23. Maggie

Iglanced down at my phone for the tenth time, matching the address on it to the numbers on the house in front of me. It was surprisingly big for a house in New York. The red brick was bright and cheery against the white shutters. The large columns and half-circle driveway made the home feel stately. The window boxes had bright-pink flowers, and a sign propped next to the door told me I was welcome there. But part of me wondered if that would still be the truth when the owners opened the door to see who was standing on their porch.

After my conversation with Tommy, I had stayed up nearly all night wondering if all I really needed to do was forgive myself. But the only way to do that was to face my past. I hadn't been able to eat anything this morning. Olivia had asked multiple times if I was okay as I picked at my food during breakfast with her, but I dodged her questions. If I spoke out loud about what I was planning on doing, I was afraid that I'd realize how stupid it was and I'd chicken out. I knew that if I was going to do anything, it had to be this morning before the game tonight. The game would get over too late and I wouldn't have time tomorrow before the game and getting on the plane to do anything.

So it was now or never.

My lungs pushed the rest of the air inside of them out, trying to expel some of the anxious energy before I started up the stairs. I had never seen Luke's childhood home. He had planned to take me here for Christmas break our senior year, but he was gone before he ever had a chance. As I climbed the stairs, images of him walking down them on his way to school flashed through my head. I saw him as a little kid trick-or-treating down the street, dressed in the Darth Vader costume he had told me about proudly. The tie-dye chicken that he found his mom at a garage sale as a gag gift sat in the corner of the porch. Everywhere I looked there were memories of him, pieces of himself that he had laid out for all to see.

It took every ounce of bravery in me to push the doorbell and not run away as fast as I'd come. My heartbeat quickened at the sound of someone walking to the door, and one more doubt creeped into my head, wondering if I was doing the right thing, before the door was pulled open. Luke's mom stood on the other side. We had stayed in touch for a little bit after that horrible day, but communication slowly faded away. His parents had never blamed me for the accident. It was quite the opposite. They were so caring and attentive over me as I healed and tried to cope with the loss of my fiancé while they were grieving their youngest son. But I knew that in order for me to move on with my life, I needed to voice my guilt about that night and leave it out in the open for them to decide my fate.

It was a stupid idea, but I needed someone to forgive me and I couldn't ask Luke. Whether I needed to be forgiven or deserved it, I needed someone that understood to say the words and release me from this grief. If not, I was afraid I was reaching a point where I'd be lost forever under the weight of it all.

Luke had his mom's eyes and mouth, and it was jarring to see those traits in flesh again rather than in a photograph. I had to clear my throat to shove down the sudden onset of tears before I could speak.

"Hi, Mrs. Greenberg."

"Oh, Maggie," she exclaimed, full of warmth and sincerity. "What a surprise! Please come in."

Mrs. Greenberg ushered me inside and into a massive kitchen in the back of the house. It seemed that she was the only one home, but that was better than ringing the doorbell to find no one home and my plans foiled. She gestured to a stool at the kitchen island before she walked toward the fridge.

"Can I get you something to drink? Tea or lemonade?" I swallowed around the tightness growing in my throat.

"No. I'm okay. I actually came here to talk with you."

"Oh, honey. I saw that article." Mrs. Greenberg shut the refrigerator doors before she reached across the island to grab my hands. I hadn't thought about her reading the article. Embarrassment rushed through me, bringing heat to my cheeks at the thought that she knew I was dating someone that wasn't her son.

"That wasn't necessarily what I came here to talk to you about. But it did trigger something for me."

"What do you mean, dear?" The way that she was looking at me made me want to swallow myself whole and disappear. I wasn't sure if I could tell her about the big, ugly, black guilt that had been living inside me for almost four years. It would surely ruin the way she was looking at me right then, like I could do no harm. The black creature in my head felt like it was sneering at the thought of someone not recognizing what lived inside me.

"I need to talk about the night of the accident with you." There was nothing important about the accident that she hadn't already heard. It wasn't like there were details I had left out of the police report or something big had been missed. What I needed to tell Luke's mom was that night from my point of view. With all of the intimate details included. I needed someone to understand.

"The night of the accident," I started. "We were heading to my parents' house and Luke was asking about my mom's oatmeal cookies."

Mrs. Greenberg laughed. "He loved those cookies. He'd call me all the time to tell me how good they were. He wanted to mail us some, but he always ended up eating them before he could ever send them."

I found myself smiling at the image of Luke telling his mom sheepishly on the phone that the package wouldn't be coming because there was nothing to send. I had to school my expression back into something serious so I could continue.

"Well, the way he was so giddy about it, I couldn't help but look at him. He was so mesmerizing when he laughed."

Luke's mom smiled. She always thought Luke's and my love had been so special. She said our love had been one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of loves, and I fully believed what she had said was the truth. "When I looked back at the road, the car was on us."

I choked on the tears that were rushing back to the surface and tore my eyes away from Mrs. Greenberg. I couldn't bear to watch the look of disgust that was sure to cross her face.

"What are you trying to say, Maggie?"

"I could have saved us! It's my fault he's dead." I could barely get the words out above a whisper.

"Maggie." Mrs. Greenberg walked around the kitchen island to sit next to me. She grabbed my hands in hers and tried to meet my gaze, but I kept my eyes on my feet. "Maggie, that car came around a curve. You know that. Even if you had been looking, you wouldn't have been able to do anything. It's a miracle that you didn't die too."

There had been plenty of nights that I had stayed up wondering why the world took Luke instead of me. He was full of so much more goodness than I was. If anyone deserved to die that night, it was me. But this woman was consoling me like I deserved to live.

"I like to think that Luke saved you. He loved you so much that he wanted to protect you until the very end." I finally looked up to meet Mrs. Greenberg's eyes. There wasn't a tear in them. I had expected her to be as much of a mess as I was talking about the night that her son died. "Honey, that night was not your fault. If I had known you've been carrying around this guilt inside you this entire time, I would have told you that sooner."

"How are you doing so well?" I asked her as I swiped at my tears.

"Because I had to learn that I will never lose my baby boy." She put a hand up to her heart. "He's in here, just like he's in yours. Honey, you have to let him go. You deserve to be happy."

"How can I find the kind of happiness I had with Luke again?" I asked her. "Even you said our love was once in a lifetime."

"Maggie . . ." Mrs. Greenberg's hands moved to cup my face as she made sure she had my full attention. "There are so many kinds of once-in-a-lifetime loves. You both were so fortunate to have found that in each other so young. But, Maggie, your heart is so full of love. You will find someone else. It won't be like Luke's and your love, and I know you would never want that anyway. The next kind of love you will find will be something completely different. Something you didn't know you needed.

"And, to me, it looks like you may have already found it."

"Oh, Mrs. Greenberg. No." I started to shake my head. There was no way that I would lie to this woman about my relationship with Tommy. I would surely end up in hell at the end of this if I did. "He and I aren't like that."

"Are you sure?" she asked as she pulled away from me. "Because from what I can see, the way you two look at each other is something quite special."

I wasn't sure what had happened, but it was like a dam had opened up inside me after I had finally unlocked the ugliness for Mrs. Greenberg. So after she insisted that Tommy and I were special, it was like my mouth had a mind of its own as it opened again to tell her the truth.

"We aren't really dating." I looked back up at her after the words passed my lips. Some part of me felt relieved to be able to unload the secret onto someone else. "It's for the media and to help his career. We aren't in love."

"Maggie, you have never been a good liar." Mrs. Greenberg gave me a wry smile. "Any time you've ever been around someone, your feelings for them are always written all over your face, good or bad. If you're trying to tell me that you don't like that boy right now, you're in denial."

A heat spread across my cheeks as she read my feelings plainly. I cursed myself for being so obviously enthralled with Tommy Mikals. I had told myself from the start that if I got feelings for him, I'd be made a fool.

"Even if that may be true," I replied softly, "he's only doing this to save his career."

"Are you that dense?"

My mouth dropped open at her candor. "I'm sorry?"

Mrs. Greenberg took out her phone and tapped away on the screen before flipping it around so I could see. She had pulled up a picture of me and Tommy getting pizza the night before. The two of us were laughing as we raced across the street toward the pizzeria. Pure joy was all over my face. It was the brightest I had seen my smile in a long time.

"Do you see the way that boy looks at you?" She pointed at the second picture on the screen. I was eating my folded pizza, and Tommy was watching me. His eyes had crinkled at the corners, and the way he looked at me made my breath catch in my chest. "Are you trying to tell me that a man that looks at a woman like that isn't in love with her?"

As I rode the ferry back to the city, I thought through what Luke's mom had said to me. She never said she forgave me because she didn't think there was anything to forgive me for. And did I really deserve happiness? A small part of me knew that I did, but a bigger part was scared to hope for happiness like that again.

I picked apart our conversation about Tommy. Mrs. Greenberg's perception was rarely off. But could she really be right about how she thought Tommy felt about me? It felt too good to be true.

Was Tommy my next once-in-a-lifetime kind of love? I was scared to hope that the happiness I had from Tommy would last. I didn't want to let myself hope for someone to make me happy again only to be disappointed in the end.