“And you’re coming with me!” Audrey said, talking a mile a minute. “It’s my graduation gift, and she’s paying for me to take a friend. And you’re it. So find out when the hospital will let you take a week off. And Will said he’ll arrange to take leave then, and he’ll escort us around.”

“Oh my God, I can’t believe it. I would die to go there,” and to spend a week with Audrey’s brother, which Audrey suspected. He had never shown anything more than brotherly interest in Lizzie, but she hoped that maybe now that she’d graduated, he would treat her like a grown woman. And whether he did or not, she couldn’t wait to go somewhere exotic and tropical like Hawaii. It was an incredibly generous gift, and even more so because Mrs. Parker wanted Audrey to take a friend with her.

Both girls were dreaming of it when they went to sleep that night. And graduation the next day was deeply emotional. Will hadn’t been able to come, since he was in an advanced combat training program for two weeks that he couldn’t get out of. And Ellen made a heroic effort to see her daughter graduate. She had to be strapped into her wheelchair so she wouldn’t fall out, and Mrs. Beavis came with them. Audrey suspected it might be the last time her mother would be able to leave the house, but Ellen wasn’t going to miss her daughter’s graduation any more than she would have missed Will’s from Annapolis three years before. Nothing, and no illness, was going to deprive her of this moment. She was profoundly proud of Audrey, who had passed her exams at the top of her class, with Lizzie not far behind her. Ellen had come to love her too, as a dear girl and a wonderful friend to Audrey, her only friend. The two young women were a staunch support to each other.

Lizzie’s parents had come to the graduation with both her brothers. Her father looked stern and proud as he watched her graduate, and her mother had tears in her eyes when Lizzie accepted her nursing pin and diploma. It brought back memories of her own graduation.

Lizzie told her parents about the invitation to Hawaii right after the ceremony, and was still elated at the prospect.

“We’ll see,” her mother said quietly. “We’ll talk about it.” Her response hit Lizzie like a bucket of cold water, and she stopped and stared at her mother. They were not going to do this to her again, infantilize her and tell her what she could and couldn’t do. She was a grown woman.