Page 98 of This Is How It Started
“She ran off with another boy,” she continues. “A boy in their circle of friends. At first, Josh was devastated. And then he met you.” She cups my chin, and I feel the warmth of her touch and an affection that grabs me by the throat and makes my eyes tear. “He loved you so much, Rachel. You made him so very happy.”
“He kept her old text messages all these years,” I blurt, surprised that I’m confiding in my mother-in-law, a woman I’ve never been particularly close to. “I mean...I’m not saying he was still involved with her...only that it’s odd that he never mentioned her before, don’t you think?”
“Why would he?” Pauline hitches her shoulders like she’s truly baffled by my confusion over Josh’s hesitance to mention an ex-girlfriend. “She was no longer important to him. Why would he think she would be important to you?”
It seems so simple the way Pauline says it. But I know it’s not. Or maybe I just want to make things complicated. Later, I’ll take the time to explore that notion, but now I want to know what Pauline knows.
“Do you think Josh loved her?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer but needing it like I need my next breath.
She takes the stool next to me and kisses me on the cheek. “Josh had a big capacity for love,” she says, her eyes sadder than I’ve ever seen them. She misses her son as much as I miss my husband. “But he knew better than to want something he couldn’t have, something that was impossible. So, he let himself grieve for a while. But he had too much passion for life to not move on, to not look for love somewhere else.” She reaches out again, this time wrapping her small hand around mine. “And then he met you, dear, and his whole world changed.”
* * * *
On the plane ride home, I dissect my conversation with Pauline. Is the takeaway from it if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with? Or is it something different? I can’t help but remember something my mother said. “People change, circumstances change. It doesn’t mean we don’t cherish the past, but we move on to the future.”
Her words—and Pauline’s—give me a new sense of clarity. I think I’ve been giving Beth Hardesty too much importance. Or maybe not the right kind of importance. The idea of a one true love is the ultimate romantic trope, but it doesn’t account for the exigencies of life, like getting dumped by your live-in girlfriend or getting T-boned at thirty-five. Or for that matter getting pregnant at seventeen, miscarrying and upending all your plans. Had Josh seen Beth as his one and only, he never would’ve gone looking for someone else and he never would’ve found me, the next chapter in a great love story. Because it really was a great love story. And no one can ever diminish what we had together.
So instead of holding me back, the lesson of Beth is pushing me forward. And when I try to see my future, it looks a lot like my past, and I suddenly know what I have to do.
Chapter 35
This Is How it Starts
On the ride home from the airport, Dr. Booth texts me.
“How ’bout we finally get that dinner? Tonight? Tomorrow? You name the day and time.”
I’ve been putting him off for weeks, coming up with every excuse under the sun. But only now do I realize that it’s not out of loyalty to the memory of Josh that I have been evading him, it’s out of loyalty to Campbell.
I hover over my phone in the back seat of the Lyft car that smells like disinfectant and Mexican food as I ponder my response. Then my fingers are moving. Swiftly. Confidently. And before I know it, I’m hitting the Send button. “Delivered,” my phone says. It’s done.
In the driveway, I stand beside my small carry-on suitcase as the Lyft driver pulls away and stare up at the Queen Anne. The sight of it, even after only a few days gone, lodges somewhere deep in my soul. I’m home.
I drag my bag to the back door, waving to the young couple staying in the guest cottage, enjoying their coffee poolside on the lawn. They wave back, and I go inside and climb the stairs to my bedroom. There, before I unpack, before I wash away my travels, I open my email and purge the selfie of Beth in the dressing room, the one I sent myself and have been carrying around ever since I found it, letting it hold more meaning, more weight, than it should.
I pull the scrapbook of Josh and me that I made after he died from the bookshelf, lie on the bed, and take a deep breath as I turn the pages, visiting the passage of years. Our years together, Josh and me. We made a good life. One filled with love, one filled with happiness. Even now, I can feel him everywhere I turn. All around me.
The melted yahrtzeit candle is on the nightstand, the flame long flickered out. I gather it up along with the scrapbook and Josh’s laptop and tuck it away next to my wedding ring in a drawer. In the back of my jewelry box, I find the forever band Campbell gave me so long ago and watch prisms of color play off the gems in the sunlight like a new dawning.
I spend the rest of the morning cleaning my room, putting away my cherished past to make room for my future.
Then I stand under a spray of hot water in the shower until my skin wrinkles and the water turns cold. After dressing, I head to my car, drive across town and park across the street from Campbell’s house. There’s a sold sign where the for-sale sign used to be. He did it. He sold the house.
I guess I can say it’s part of his cherished past, except it isn’t. It was just a way for him to bide time until he found his future. I sit there for a while, imagining all the what-ifs the same way I did after Josh was killed in the car crash.
A long time passes before I start the engine and pull away from the curb. I make it all the way to Sunnyside before I remember that I’m afraid to drive.
The Scotts’ house has the best yard on the block. A cottage garden filled with lavender, roses and sage. I stay in the car, summoning my courage, then climb the porch steps to the front door, where I ring the bell.
Mr. Scott is there to greet me and, without saying a word, enfolds me in a hug. I smell his chewing gum, the kind that tastes like violets. He used to give us pieces when we were kids, and I’m momentarily thrown back in time.
“He hasn’t left yet, has he?” I ask, fearing that I’m too late.
“Come inside.” He guides me into the living room, which would be a simple space if not for Campbell’s furniture. Each gleaming wooden piece is more beautiful than the next.
But I only have eyes for signs of Campbell, that he’s here.He couldn’t have left yet,I tell myself. Escrow takes at least thirty days.
“He’s gone, lass,” Mr. Scott says, then insists I sit and have a cold drink.
