“It means you behave as if Episode One had never been made.”

I raised my brows. “Well, that sounds promising. And does this machete order involve hacking out Jar Jar Binks from the other episodes with a machete?”

She laughed. “Sometimes the way your mind works really disturbs me.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“No, machete order states that the Star Wars saga, instead of being about Anakin Skywalker’s rise and fall, as George Lucas would have us believe, is actually about Luke Skywalker.”

I frowned. “Okay. I’d buy that with Episodes Four, Five and Six, but what about the other two? He’s not even born until the last five minutes of Episode Three.”

“Yeah, so machete order states that you should start watching the saga with Episode Four, A New Hope, then Episode Five, The Empire Strikes Back.”

“Okay. I’m with you so far. Those two are my favorites of all of them. Then you stop there, I take it?”

She frowned at me. “How can you stop there? Empire ends with Han frozen inside carbonite and a prisoner of Boba Fett.”

I shrugged. “I could live with that mystery if it means I don’t have to sit through three hours of Ewoks in Return of the Jedi to discover how it resolves.”

“Well, machete order doesn’t involve editing out Jar Jar or the Ewoks. It just states that since the saga is about Luke, you watch A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back first, and then treat Episode Two, Attack of the Clones, and Episode Three, Revenge of the Sith, as flashbacks. Then conclude with Jedi.”

“So the only thing machete order does is eliminate the existence of The Phantom Menace.”

“Yep. But it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

“Hmm. Would be more worth it if someone pulled out a machete and hacked Jar Jar’s head off in the first scene. That’s what I’d call ‘machete order.’”

She giggled, nibbling on one of her ginger chips. I watched her, a gray knit cap pulled tightly over her head, her beautiful brown eyes peeking out just under the edge. “So how are you feeling?”

Her mouth twisted and she gave me a look.

“Yeah, I know I ask you that a lot but I still want to know.”

“I’m fine. Just great. For a few more days, until the next dose of death.”

I frowned. “Just means we need to enjoy these days even more, then, don’t we?” She darted an unreadable look at me and turned. Grabbing her glass of ginger ale, she sipped, looking out over the harbor as we puttered along at a measly three knots in the little electric boat. The sea air was bringing a healthy pink flush to her cheeks.

I took the opportunity of her distraction to admire her. She was lovely, even when obviously ill. And she kept her head up. She was braver than anyone else I knew. My heart swelled with pride to recognize that in her. I just wished I knew what monologue was going on inside that head of hers when I saw those flashes of pure sadness pass like a ghost through her eyes.

I wished we could do things over, apply a brand of machete order to our own lives. There was a lot about how I’d handled things between us that I wish I could just cut out. But there was no way out of this Hell but straight through it, with the dogged hope that our love would still be intact on the other side.

“Emilia…”

She turned, her eyebrows drawing together in a tight frown. I opened my mouth to continue but the way she was watching me caused me to pause. “What’s wrong?”

“You don’t call me that anymore…or at least you haven’t. You’ve been calling me Mia like everyone else.”

“Oh. Yeah…”

“I liked it. I was wondering why you’d stopped.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. The reason I’d stopped calling her by her full name had everything to do with the reason I’d started. When we’d first met, it had been a way to verbally intimidate her. Then it had grown into a habit. Her name, her full name, to me, was a term of endearment. The name that no one but me called her. But I couldn’t help but remember that every time I’d tried to claim her, to pull her into my orbit, I’d changed her life irrevocably and not always for the better.

I took a deep breath. “I wasn’t sure you liked it…you didn’t, at first.”

She looked at me, her face very serious. “You’re right. I didn’t like it…at all.” She turned and gazed out over the bay again, a small smile on her lips. “But I was determined I would never give you the satisfaction of letting you know that.”