to her.
She’d never dreamed it would be the loss of her best friend.
It was Adele who’d helped her pick out a prom dress, who came to visit her at art school,