Chapter 18

18

D AVID

The same day

It snows slowly.

It started this afternoon when I left my office after a meeting with James and Ed, and now the snowflakes glide over the trees before landing quietly on the ground.

I pop my collar and let the snow sweep my cheekbones with a tenderness that’s hard to match.

The flowers I hold look like timeless art, quivering under the cold breath of the wind.

My heart aches for the crushing finality of their life.

Wilting in solitude and getting scattered by the wind.

Beautiful in life and death. As beautiful as she was.

I set the flowers down, my eyes sliding over the name on the tombstone.

Anna Keegan.

Anna… Dear Anna.

She and I were not on visiting terms for a while.

Her sudden death made me angry, and I couldn’t explain to myself why.

I was angry with her before that.

I was angry with her when she broke up with me like the coward that she was. I was fuming when I learned the reason she did that.

And then I was angry because she gave him what she didn’t want to give me.

Knowing her was a painful lifetime lesson that affected every woman in my life. Deep down inside, I knew I couldn’t trust any of them.

I knew they were not to be trusted.

Or so I thought.

That was one lesson I wish I didn’t have to learn.

I was angry because she turned out to be a shattered dream, a costly illusion, and a well of uncertainty I almost drowned in.

And then I was angry when I said 'I do' to another woman, but not as angry as I was when she said 'I do' to another man.

We had such a complicated story, and her premature death didn’t simplify anything. It made things worse.

But time has softened her existence in my memory and let her live beyond the veil.

In time, I learned that all of us are prone to making these mistakes.

She was no different, and I made a lot of mistakes, too.

It was like I made them to show her I wasn’t any better.

In reality, I needed the pain from my wrongdoings to drown out the ache fueled by her indifference.

After she gave me a mortal blow, I couldn’t find my peace.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t grab her attention.

She wasn’t jealous. Or curious. Or angry.

Sadly, she wasn’t even in love with him.

It didn’t look like she was.

And for a while, as I was licking my wounds, I tried to imagine she was remorseful and perhaps longing for me the way I'd been longing for her.

I thought we were bound to each other. And we were––at least in my view––but our connection was more of a liability than the warm transcending of an everlasting feeling.

The time of questioning her motives has long passed. She did what she thought was right for her while I took that gnawing pain and morphed it into ice.

I built walls around my heart and decorated them with frozen snippets of my past to remember what I was in for. That’s how I entered my marriage.

My fingers peel away from the delicate stems before I set them down, straighten, and slide my hands into my pockets.

“How is life over there?” I ask quietly, not expecting an answer, a faint smile tugging at my lips.

A cold gust of wind makes a go for my eyes, and I feel the prickle of tears. I tilt my head to the side and look away to protect them from the biting chill.

And also to ignore my memories.

“I’m sure you know Julie is doing good,” I say, moving my focus to the tombstone.

My stare goes blank as I look beyond the grayish stone, the letters of her name dancing in front of my eyes.

She never wanted to take his name after getting married, and that was another sign that she was never one hundred percent his.

This thought had kept me sane for a long time. Now, it means nothing to me.

A healed heart is a good home that needs no shutters.

“She’s just like you,” I continue, smiling. “Bright. And brutally honest. Loyal.”

I stop, my lips quivering a little.

If she were here, Anna would tip her head to the side and lift an eyebrow at me.

She wouldn’t accept a trivial lie like this.

She herself admitted that she hadn’t been loyal to me.

But Julie is.

And I hope she stays that way.

“I, um… I also met someone.”

I pause.

“I know it doesn’t matter. It’s never mattered to you, but I wanted you to know that. It took me a long time, didn’t it?”

A quiet, saddened chuckle peels off my lips.

“Remember when you said that I’d find someone else fast? I didn’t want you to say that. I wasn’t interested in someone else. You wanted me to get angry with you, and it worked. I still don’t know if it helped you in any way. It didn’t help me, for sure. At any rate… I couldn’t find someone else as fast as you had thought I would, and I made peace with that. But things are different now, and I’m thankful for that. Good things always are worth the wait.”

I go silent, a fist of tension blocking my throat.

“I still miss you, Anna. I still think you were one of the best things that could come to me, despite everything bad that happened between us. But now… Now, I’m ready to move on and live what you and I could never had. I’m no longer angry or resentful. I think things happened the way they did for a reason. You touched my soul. And I touched yours. I still have Julie as you have turned into a beloved memory.”

With that, I say my most truthful goodbye to her and leave the cemetery.

DAVID

“So which one is it? I have apple pie and pecan pie.” Miranda asks, holding a bakery box and pointing to the pies on the table with a kitchen knife.

“Both.”

It’s warm in her house, the sweet smell of cinnamon cloying the air.

“Perfect. I’ll pack them both.”

She reaches inside a drawer and pulls out another box.

A hand wrapped around the cup of coffee in front of me, I watch her handle the freshly baked pies.

Miranda couldn’t be more different than Anna.

Where Anna had beauty and spunk, Miranda had kindness and curiosity.

Anna had always entered people’s lives like a storm coming from nowhere, while her sister had always touched them like a summer breeze.

She’s never chased anything in her whole life.

I’ve never seen a more self-assured woman.

She knew who she was back when Anna spun around and crushed hearts like they were eggshells.

There’s always been little resemblance between the two sisters.

Miranda was older than her sister and way more quieter.

She studied math, worked as a teacher, and never got married. She had a passion for baking but never wanted to start a business and earn a living doing that.

I offered to finance her business, and she flat-out refused me, saying she’d never put herself through that kind of stress.

She loves to bake––she said––not to run a business.

I can’t blame her. I get it. It’s a shame, though.

She sets the two boxes in a paper bag with the name of a local grocery store printed on it and sits at the table across from me.

“How was today?” she asks with a soft smile.

“It was good,” I say quietly while she pushes the bag to the side. “I’m glad I made it on time,” I add before lifting my drink to my lips.

Quiet moments rush away while hollow sadness creeps up on me.

Anna is gone. Miranda is single by choice, of course. I’ve been single most of my life. By choice as well.

Julie has no interest in going out and meeting people.

It’s like Anna had put a curse on us before she left.

It’s sad when I think about it.

And here I am.

Miranda is my only family through association. Anna and I have never married each other.

And Julie is my protege.

Julie is that part of Anna that lives on.

Truthfully, I wish we could have more than this.

Her hand slides over the sleeve of my suit jacket.

“You did your best,” she says. “I don’t think anyone could care more about her than you did. No one had done more for her.”

Her words catch me unprepared, cementing my belief that we are too lonely, living too far from each other.

She pulls her hand away.

“Julie said you met a woman,” she says, a grin tilting her lips.

“She did?” I murmur, amused, leaning back in my seat. “She couldn’t keep her mouth shut, could she?”

“You know her.”

“What did she say?”

“That she might be the one.”

“She wants her to be the one,” I say, relaxed.

Her eyes stall on my face for a few seconds.

“She might be right,” Miranda murmurs.

She’s always read me accurately. And she’s seen a lot on my face since her sister sent my life into a tailspin.

She tried to comfort me but, sadly, couldn’t offer me any answers.

No one could make sense of Anna’s actions.

People said she must’ve changed her mind. Distance does that to people. And I wanted to believe them, but allmy brothers in arms came home and married their sweethearts.

I was jealous. I’m not gonna lie. I had the same plans.

Instead, I came home to find a woman who was no longer mine.

“What makes you say that?” I ask, tipping my gaze to my drink to evade her eyes.

“That smile, right there,” she says, and I raise my eyes and catch her pointing to my face.

I chuckle to put a dent in her conviction.

“Julie says a lot of things. I think she wants me to get married.”

She takes a drink of coffee and shakes her head.

“I doubt that. Julie doesn’t believe in marriage.”

“That’s a shame,” I say, and she wags her finger at me in disagreement. “I’m not a good role model,” I argue.

“As if I am,” she retorts. “It has nothing to do with us.”

“I think it does,” I say.

She ponders her next line.

“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Most people her age don’t believe in marriage,” she comments, and a kernel of burning awareness races down my spine.

Elizabeth is not much older than Julie, which is questionable if you think about it, but that begs the question. Is Elizabeth one of those people who don’t believe in marriage?

Now that I think about it… Why wouldn’t she be?

For a second, I’m contemplating that possibility and swiftly tense up.

I never thought about that in serious terms.

What if she thinks exactly like Julie?

What’s in it for them, anyway?

What was in it for me when I got married?

A long while ago, I optimistically thought marriage was the beginning of a well-lived life.

I wanted to marry Anne.

And I thought she wanted the same thing.

We talked about it. We had plans for it. We knew we were young, but we didn’t want to waste time and think about us with frivolity.

We wanted to do the right thing.

And then things fell apart. And my new view of marriage was shaped up by that event.

So, when I married Samantha––aside from doing it out of revenge––I thought very little about the institution of marriage.

That’s why I did it how I did it.

Our marriage was transactional, and I was cold about it. There were no feelings, a metaphysical connection, or a joyful life waiting to happen.

I was dispassionate and calculated, and Samantha was the same. A match made in hell.

Strangely, I’ve never thought about this aspect––that Elizabeth might not be a fan of marriage––until now.

Yes, I’ve seen a handful of marriages that worked well and meant what they were supposed to mean.

But somehow, it didn’t concern me because I wasn’t interested in marriage and hadn’t considered remarrying at any point in my life.

And despite feeling differently about Elizabeth, I didn’t want to go there and seriously think about it.

But what if this is the case here?

What if she hates the idea?

I’m sure she hasn’t even thought about it.

We just had this conversation about her life changing because of me, and she wasn’t thrilled with the idea.

To say that she works for me is a stretch, and we both know it.

This is not about working for me. It’s about being together and protecting her.

Marriage is not even… We’re not even close to considering… Oh. Fuck.

We might crash and burn before even getting there.

“What’s so bad about it?” I ask with a tinge of dark humor in my voice, avoiding her eyes and squeezing the back of my neck with a tense hand.

She chuckles quietly.

“Yeah, right. What’s so good about it?”

Our eyes meet again, and I ponder a good answer.

“Once upon a time, everything was good about it,” I say silently, and her grin fades.

She slowly shakes her head.

“I hope you’re not still holding it against Anna.”

Just as slowly, I shake my head in response.

“No, I don’t. It was meant to happen how it did, or we wouldn’t be here today. To be frank, I regret nothing, and it’s the first time I can truly say that.”