Chapter 24
Thursday morning.
Will had woken up to The Gift That Is TS and that hat resting on his chest. Rachel had been cracking up before he’d even looked over at her.
“I’m glad you’re excited,” he’d said.
“So excited.”
“But this”—he’d lifted the hat off him—“still not happening.”
“Give it time, Will. Give it time.”
He’d known then that he was going to tell her when they were in Nashville dressed and ready to go to Swift Saturday.
If things didn’t go well—if she said she needed time to think or told him to call it off or yelled he was a lying asshole or took a golf club to the car like at the end of the “Blank Space” music video—Rachel’s anticipation of the night ahead would still be there to bring them back together. His sins, he told himself, would be no match for the light that was Taylor.
It was a house of cards that came tumbling down the second he conceded Rachel wouldn’t need him there to enjoy herself. She’d probably have more fun without him, especially after he did what he was going to do. But it was getting late in the week, and he was running out of options.
“Got my massage booked at the spa,” Rachel said, practically bounding back to their table in the hotel restaurant where they’d had breakfast. The spa’s online reservation system hadn’t been loading right on her phone, so she had gone to do it in person when they’d finished eating. “And I did the full hour.”
“That’s great,” Will said. “When’s your appointment?”
“In twenty minutes. So I need to go up and change, like, now.”
“Oh, okay. I already paid, so I’ll go with you. Just let me ...” The coffee was no longer hot, and he took two big gulps and finished it. “All right, let’s go.”
“You could’ve stayed and taken your time,” she said. “I didn’t mean to rush you out of there.”
“Nah, I was done, and I think I’m going to go sit at the pool, so I want to put on my trunks and grab a book.”
“Just don’t go in the water with your tattoo.”
“I know. My swimsuit is just more comfortable.”
“So you can free ball it?”
The elevator dinged open in front of them, and an elderly couple walked out. He waited until he and Rachel had gotten in and, even then, kept his voice lower.
“I didn’t want to say it out loud, but, yes, Rachel, so I can free ball it.”
She laughed, and they rode up to the fifth floor and got changed with a few minutes to spare. Rachel was brushing her hair in the bathroom mirror, and Will came up behind her and put his arms around her waist and his hands lightly atop her bump.
“You sure it has to be exactly eleven thirty?” he said, kissing her collarbone above the line of her robe, craving the uncomplicated closeness he feared might be on the verge of slipping away.
She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing him in, and then reopened them. “You’re trouble. And yes, I am sure.” She turned in his arms to face him. “But we have all afternoon and a wide-open schedule. Just don’t go getting sunburned at the pool.” She kissed him on his nose and went to get her flip-flops.
“Didn’t you say it was indoors?” Will asked.
“Yeah, but it’s got big windows. Lots of sunlight. I’d probably wear sunscreen. Just to be safe.”
“It feels a little ridiculous to put sunscreen on before going to an indoor pool.”
“Do it, don’t do it, whatever—you’re a grown man. You’ll figure it out.” She sounded like a woman ready to stop talking about sunscreen and get to her massage, which was confirmed when he heard her open the door to the room, effectively ending the debate.
“Love you!” she called back just before the door closed with a thud.
Will looked at himself in the mirror. “Maybe I do need sunscreen,” he said to his reflection.
As he looked, the similarities to his dad stared back at him. The resemblance wasn’t overwhelming by any means, but it was there. In the shape of his nose and chin, and in his mouth when he smiled. (His mom had told him that once; he had a hard time picturing his dad smiling).
Will imagined, like he had countless times before, what it would be like to have a relationship with his father. When he did this, he sometimes imagined the questions he would ask. Just then, as he started to work the SPF 50 in on his face, he’d want to know if his dad had been scared when Will’s mom had been pregnant with him. Had he worried about some of the same stuff Will was currently? Had he ever gone to crazy lengths to make sure Will’s mom, his wife, would be happy after the baby came?
If he took his dad’s call, could he ask him now?
He shook the idea from his mind. His dad’s contributions to his life began and ended with that crooked grin.
Will finished applying the sunscreen and then hit the pool, claiming a chaise lounge right next to the water. This wasn’t the kind of setting your imagination typically associated with the term poolside. There was no tiki bar or beverage service, no lazy river or row upon row of reclining deck chairs. It was a fitting complement to the theater room in every way: comfortable, but in no way over the top. One wall was made entirely of windows that ran directly over the pool, with an opening underneath that let you swim from the indoor side to a smaller part outside, where there was also a hot tub. The seating inside could accommodate about 20 people, but late on this Thursday morning, Will had the place to himself.
Before trying to escape into his Emily Henry book for a bit, he checked his phone. He wasn’t expecting another email from Beatriz and had even looked before he’d left the room just to be safe.
But there it was. The subject line:
“Interview Schedule.”
Hi, Rachel—
I just wanted to share your schedule for Tuesday. Please see below and let me know if you have any questions.
Hope you’re having a great trip!
Beatriz
9:00–10:00 a.m.: Meet with Writing and Social Media Teams
10:00–11:00 a.m.: Meet with Design Team
11:00–11:15 a.m.: Break
11:15 a.m.–12:15 p.m.: Meet with Video and Web Teams
12:15–1:45 p.m.: Lunch with Rochelle
1:45–2:00 p.m.: Break
2:00–4:00 p.m.: Sit in on Client Meetings
4:00–5:00 p.m.: Wrap-Up with Rochelle
He went over the list of meetings once more. He hadn’t expected the day would be so ... jam-packed. It didn’t shake his belief that Rachel would knock it out of the park, and he supposed any responsible employer would do their due diligence, especially when relocating someone from across the country. But this didn’t read like a formality you put a candidate you’d personally recruited through. It read like a gauntlet—one Rachel hadn’t signed herself up for. She had even reminded him before they left on the trip that what people say at the interview stage doesn’t mean a whole lot.
What had he gotten her into?
He imagined Aunt Katie, wherever she was, already knowing how all this was going to go. The last time he had seen her, which they had both been aware would be the last time, she had said she wasn’t scared about dying, but that she was sad she wouldn’t get to talk with him anymore and watch him and Rachel continue growing into the people they would become. Will had responded that they’d never forget her, and they had both started crying.
“I do think that when you die,” Katie had said when they’d (more or less) gotten themselves together, “your spirit picks up some supernatural abilities when it comes to keeping tabs on the ones you love. So whatever’s going on with you two, I’ll know.”
He wanted that to be true almost as much as he wanted what he’d done to work. Because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t just be Rachel that he’d be hurting. He’d feel like he’d let Aunt Katie down too.
The thought of that tightened the pit in his stomach.
“Do you mind if I sit here?” a voice asked from above him, bringing him back to the hotel pool and the subtle yet persistent aroma of chlorine.
Will looked up at the man who had asked the question and then at the chairs around them—all of which were empty. He didn’t understand why this guy, who appeared to be in his 60s, had requested to ride shotgun on the same little patch of concrete and violate both of their personal space in the process. But as awkward as it was, it would’ve been more awkward to tell him no.
“No problem,” Will said.
“Great, thanks.” The man settled into the chaise, putting his feet up as he placed a small cooler onto the ground in between them. “I thought you might be saving it for someone.”
Yes, that would’ve been a plausible lie,Will admonished himself with more than a hint of regret. “Nope, just me. My wife’s getting a massage.”
His new neighbor smiled kindly. Will noticed he had on some dark-gray low-top sneakers, which went well with his white polo and charcoal gray shorts. All together, they added up to a look that was not standard-issue grandpa, sort of an avatar for the type of man Will pictured when his mom said she had a date.
“Lawrence Olsen,” he said, extending his right hand.
“Will,” Will said, shaking it but declining to volunteer his last name.
Lawrence reached down and opened his cooler. “Can I interest you in a beer?”
“Uh, I don’t think they allow alcohol around the pool,” Will said, choosing not to add that it also wasn’t even noon.
Lawrence did the same scan of their surroundings Will had done when he’d tried to figure out why this man had wanted to sit by him. But instead of being confused, Lawrence was amused.
“I think we’re in the clear,” he said.
“Yeah, you may have a point.” Will didn’t really want a beer, but he also didn’t want to be a weenie about it. “Sure, why not. Thank you.”
He accepted the can of Heineken, and they cracked them open in unison. After neither said anything for a minute or two, Will glanced at Lawrence out of the corner of his eye. The older man seemed to just be soaking in his surroundings, while Will was half wishing for a hotel employee to wander through and kick them out for drinking. At least then this interaction would have a natural conclusion, and he could go back to second-guessing his decision-making.
“You’re probably wondering why I picked the spot right next to you,” Lawrence said, watching the water lap in and out of that gutter thing pools have.
So he is aware this is weird, Will thought. He took a drink of his beer to give himself an extra beat to come up with an appropriate answer.
“I mean, that chair’s the only other one with a head cushion, so I guess I just assumed you like neck support.”
It was an environment full of hard surfaces, and Lawrence’s laugh bounced around it. “You did, did you?”
Will shrugged and took another drink. A longer one this time.
“I sat here,” Lawrence said, “because you remind me of my son, and I guess I’m kind of missing him today. All of my kids. My daughters are in California, he’s in DC, and here I am in the middle.”
Will wasn’t great at placing accents, but Lawrence did not sound like he was from Kentucky. “Do you live here? In Lexington?”
“I do. For the last forty-one years. Came from Boston to go to law school. I planned on staying three years and never went back.”
“Because ... you’re that big of a horse racing fan?”
This time, Lawrence’s smile was more wistful. “No. Because of a girl.”
Hearing a trace of his own story in Lawrence’s, Will nodded in acknowledgment. “Been there myself,” he said.
“You don’t say.”
“I moved to Chicago because the woman I wanted to marry was there, and I was hoping that one day, she’d want to marry me too.”
Because he hadn’t known back then about Rachel’s epiphany after driving home for her grandmother’s funeral, relocating from Ohio had felt a little like leaping without a net. Both Ali and his mom had pressed him on whether it was the smartest thing to do since he and Rachel weren’t even engaged. But Will hadn’t thought she was ready to be proposed to—they were both still only 24—and he’d been confident he didn’t want to do another year away from her. So when the opportunity to take a job in Chicago had presented itself, and Rachel had liked the idea, he’d jumped and crossed his fingers it would work out.
He was noticing a theme.
“And is that woman the same one getting the massage right now?” Lawrence asked optimistically.
“She is. We’ve been married for about five years, and we’re actually expecting our first baby this November.”
“Well, hey—congratulations!” he said, seeming genuinely excited over this news. “Now I’m really glad you let me give you that beer.” He raised his can. “Here’s to love and to your growing family.”
For someone like Will, whose father-in-law at best tolerated him and who just the day before had been regrieving his parents’ divorce because it hadn’t lived up to the standard set by a rom-com, receiving a heartfelt toast from someone’s dad, even if it weren’t his own, was wholly unprecedented and strangely moving. Will was in on Lawrence Olsen from that moment on, for however long this chat lasted.
“It’s Easterly, by the way,” Will said. “My last name. Will Easterly.”
Lawrence looked confused, but it cleared quickly. “I gave you my full name when I introduced myself, didn’t I?” Will smiled, and Lawrence chuckled. “My kids always tease me about that. I don’t even realize I’m doing it. Old business habit, I guess.”
Their conversation threatened to stall for a moment or two, but now that Will wasn’t in a rush to end it, he tried to find a way back in.
“Things with that girl must’ve worked out pretty well for you too,” he said. “If you’ve been here over forty years.”
“They did. Although I wasn’t quite as brave as you. I proposed to Josie a couple of months before we graduated from college. She was coming home to Lexington to teach music, and I was ready to come with her if she’d have me, but I wasn’t willing to risk ending up here on my own. I wasn’t even going to tell her I’d applied to law school at Kentucky unless she said yes. We always joked that if she hadn’t, I would’ve just gone to Harvard as my backup.”
“Really?” Will said, impressed. “You got into Harvard Law?”
“Oh no, not even close. I wasn’t nearly a good enough student for that. I mean, I was just lucky she grew up by a state school.”
He laughed at his own joke, giving Will permission to do the same.
“And clearly, she did say yes.”
Lawrence smiled again. “She did. Opening day, 1983. We had Red Sox tickets, and I asked her to marry me after the game. I was so nervous by the time it got to the seventh inning. They lost seven to one to the Blue Jays, and it was the only time in my life the Sox have been down, and I was rooting for outs.”
“So why didn’t you two ever move back?” Will asked. “Didn’t you say Lexington was only supposed to be for a few years?”
“Yes, that was our plan. And don’t get me wrong; Lexington’s a fine town. But we were always a little too hippie dippie for our surroundings, as my father-in-law used to say. So we were going to go back to Boston, Josie was going to get her master’s in music performance, and I was going to get a job at a law firm, hopefully in environmental law. But the summer after my first year, we got married, and six months later, she was pregnant.
“Suddenly, uprooting ourselves to move somewhere where we’d have no family within fifty miles and that would be far more expensive to live seemed a lot less practical. So we decided we’d put Boston off, just until Justin was old enough to go to school and I was making a little more money. Then we had our twins, Chloe and Emma, and we pushed it back a few more years.”
Will was rapt. He couldn’t believe the parallels to his and Rachel’s situation. Lawrence took a sip of his beer and shook his head.
“Josie looked at me at the girls’ high school graduation and, with no context, said, ‘Maybe when they graduate from college.’ I smiled, and she did too. They graduated from UCLA fifteen years ago. And here I am talking to you, in the heart of bluegrass country.”
Lawrence shared all this without seeming the least bit bitter. The way his face looked when he talked about Josie and their kids, even in passing, you could sense all the unseen ways in which he adored them. If anything, it felt to Will like a well-worn anecdote that he’d shared with friends over beers when they’d given him a hard time about how he’d always sworn Kentucky was only a temporary thing.
Still, on some level, Will thought it had to bother him. Bother both of them.
“Well, there’s still time,” Will said. He didn’t know exactly how old Lawrence was, and setting aside that they were currently drinking beers at a hotel pool on a Thursday morning, he did not appear to be someone who spent his days puttering around the house, so erring on the side of him still being a working lawyer seemed appropriate. “Maybe you two will get there when you retire.”
He tried to sound optimistic as he said it, but the idea of two people wanting something for that long and not getting to it until so many of their years together had passed, if they got to it at all—it sounded to Will like a cautionary tale.
And sure enough, this time, when Lawrence smiled, it didn’t read kind or wistful. It just read sad.
“That is what we decided,” he said. “We were going to move there when we retired.” He fidgeted with the wedding band on his finger, and for a second, Will could tell Lawrence had stopped speaking to him and was talking to someone who wasn’t there. “We just didn’t make it, did we?”
Josie had gone out for a run one Wednesday, Lawrence explained, as she did three mornings a week. After he’d gotten dressed for work, he had made her coffee and an English muffin with strawberry jelly, timed perfectly to when she’d walk through the door from the mudroom to the kitchen, the same door their three kids had tromped through for years. But with just the two of them, this had become their ritual, a chance to start their days together before he went to the firm and she began her lessons (she was still teaching music).
That Wednesday, though, Josie had been late getting home from her run.
She was never late getting home from her run.
So Lawrence had texted her. He’d called her. And when another 10 minutes had passed and she hadn’t responded, he’d gotten into his car to go looking for her. He’d known the route she’d been running that morning because he’d known all her routes, and as he’d driven, he’d imagined catching up with Josie and her laughing at his overreaction.
When he’d come up on the flashing lights of the ambulance, he’d known instinctively that wasn’t going to happen.
Josie had died of a heart attack. On the side of the road a mile and a half from their house.
Will’s stomach roiled, a vision of Josie as Rachel in his head, and it took everything in him to keep the mix of breakfast and beer that had risen to the back of his throat from going any farther.
“It’s been six years,” Lawrence said. “When the girls were in college, we started doing these little vacations where we’d just stay at a hotel in town. Josie always loved a hotel. She said they made everything feel a little more special, even if we were down the street. Sometimes when I need to feel close to her and the quiet of our house becomes a little too much”—he waved his hand in a sweeping motion around the pool area—“I do this for a couple of days.”
Lawrence stopped talking and finished his beer, his gaze on a nonexistent horizon, while Will sat there, scrambled from this brush with what was in effect his worst nightmare. He tried to find an explanation, something orderly, to latch on to. Josie must’ve been, what, 20 years older than Rachel when this happened? More? And she was exercising, not giving birth.
“Did she have some sort of underlying condition?” Will asked, knowing he should just be giving Lawrence a sympathetic ear but desperate for a reason that felt less randomly cruel.
“No, just one of those things,” Lawrence said quietly.
Will didn’t know what that meant. Other than that people died unexpectedly every hour of every day. That story on maternal mortality rates came crashing back into focus, and he felt queasy again in the humid indoor air.
“I’m sorry,” he finally ventured, still reeling. “For your loss and for making you relive it just now. I can’t—I can’t imagine.”
Except he just had. And it was torture.
Lawrence’s kind smile returned.
“Oh no, no, no,” he said. “No apology necessary. I basically steered you into it. Like I said, she was already on my mind. I wouldn’t be here if she weren’t.”
“I know it’s not my place to ask, but have you ever considered moving closer to your kids?”
“Please, I wouldn’t have told you all this if I had a problem talking about it. And to answer your question, yes, I have thought about moving. Often, actually. But I don’t want to be a burden on any of them, and I don’t know how to pick which one to move by.”
The irony of that comment helped pull Will out of his stupor.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that your children don’t think you’re a burden. I’d love to have a dad like you.”
Lawrence gave him a quizzical look but didn’t ask for more.
“That’s very kind of you to say. They tell me the same thing. Maybe they’re not just being nice to their old man after all.”
“Yeah, I highly doubt it.”
Lawrence set his empty Heineken on top of the cooler. “I suppose the real reason I don’t do it is because this is where our life was, Josie and me. We got married here, we raised our kids here, we were getting older together here ...”
He trailed off and didn’t say what Will knew he was thinking: Josie had died here. She was buried here.
“Part of you would feel like you were saying goodbye to her all over again.” The words were difficult to say even though Will hadn’t known her and hardly knew him.
Lawrence turned away from the water and looked at him more intently than the entire time they’d been sitting together. “For being so young, you’re pretty wise, Will Easterly.”
“I think maybe I just love my wife the same way you love yours.”
Flexing his hand, Lawrence assessed his wedding band again.
“Sometimes, I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and swear for a second I can still feel her in the bed next to me,” he said. “And then I’ll remember, and I’ll ask myself if there’s anything I would’ve done differently. I know our life together and our kids and the way we used to grocery shop together on Sundays and how we made each other laugh—all of it was so much more than I ever had the right to ask for. And I knew her well enough to know she felt the same. We talked about it all the time.
“But she was so talented, and she didn’t just like the cello. She loved the cello. Now, I know what you’re thinking: The cello? Who gets excited over the cello? But she did, and once you heard her play, that was it. She deserved the chance to follow that dream. And if we had moved back, she would have.
“If I have any regrets about our marriage, it’s that.”
Will didn’t say anything in case Lawrence was going to keep going, but he didn’t, and a silence spread out between them. The older man didn’t know a thing about what Will had been plotting behind the scenes for the last week, nor had he offered that sentiment about regret as advice.
But Will took it in. He let himself be affected by it. And he told himself in no uncertain terms:
That’s not going to be us.