Page 77 of Room for Us

The Ethan whose head is currently at an uncomfortable-looking angle, who clearly fell asleep waiting for me to seek him out… This Ethan believes I made him a better person, wants to say goodbye to me, and is sacrificing comfort. This Ethan fractures my convinction that I’m broken beyond repair.

In my addled, sleep-deprived state, everything suddenly becomes clear.

My dad leaving—it was like he died, suddenly and tragically and wrapped in betrayal. He became a ghost who haunted us. My mother’s resulting depression. My coping through acting out. Alienating people. Never letting anyone get close enough to hurt me. Creating drama to exert power over my surroundings. Seeking approval and control of my life through leaving for college, then marrying Chris to stay away. My failure to bear a child. Failure to save my marriage. Failure to get my dad to come home. Failure to save my mother from the rumor mill. My ultimate failure to have meaningful relationships because of my fear of being abandoned, physically and emotionally.

I’ve lived my entire life as the oblivious main character in my own autobiography. I wrote the story I’m living, and even though I’m aware now, it’s a path I can’t escape, no matter how my heart weeps at the sight of the sleeping man before me.

Maybe he’s the one—the one I can be fully myself with, who will love all of me, who will never leave. And maybe, if I were a different woman, I’d be brave enough to take the risk. To believe Celeste.

I can so easily see myself waking him up, telling him I love him, that we’ll find a way to be together, that I believe we have a future… a happy one.

But as much as I want to believe my own fantasy, I’m missing a key ingredient—hope.

There’s room for him in my heart. He’ll always be there. I’m sure of it.

But there’s no room for us.

“Goodbye, Ethan,” I whisper.

I tiptoe back to bed.

A few short hours later, I wake to the muted but unmistakable sound of a car in the drive. Blinking gritty eyes, I sit up to find myself in yesterday’s wrinkled clothes, with Aunt B’s costume jewelry spread across the bedspread, glittering mutedly in the soft dawn light.

Dread seizes me as I hear the trill of Daphne’s voice—tone questioning, then disappointed—and finally, a car door slamming and tires in the driveway again.

He’s gone.

“What do you mean, he’s gone? Where did he go?”

My mom sets her signature apple crisp on the kitchen counter. Her movements are careful, her voice dancing in the tones reserved for her most traumatized patients.

She knows something is terribly wrong. I didn’t answer her calls or texts all day. When evening rolled around, she couldn’t take it anymore and came over. Hoping, I’m sure, that nothing was amiss, while instinctively knowing the opposite.

I never bothered to lock the front door after Ethan and Daphne left, so she let herself in and found me in the living room. I was sitting in the dark, in the chair Ethan slept in, staring into nothing, thinking about nothing. Being nothing.

Somehow she got me to my feet and onto a stool in the kitchen, poured a glass of water down my throat, and is currently serving me a chunk of my favorite dessert.

“I’m not hungry,” I mumble.

“Okay,” she answers, unbothered as she sets a spoon and a bowl of warm, cinnamon sugary goodness in front of me.

My resistance buckles and I scoop a little into my mouth. Tears collect in my eyes.

She doesn’t ask me what happened—she doesn’t have to. It pours out of me in a waterfall of confession. Every little thing I’ve kept from her, from how I lost my virginity to my infertility. The truth about my marriage. My guilt over not staying close to Aunt B. How I hallucinated her voice for weeks until realizing it wasn’t real. Everything that happened with Ethan. How powerless I feel over my own fear. How confused I am. How my heart feels pulverized in his absence.

When I finish, I wait for her to launch into reasons and solutions, explanations and platitudes. Instead, she wraps her arms around me and holds me tightly, stroking my hair until my shuddering breaths even out and deepen.

“Mom,” I whisper, voice cracking. “What do I do?”

She kisses my temple. “Exactly what you’re doing, my heart.” When I stiffen, she leans back to clasp my wet cheeks. Her teary eyes find mine. “Millions of people never question why they are the way they are, the root causes of their unhappiness, anxiety, anger, grief… Their minds and bodies continue on, adapting as best as they can to a lifetime of traumas, big and small. But there are those who sense another path, and eventually, instead of turning away from their pain, they turn toward it. They know that the only way out is through. It’s the hardest way, and the only way, to healing.”

“It hurts,” I whisper.

“Yes, it does,” she answers, voice thick with her own journey, her own remembered pain. “I wish I could promise you that it’ll be over soon, but I can’t. All I can tell you is that you don’t have to do it alone.”

“I don’t want to do it at all.”

“Too late.” Her lips graze my hair. “You’re wrong about one thing, my sweet girl. You have hope. Somewhere inside you, you know you deserve love, peace, and joy. Because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here now. You wouldn’t have come home. You would have kept running. And let me ask you this—do you want to run away right now? Sell the inn and go somewhere no one knows you?”

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