Page 134 of Just One Look
“If those are flaws,” Baxter said, “aren’t they preferable to your mother’s? How far would you have gone, do you think, if I’d let you grow up like her?”
“Oh,” she said. “Wait.” And sat there like she’d been electrocuted. He could all but see that furious mind at work when she finally said, “Do you know why I’ve loved surgery?”
“Because it’s your gift,” he said. “Because you were born to it, and you inherited my brains and my fine-motor skills.”
“No,” she said, and she was staring into his eyes now. The warrior queen. Boadicea. The hair on the back of his neck rose as she went on. “That’s not why. Because that’s the one place I’m bold. I’m confident in surgery. I take risks, because I trust my judgment, and I trust myself to have the skill to pull it out. I fight for my surgeries, I fight for my patients, and I find a way. And I’msure.I’ve put all of myself into surgery, because it’s the only place I like myself! It’s the only place I canbemyself. But the answer can’t be to stuff more and more of myself into it, to try to live there. It’s got to be to take those parts of myself and … and …”
“And spread your wings,” Luka said.
“Yes,” she said, and now, she wasn’t holding his hand under the table anymore. She was holding it on top of the table. “And spread my wings. My mom sang along with the radio. She had a beautiful voice. She had ajoyfulvoice. She’d tell me, “Make some noise, Birdie girl. Sing loud enough for God to hear. We were all born to wear wings.” She was choking up, but holding the tears back. “She got her wings,” she told him. “She earned them. She died saving me.”
Baxter said. “She wasn’t any noble martyr. She made a stupid mistake, the sort of thing I’d warned her about dozens of times. She drove into floodwaters and got herself killed, and nearly got you killed along with her!” He was on his feet, clutching the edge of the table like he’d flip it over. Luka held Elle’s hand tighter and thought,If he goes for her, I’m grabbing him. Not hitting him. Grabbing him and turfing him out.He needed the reminder.
Elle didn’t flinch, and she didn’t back down. She said, “If she did, dozens of other people made that same mistake that day. Fourteen other peoplediedfor that mistake. None of them saved their kids before they did it. Just Mama. And you blamed her!” She took a shaky breath, then said, keeping her tone modulated with an obvious effort, “I’m not just a Wolcott. I’m a Smith, too. I’m generations of women who take care of their kids and their gardens and manage on nothing, who drink sweet tea from Mason jars and harvest greens on the side of the road, who feed the chickens and slop the pigs and take their little girls for cokes and roll down the windows and sing in the car and make the best fried chicken anybody’s ever tasted. Who manage and mend and make do. That’s me, too. All of that’s me, and I want to know that part of me. I want tolikethat part of me.”
Lauren said, “Oh, well done.”
Baxter said, “I don’t need your opinion.”
“No,” she said, not losing her composure. “You never did. And I won’t give it to you now. I’ll give it to Elizabeth, though.”
“Who’s wants to be with a man who slept with her stepsister,” he said. “Your daughter, who you were always so protective of. That’s the part of herself she wants to love? And you’re fine with that, because here you are making your friendly visit, you and your Golden Age retiree. I’d say your life’s worked out wonderfully. You’re clearly an excellent judge.”
Elle said, “You’re wrong, Dad. You’re so wrong, it’s funny. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find that part of me here. Maybe my reboot is more than that. Maybe I really can start over. And I think you should leave. We’ve both said too much, or we’ve both said what we had to. It’s time to go.”
He said, “Oh, I have more to say.”
Luka stood up.
Baxter looked at him and said, “You think you’re going to throw me out?”
“No,” Luka said. “I think I’m going towalkyou out. Right now.”
Baxter said, “I’m not going to be frightened or bullied by you. I’ve eaten better men than you for breakfast, and you’ve just had surgery on your neck.”
“Yeh,” Luka said. “I have. But the thing is—right now? I don’t care.”
