Chapter 25
“You know, Steven C. could really learn a thing or two from Kevin H.”
Rachel steps off the elevator ahead of Will, nose wrinkled. “Who and who?”
“The front desk guy in Lexington and the front desk guy here,” Will says. “Kevin just gave me two drink coupons for the hotel bar and told me to enjoy Nashville.”
“I think that’s probably the hotel’s policy, not his own personal code of conduct.”
“Yes, but I think Steven C. actively despised me.”
“In his defense, you did try to persuade him that his hotel was haunted.”
“I knew it was a mistake telling you that,” Will says, pulling one of the two key cards for their room out of the little paper sleeve. “Sure, was there a period of time when I thought Lawrence might have been a ghost? Yes.”
The lights on the lock flash green, and the door clicks open.
“But it wasn’t like it was a long period of time,” he continues once they’re both inside. It’s early evening, and the red numbers on the clock next to the bed read 5:14.
“Babe,” Rachel says, “I say this with all the love in the world in my heart: any amount of time you spend thinking a conversation you just had could’ve been an instance of paranormal activity is, by definition, too much.”
It started after Lawrence left the pool and Will discovered that his new friend’s AirPods had slipped out of his pocket and gotten left behind. Will was there another 45 minutes, reading his book in an effort to recover from their unexpectedly intense conversation, but Lawrence didn’t come back to claim them.
“I found these by the pool,” Will said when he got to the front desk, which was once again staffed by Steven C. “I think they belong to another guest, Lawrence Olsen?”
Will set the AirPods down on the counter, but Steven didn’t move to take them, instead typing something into his computer.
“I can hang on to them,” he said, “but there’s no one by that name staying here.”
“Are you sure? Maybe just try Lawrence. I’m not sure how he spells Olsen.”
Steven went back to the note he’d been writing when Will had walked up, suggesting this was not the first time someone had asked him to look up a guest’s name in his computer and the search had returned no results.
“I did just try Lawrence,” he said. “There are no Lawrences of any kind currently at the hotel.”
“Is there any way to check people who have just checked out? He could’ve been leaving today.”
Steven’s focus stayed on the longest piece of handwritten text Will had seen in years. “Sir, when we run a search, it goes through every guest who has ever stayed here, back to when we put the system in five years ago.”
“That seems a little Big Brother-y,” Will said, forgetting for a moment that he was an IT guy.
“Be that as it may, I can assure you we’ve only had six Lawrences stay here in the last five years, and none of their last names started with an O.”
“Only six? I feel like that’s low.”
“Well, I haven’t recently reviewed a list of the most popular US baby names over the last twenty to eighty years, so I’m afraid I’m unqualified to comment.”
“Maybe try Larry? He didn’t seem like a Larry, but you never know.” Will had had a more meaningful talk with Lawrence than he’d ever had with his own father, and he felt an obligation to get these back to him.
“Sir,” Steven said, finally looking up and putting his pen down—with emphasis—“I really don’t have time to start searching possible nicknames.”
“I mean, it looks like you’re writing the Magna Carta there, so maybe you do.”
Steven exhaled deeply and then typed again. “Okay, there you go,” he said. “There have been ten Larrys. One with an O last name. Larry O’Donahue. No Larry Olsen.”
“Okay,” Will said, confused. “Thanks anyway.”
It didn’t make sense. Will hadn’t known Lawrence for long, but he was sure he wouldn’t have given him a fake name. And even if he had, Lawrence would’ve told him what it really was after that conversation—a conversation that to Will, as he neared telling Rachel what he had done, had almost felt like the universe intervening to spur him on.
A chill passed through his body. Was it something as big and abstract as the universe?
Or was it something—or someone—a little more specific?
More to the point: Could Lawrence actually have died a long time ago and contacted Will from beyond the grave to deliver a message about not missing an opportunity to help his wife pursue her dream?
It sounded like a plotline from a far-fetched movie romance.
Which someone like Will, who had cried during The Notebook and was looking for good omens anywhere he could find them, was in no position to dismiss without investigating.
Will took a few steps away from the desk but turned on his heel and went quickly back. Steven saw him coming and made no attempt to hide his eye roll. Will might have found a manager or someone to complain to were he not about to inquire, in earnest, whether other guests had reported seeing ghosts around the pool.
“Sir, are you asking me if the hotel is haunted?”
“That’s not quite a ‘No, it’s not.’”
“You know that marijuana is illegal in Kentucky, right? I mean, unless you have a prescription. But you can’t, like, smoke it in the hot tub.”
“Hey, we meet again!” came a voice from behind them. Will instantly recognized it as that of the man he’d known as Lawrence, and that man walked up next to him and clasped him on the shoulder. “And you found my AirPods!”
Will kept his eyes on Steven. “You’re seeing this, right?” he muttered. “Like, there is another person standing here with me right now?”
Steven stared at Will in disbelief.
“Here you go, sir,” Steven said, stretching a smile across his face and handing the white case to Lawrence. “Found them at the pool.”
“I found them at the pool,” Will corrected.
The hotel man lingered for a second, then shook his head and disappeared through the door behind the front desk, leaving Will alone to sort out who exactly Lawrence Olsen was. He did know now he hadn’t had a supernatural encounter, which was a touch disappointing.
“I told him your name,” Will said, “so he could let you know they were at the desk, but when he tried to look you up, he said no one named Lawrence Olsen had ever stayed here.”
“Oh, that,” Lawrence said with a gleam in his eye. “Whenever we did something like this, Josie loved using the name of a famous composer to book the room. This week, I stayed under the name of one of her all-time favorites, Amy Beach.” Seeing that Will had no idea who this was, Lawrence added with a smile: “You should look her up.”
So there was a logical explanation after all. Because of course there was. On an intellectual level, Will had never truly thought there had been something magical about Lawrence’s appearance in his life. But he’d wanted to believe that some cosmic force was cosigning his plan for Rachel, and for a minute or two, a piece of him had.
Able to tell that Will was a little rattled, Lawrence invited him to split some buffalo wings in the hotel bar. They did that, with Rachel eventually joining them. She picked up some of Lawrence and Josie’s story in the course of the couple of hours they spent together, and Will filled her in on the rest later, up to and including how he’d temporarily mistaken Lawrence for a ghost (but leaving out why he’d been emotionally invested in that impossibility somehow being true).
“This really has been the best week,” she says once they’ve settled into their final hotel room of the trip. It took them three and a half hours to drive from Lexington to Nashville, and he’d gotten them reservations at the legendary Bluebird Cafe that night so they could listen to live music.
Will smiles. “I’m so glad.”
Rachel smiles back. “I mean it. Going back to real life could be pretty dull in comparison.”
“Could be?”
“Yeah. You know.”
“Know what?”
“Are you really going to make me say it?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“Jeez, I told you how much better you are than Seth, I told you about the date for the tattoo, I told you how lucky I am to be married to you, and now this too?”
Will raises his eyebrows.
“Fine. Real life could be pretty dull in comparison ... if I didn’t have you.”
He is looking for his phone charger, but her words stop him. Of all the moments they’ve had together over the course of the past week, of all the ways she’s shown him how much she loves him, it’s this one, on the eve of his big revelation, that makes him stop looking for omens and talismans and start looking at what’s right in front of him.
She would get bored. If she didn’t have him.
His carefully crafted lies feel impossibly cheap next to her honesty.
“Like, getting up and going to work on Monday is going to be a total bummer,” she continues. “I’ve got a meeting with that rationality-of-belief guy again.”
It’s only Friday, and they’re not on their way to Swift Saturday, but Will feels that fading into the background.
“Oh, and get this: my boss now wants me to create three designs for every project so we can have a more iterative process. She’s got an MBA, for God’s sake. She knows less about graphic design than I know about what you do.”
Her job was the problem. But he wasn’t her job.
“And my mom’s going to want to do that shopping trip to Old Orchard that I canceled,” Rachel adds. “I’m so not in the mood for one-on-one time with her right now.”
She’s ready to hear this,he thinks. I’m ready to tell her.
“But that’s okay,” Rachel goes on. “All of it. And do you know why?” She hovers over the Seurat tote and looks right at him. “You, Will. You and me and the life we’ve built together. The world makes sense to me when I’m with you. So there you have it. And given the unending stream of compliments I’ve heaped upon you this week, I think the least you could do is wear that hat tomorrow night.”
“I feel the same way about you,” he says, his heart now thumping.
“I know you do, babe.” She puckers her lips in a kiss at him before going to sit down.
“But I still wish you didn’t have to do any of that stuff.”
“Yeah, well, what are you gonna do?” she says, not entirely listening as she glances at the room service menu.
“I mean, I would do anything so you didn’t have to anymore.”
Her attention shifts back to him now. “I know,” she says slowly.
Will swallows hard, what Lawrence told him right before they parted ways the second time playing back in his mind:
I can tell how much you love her, son, and how much she loves you. Love like that is a privilege. Never take it for granted, and never stop being worthy of it.
Will, for years, has been operating under the assumption that going to extremes is how you prove that worthiness. But the privilege of a love like Rachel’s, so plainly yet abundantly clear as he stands there looking at her—that demands more than a list of reasons followed by a convincing speech.
It demands he hold himself accountable.
Until he looked up from hunting for that phone charger, Will had every intention of telling her Saturday night why he’d done it.
Now he knows he has to tell her immediately that he wishes he hadn’t.
“I made a mistake,” he says.
Rachel’s attention turns serious. “Will.”
“You’ve got an interview at Creative Vices Tuesday.”
She laughs once. It’s hard. Abrupt.
She sees his expression doesn’t change.
“That’s impossible,” she says.
“It’s not. I mean, I know how it sounds, and I’m not proud of—”
“Seriously, what’s going on right now?”
“Here, it’ll be easier if I just show you.”
Will walks over to her, holding out his phone with the Beatriz email chain pulled up on the screen. His hand shakes a little as he does it, the nervous energy running from his brain, down his neck, through his arms, and out his fingertips.
She takes the phone and is focused as she goes over the emails. He sees her eyes move as she uses her finger to scroll back up and read through everything again. When she’s done, she closes the screen and puts the phone down next to her. She stares at him.
“I can’t believe you did this.”
She’s sitting at the room’s desk, but with her back to it, her body facing the king-size bed, the larger of her two bags still open on top of it from when she pulled out her clothes for dinner.
“You would’ve done the same for me,” he says, hoping for the best while squatting down in front of her and grabbing her hands. “Well, maybe not the same. You’re more creative and more levelheaded than me, which is kinda crazy when you think about it. But you know what I mean.”
He’s anxious and rambling, waiting for her to say something else.
Embrace him. Berate him. Absolve him. Something.
Their TV is on mute on the hotel-guide channel, and the quiet reminds him of playing high school basketball, of all things. Junior year, he had a potential buzzer-beating shot to win sectionals, and he still remembers all the sound being sucked out of the gym as he watched the ball arc through the air toward the rim.
He just hopes it ends better this time.
And that’s when she pulls her hands away.
“Is that all this week was?” she asks. “Some sort of pep talk? To get me on board? To distract me while you were doing this?”
He doesn’t move, keeps looking up at her. “What? No. Okay, kinda. But only because I knew you would ...”
“‘You knew.’ Better than me. You knew better than me what I wanted.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“I think that’s exactly what you’re saying,” she says, standing now, her voice getting louder. “So, what, you don’t think I’m capable of making my own decisions?”
He stands, too, but she’s already brushing past him on her way to the door.
“Babe, c’mon. You know that’s not true.”
“No, what I know is that I don’t need you to swoop in and save me. That I’ve never needed you to save me. Because I’m not some damsel in distress, no matter how much you seem to want to see me as one.”
“I don’t—look, I know I messed up.” She’s at the door now, and he’s ransacking his mind for the words that might somehow keep her from leaving. “Like, exponentially. I’m trying to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry,” she says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why didn’t you say so? That makes it all better.”
He’s stunned into silence. How did he screw this up so badly?
She opens the door.
“Where are you going?” he manages to get out.
“I don’t know,” she says and slams it behind her.
And there, in that nondescript, standard-king room a few miles from the Nashville airport, Will realizes something.
It doesn’t matter whether he takes after his dad or not. He’s perfectly capable of destroying things all by himself.
The weight of it drops him into the chair Rachel had been sitting in.
He doesn’t get up for a long time.