Page 67 of All In
“Maybe,” Yvonne said, “you should try to find out.”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m ready. I can’t dump all that confusion and guilt on Teddy. He’s precious to me. So precious, in fact…” I spread my arms out to indicate the house. “I buy a house fifteen hundred miles away from him.”
“You want to know what I think?”
“In the worst way possible.”
“I think something’s happening between you and Theo, and it scares you to pieces.”
A thousand reasons why that was wrong piled up on my lips. I swallowed them all down.
“I think you might be right,” I said softly, and all at once I felt something shift in me. A settling. A Big Something I might have been waiting for.
Yvonne’s smile was gentle. “Keep going, baby. Tell me.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to imagine a life after Jonah,” I said. “A future like other people have, with marriage and kids, and careers we help each other to build. It’s been almost impossible to imagine loving someone else. But when I let myself have that kind of hopeful vision, the only person I see is Teddy.”
Yvonne nodded. “And now thebut…”
“But the guilt. And how Beverly would react. And what Oscar and Dena would think. And the worry that I’d mess it up. And the fact that I’m… I’m terrified something will happen to Theo like it did to Jonah.” My eyes stung with sudden tears. “I’ve lost too much already.”
“I know.” Yvonne dropped her sledgehammer and embraced me in a dusty hug. “I know you have.”
“I had Jonah. For a few, short moments that beautiful man was mine and I was his. I’ll never have anything that real or good again, will I? Who gets a second chance like that?”
“The ones who step back up to the table and lay it all out there.” Yvonne pulled away, pushed the hair from my eyes. “You’re not done, Kacey. I know you aren’t. You have more cards to play.”
I smiled through the tears. “I am a universe.”
Yvonne’s eyes widened. “I like that. Yes, you are a universe, right here in this room, and you arenot done.”
She put her arm around me, and we surveyed the demolished kitchen.
“You’re starting over again. New life, new place. It’s brave, putting one foot in front of the other. You don’t have to figure it all out at once. Don’t force it, and if something good and real is waiting for you around the corner, it’ll still be there when you’re ready.”
The cabinets were all down, and we were up to our ankles in splintered wood. Dust motes danced in the afternoon light streaming in through the window.
Yvonne gave me a squeeze. “Can you see it yet? Your new home?”
“Not yet.”
“You will, baby. You will.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR
Friday afternoon was dead at the shop. I’d been hoping for a hard job—a client who wanted something intricate to keep my mind off Kacey’s date. Instead, all I got was a young, nervous-looking girl, about twenty years old, who wanted a semicolon on the inside of her right wrist.
Great,I thought.That’ll take me all of ten minutes.
“What’s it mean?” I asked her, loading black ink and a liner needled in my tattoo machine.
“A semicolon is where a writer can choose to end the sentence,” she said, tucking a lock of brown hair behind her ear. “But they don’t. The story goes on. It’s a symbol of hope. To keep going.” She smiled tremulously. “Sometimes I need that reminder.”
I stared at the girl a moment, nodded, this job suddenly taking on a whole new meaning.This is why I do this.
I inked the semicolon onto the young woman’s wrist and when she was done, I thanked her instead of the other way around.
