Shattered Diamonds

2. Josie

2

Josie

I stared at the white plate topped by a grilled cheese with bacon sandwich and greasy French fries and tried to remember which table had ordered it. When I pulled the tickets from the pocket of my apron to see which table the food belonged to, I somehow managed to drop them all.

Aunt Mimi scooted past me, effortlessly holding two full drinks and several plates piled high with breakfast foods. “The grilled cheese is for table sixteen, Hon.”

“Thanks,” I told her as I stooped to pick up the mess of receipts. Shaking my head at my own ineptitude, I decided that I could mark ‘waitress’ off my list of potential long-term jobs. If Mimi hadn’t raised me as if I was her own child for the past few years, she probably would have already fired me.

Apparently, spending practically my entire life training in the water, made me good at gracefully slicing through the pool at a high rate of speed, but took away my ability to do ordinary things adeptly on land. I had never thought of myself as being particularly awkward or forgetful until I tried to take on this job that Aunt Mimi had offered me out of pity.

My years of training for the Olympics had been grueling and all-consuming. My shoulder injury had been swift and irreparable. In an instant, I went from trying to be the best women’s freestyle swimmer in the entire world, to struggling to get the right food to the right people in a hometown diner.

I didn’t have anything against being a waitress––other than the fact that I was terrible at it. It just wasn’t at all what I thought I would be doing at this juncture in my life.

In all honesty, I had thought I would soon be standing at the top of an Olympic podium, tipping my head down, and accepting a gold medal around my neck. It wasn’t just a random daydream or wishful thinking. I had worked my a*s off with laser focus for the vast majority of my life. I envisioned it so hard I could feel the cold, heavy medal pressing against my chest. That goal had been the only thing that mattered, until it came crashing down around me.

The most devastating part of all of it was that I knew deep down in my heart that my parents must be looking down on me with disappointment. They had sacrificed so much in both money and time to secure me a fantastic swim coach and make sure I had access to the training pool and workout facility every day.

When a tragic car accident took their lives far too soon, I doubled-down and worked even harder to make my dreams of earning an Olympic gold medal come to fruition. Last time around, I had barely missed making the Olympic team. I had planned to use every moment of this four-year gap to shave down my time to make sure I made the U.S. team and brought home the gold. It was the only way that all of our sacrifices would have made any sense. Almost good enough was not even close to being acceptable. I needed to be the best.

Even Aunt Mimi had jumped on board with my Olympic dreams. I hadn’t wanted to leave my friends or move to the small, coastal town in Maine where she lived, but she had agreed to use the money from my parents’ life insurance policy to fund my continued training.

Watching as my short, silver-haired, plump aunt flitted around her restaurant, making each patron feel like a valued guest, I decided that this was just as much her domain as the pool had always been mine. There were probably a thousand things that needed to be done at the diner, but I was watching my aunt, lost in thoughts about what could have been.

I had wanted nothing more than to make my family and friends proud, so I had done my best to ignore the shoulder bursitis at first, thinking it was simply pain I needed to push through. When I finally went to the doctor, it was so bad that she recommended immediate surgery. The surgery was what the medical profession considered to be a success, but it stole away my chances of becoming an Olympic athlete.

The six weeks I spent with my arm in a sling immediately following my rotator cuff repair were the longest of my life. After years of spending every free moment in the pool, I felt at a complete loss for what to do with all of my extra time. I remember sitting at the edge of the pool, dipping my feet into the cool water, and sniffing the chlorinated air as I waited for my shoulder to heal.

It never crossed my mind that, even after it healed, it might not be what it once was. I pushed myself to the limit at physical therapy. That was my path back to the pool, and I didn’t intend to let anything get in my way. I kept a good attitude, and I did everything right. If the therapist asked me for twenty repetitions, I did thirty.

When I finally got back in the pool, it felt like coming home. I was ready to work back up to where I had been, and I wasn’t going to let anything stand in my way. After spending an entire year post-surgery giving it my all in the water, I finally had to admit that over ninety-eight percent range of motion was great for a typical patient, but it was not enough for an Olympian.

My trainer and I had said our tearful goodbyes last week, and now I was trying to figure out what to do next. When you base your entire life on one dream, it’s practically impossible to move on when that dream comes crashing down around you.

“Can you pick up table twenty, Jo-Jo?” Aunt Mimi rushed past, gracefully filling up patrons’ coffee mugs as she went.

I shook my head to clear those thoughts, forcing myself back to reality. “Sure thing,” I answered the no-nonsense woman.

Grabbing a pad of paper and a pencil, I turned to greet the table in question. A man with his back to the room was sitting alone at the booth. As I walked closer, I realized exactly who it was.

Steeling my nerves, I walked boldly to his table. I tried to smile at him, even though my mind was screaming that the washed-up, has-been, Olympic-hopeful swimmer was now waiting on the Brunswick Bay Harbor killer.