Page 122 of Happy After All

He stills beneath my touch.

“I don’t have to,” I say, starting to pull away, but he puts his hand over my wrist and holds me there.

“You can.”

We stay like that for a second, and I can feel his heart beating under where my arm rests against him. Hard. Steady.

I close my eyes. “Only if you’re okay with it.”

“I want you to read it,” he says, and his voice is stronger now, surer.

He emails me the document, and I get my laptop and sit in his bed. I start reading, and I’m not sure what I expect from this book. From this faithful adaptation of a woman’s life, written by the man who loved her.

But it’s somehow more, somehow deeper than I could’ve imagined.

It isn’t just Sarah I’m reading about, but Nathan. Because I can see her through his eyes. I can see how much he admired her. I can see her achievements through the lens of someone who loved her so much, and it humbles me.

I have never had a single person in my life who looked at something that I did in this way. I don’t feel envious, not really. I’m in awe. That somebody like him can see a person that way even after everything he’s been through.

That this kind of love and connection can exist in the world.

Nathan offers to get us lunch, and I nod in agreement as I shift positions and stretch across the bed with the laptop in front of me, my chin propped up on my hands.

He talks about how they met. How deeply she accepted him. There is honesty in these pages, about all the ways in which they clashed through the years. They’re both active people. Nathan loves to hike. Sarah always wants to be outdoors with her horses, or entertaining friends, and Nathan wants to spend hours working on his book. She’s proud, but she doesn’t quite understand him. I realize that’s the lens he sees her through as well. He is astonishingly proud of everything she does. He doesn’t love horses, not like she does. He understands that it matters to her, and because of that it matters to him. They pour so many resources into her endeavors. It is a very real support.

He finds a way to love it because she does.

I find the capacity for that fascinating too. I also know what it’s like, to be the partner who’s slightly more introverted, and I’m not even as introverted as Nathan. But I didn’t want to go to industry events all day every day in the way that Chris did. I had to be dragged to them sometimes, and it felt like putting on a mask to get ready to go. I can see a sensitivity in the way he and Sarah handled this with each otherthat I didn’t experience in my own relationship. I think that maybe their commitment to being different and supportive is a very rare thing.

I think how much it must’ve meant to him, coming from a family where he was very different from his parents, from his brothers, and finding someone who not only accepted him but who did it while not being exactly the same person he was.

That is a gift.

I can’t help but love Sarah as I read this book. Her drive is singular, to the point where, when she is diagnosed with cancer, her primary concern is still making it to the Olympics. She doesn’t want anyone to know she’s sick. There are times during her illness where that puts a massive strain on her and Nathan, even as he recognizes that this isherlife and she has to be able to go out the way that she wants to. She doesn’t want to extend her life for four or six months longer if she misses out on the things she loves the most.

She doesn’t want to lie in a bed. She doesn’t want a surgery that will make her worse and not heal her entirely.

I feel his tension in that, his acceptance, but I also feel her bravery. Her strength. There is so much certainty in her. Of course, her choice costs Nathan. It costs him time. He’s the one left with the whole life to live after.

Even so, her decision isn’t selfish, and he never comes close to painting it that way. Her decision is the sum total of her life and her legacy. The writing is his determination to honor it.

Nathan comes back with food, but I’m lying here crying very real tears as Sarah wins her final gold medal. Thin and ill, with people making comments about eating disorders while in reality colon cancer has ravaged her body. She doesn’t let it affect her because she knows her strength. She was a very strong person in ways I’m not sure I’ve ever had to be. In ways I know I’ve never had to be. I’m not sure I’ve ever known who I am with the level of certainty that Sarah Hart did.

I realize that Nathan could only know her this well after she was gone. He knew her the whole time, but he got her side of it after. I can’t help but feel a sense of tragedy in that.

Or maybe it isn’t tragic. Maybe it’s just a miracle to be known this way, no matter when it happens.

He sits in his desk chair, holding the bag with our food, and I keep reading, overwhelmed by a swell of emotion. The book doesn’t end with her dying. It ends with that medal. I lay my head down and weep. He says nothing.

I can’t say anything.

Not for a while.

When I finally do find words, I just want them to be the right ones. Our grief is different. My loss doesn’t mean that I perfectly understand his. Or that I have all the right words. He had to love her while letting her do things that physically hurt her. He had to love her while watching her die slowly over eighteen months. And ever since then he’s carried this great need to tell the story.

“I’m sorry if it’s offensive,” I say, “that I finished something that took you three years in just about four hours.”

He shakes his head. “That’s the best compliment I can get. I guess it’s readable.”

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