Hooked

squeezed Steph’s hand and shooed her toward the door of the exam room. “Go. Live. You don’t need to come back to see me for another year.”
    Relief flooded Steph, followed closely by a burst of painfully sweet joy. Her first impulse was to call everyone she loved, to tell them, and first on that list was Finn Hartley. But she didn’t phone him. She didn’t yet know what the news meant to her future, and didn’t know what to say to him. Would he even want to hear her good news?
    Okay, now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself. Suck it up, Steele, and get on with it.
    Fortunately, the family was thrilled with her news, so much so, in fact, that the brothers-in-law totally forgave her for letting their passport to sporting man’s heaven get away. And later that month, she got a lovely email from Katie Hartley with a prom photo showing her in one of the three dresses Steph had sent her. It brought tears to her eyes as she read and reread the note, searching in vain for clues to how Finn was doing.
    As the summer rolled on, she found herself thinking about him constantly, especially when she took Mickey out to play and wandered the green where she and Finn had walked together. Had she been crazy to end it before it really began, as her sisters said? Had turning him away been selfless or just plain cowardly? Again and again Steph found herself back where she’d started, thinking that she’d made no progress at all…that she might never feel safer or more settled or ready to risk loving again.
    When the letter came, saying she’d been selected to participate in the October Casting for Recovery retreat, she was stunned. She had forgotten about sending in the application. She found herself staring at the fishing equipment by her back door and telling herself that taking part in the retreat would probably just dredge up painful memories and highlight the uncertainties she lived with.
    It took every ounce of her courage and some sisterly badgering for her to make the drive to the retreat on Lake Logan in western North Carolina. The trees were just starting to turn and there was a crisp feeling of change and expectation in the air. The staff who greeted her wore badges identifying them as CFR volunteers, but highly paid professionals couldn’t have been more competent and attentive.
    Maura Evans, a tall, sturdily built woman with glorious red hair, introduced herself as the retreat director and led two other volunteers in helping Steph unpack her car. After taking care of the paperwork and handing her a program, hat, badge and bag of goodies, Maura escorted her to her assigned cabin and introduced her to her three cabin-mates.
    Loretta, Danielle and Kai Li all seemed a little nervous, just as Steph was, but as they talked while settling in, their personalities came out. Loretta was a tart-tongued hairdresser from Raleigh, Kai Li was a quiet, self-possessed nurse from Chapel Hill, and Danielle was a bubbly real estate agent from Charleston. When it was Steph’s turn, her face heated and she simply said she was Stephanie, who ran a couple of dress shops in Atlanta.
    That first afternoon and evening filled her with a low-grade anxiety. It was irrational, she knew, but she couldn’t help wondering if Finn might be volunteering there on Sunday as a fishing guide. The possibility made it hard for her to concentrate as the women introduced themselves around the dining room table that evening and told something about their journey.
    The range of experience among the participants ran from recently diagnosed and still under treatment to fifteen years cancer-free. But it was soon clear that every woman present shared the trauma of having her life changed forever by the diagnosis all women dreaded.
    When it was her turn, Steph rose and found herself grappling for words that wouldn’t come. Panicked by her sudden lack of speech, she flushed violently and shook her head.
    The room went deadly quiet and a motherly looking woman seated beside her took her hand and whispered, “It’s okay. Just take your time. We’ve got all night.”

Chapter Ten
    Around the room several women wore pained expressions of sympathy. Others nodded or smiled in support. Steph closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and started with the simplest part, her name.
    “I’m Stephanie Steele.” The dam of words broke. “I usually talk people’s ears off. I can’t seem to do that right now, and I don’t know why.”
    There was a brief