A Watershed Year Read Online Free Page B

all my visitors. But you kept them moving, ushering them in and out, telling them not to tire me. And when my mother came to visit from Florida, you sat with her and muted her hysteria and made sure she didn’t tuck too many pillows under my head. That’s all she seemed able to do.
    This may sound strange, but I had a dream about you one night back then, and you were you, but you were also Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of my favorites from the Crusades. You were riding off to the Second Crusade in your armor, on a white horse, young and fierce and determined to help your husband, Louis VII, as he battled the infidels. Technically, Eleanor didn’t even like her husband, and she ended updumping him after the Crusades. Later, she married a man a decade younger, who became King Henry II of England, bore him a pack of children, and then turned against him along with three of her sons. But the point is, I’ve never had such a literal dream: you in armor, ready for battle.
    I never told you this, but in my third round of chemotherapy, when the visitors had dwindled to one or two a day, I woke up from a nap, and you were gone from your chair next to my bed. I don’t think five minutes went by before I started to panic—shortness of breath and everything. I even called the nurse, but you walked in with a cup of coffee before I could start drilling her on your whereabouts. I should have told you then, but I didn’t, so I’m telling you now: I couldn’t have survived the past year without you.
    You have no obligation to receive these e-mails, Lucy. I realize this may upset you so much that you won’t want them. If that happens, just click on the link below to disable the program. You can do that any time. It just made me feel better to think that we could talk somehow, beyond the end of my life, that I could preserve my presence in some small way. And I haven’t told you everything I should have. I wasn’t finished yet, at least where you are concerned.
    So, if it’s okay, you’ll receive an e-mail once a month, another part of my story, your story, our story. I can’t guess what will happen to you, Lucy. Your life surely will take some unexpected turns; you will adopt a whole new frame of reference. I believe that somehow you’re destined for motherhood (Eleanor, who lived into her eighties, had ten children, just so you know). We never talked much about it, but you seem to me like a natural mother. Clearly, you’re someone who knows how to give, and that’s what good mothers do.
    Find out what most fulfills you, Lucy, and go after it. It may not be my place to tell you, but you sometimes deflect the obstacles that come your way instead of racing ahead of them to chart your own course. If I can play some small part in nudging you toward something wonderful, then it won’t be as if two-thirds of my life evaporated. You’ll take me along on your ride.
    If you click on the link below, a prompt will ask if you’re sure you want to disable the program. If you click “yes,” there’s no going back. It’s up to you.
    Otherwise, look for my message on the tenth of the month.
    Love,
    Harlan
    Lucy rubbed her eyes as if that might make the whole thing disappear. On an impulse, she called up the link at the bottom of the e-mail, and a window popped up asking if she was
sure
she wanted to delete the program. She moved the cursor to “Yes” because she didn’t want to plunge into the depths of grief every month; she moved it to “No” and then back to “Yes” because she hated the idea of waiting a month at a time to hear what Harlan could have told her when he was alive. But she clicked on “No.”
    It was as if she had blinked, and everything she thought she knew about the past year had changed. Had it been that obvious that she wanted to be a mother? She couldn’t remember talking about it. Had he caught her staring at babies in strollers? And his dream of her as Eleanor of Aquitaine? She seemed to recall that Eleanor