22. Este
ESTE
I slide a sundress over my head. It’s one of my favorites—a linen blend with yellow and white vertical stripes that falls just above my ankle.
When I reach into the bedside table, I pull out a letter that Cole left for Reed, using her given name, Reilley, along with all his end-of-life documents. He took care to write her a letter “just in case,” knowing he lived a dangerous life that could end at any moment.
It reads in flowery chicken scratch:
“To Reilley, when you’re ready to read this.”
It’s the right day for it. I can feel it in my bones. There are photos inside of it, I know, thanks to Cole’s scrawled, “ do not bend .”
With a little sigh, I rub my thumb over his handwriting and wonder about Cole’s words. He’d left me a letter too, but I’d read it as soon as I received it from his attorney, who did all his end-of-life paperwork.
I take the envelope with me to the kitchen, where Reed is already sitting at the table, shoveling big forkfuls of French toast into her mouth. She’s wearing a bright pink dress with a flower tucked behind her ear. She’s never looked so grown-up or beautiful.
“Hi, sweetie.” I kiss her cheek and rub her back. “Happy last day of junior year. I have something for you. Something your dad left. Are you in the right mental space to read it?”
Reed’s eyebrows arch as she takes the envelope in her hand and looks at me with surprised, bright eyes that mirror my own.
“How do I know I’m ready?” She asks when she sees that it’s from Cole.
“You’re newly seventeen, my love. You’re about to go away for over two months to a camp where I won’t see you. It’s time.”
I turn to Dom and pad across the kitchen. I kiss him deeply.
“Good morning, love of my life,” Dom whispers to me.
“Good morning. Ditto.” I give him a grin and then steal a piece of bacon from a platter beside the stove. I moan at how good it is, how perfectly crisp.
“Oh, Mom,” Reed folds up the letter. “That was such a sweet letter. Today was the perfect time for it. I don’t mind if you read it after I leave. And he included a bunch of photos I took of us at the San Diego Zoo the month before he died. We look so cute. Check us out!”
Reed walks over to where I’m standing beside Dom, and she hands me a glossy photo of a selfie Reed had taken with her recently acquired selfie stick.
I’d had my hair up in a messy bun with a green visor and red lipstick, smooching the camera, while Cole and Reed made faces at each other.
Reed had given her dad bunny ears, and one of Cole’s eyes remains closed in the photo, so he looks extra silly.
I can’t help but laugh at the goofy image. It’s so lovely to look at a photograph like this and laugh instead of cry.
It’s like I’m finally healed. It had taken a long time to reach this point. To this stable, happy place where I’m okay without him.
He’d been the love of one portion of my life, and Dom is here for the rest of it.
When I glance at Dom, his face is downright white, and he looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“Well, Reed, have a wonderful day at school,” he tells her before giving her a quick hug. He seems to rush her out of the house. She shoulders her backpack, hugs me, and scurries out to catch her bus.
“Everything okay?” I ask Dom in the kitchen as I look through the photos, glancing up at him every so often. I don’t mind that he’s looking at our old family pictures, but he doesn’t seem right.
“Este, this…this was your husband, Cole?”
“Yeah. I know, he can’t ever seem to have both his eyes open at the same time for any of the photos.” I give a smile. “Just part of his charm, I guess.”
Dom clears his throat.
“Did he, um, go by any other names? Like, was Cole a nickname?”
I peer up at Dom, who doesn’t meet my eyes. He’s behaving so strangely, just staring at the picture I’m holding.
“His name was Colin Coleson. We met when we were fifteen. He was new to the area, and I took him on a tour of the school. It was love at first sight, really, and he was the only boy I ever dated until you. I didn’t take his last name because things were kind of difficult between us when we married, and I guess I felt a bit pushed into it.
I never wanted to be twenty-one and a bride.
Had so much I wanted to still do with my life. ”
Dom abruptly walks to the table and sits down, his back ramrod straight.
“Dom. Dom, what is it?”
Fear courses through my body, and an unsettled feeling swirls in my stomach. Something must be seriously wrong.
He puts his face in his hands. “Este…Celeste Evans.” He repeats my name oddly, and I sit down beside him.
“What’s wrong?” I demand.
“Did the military tell you how your husband died?” His voice is quiet and serious.
“Just that he was a hero. They told me to hold tight to that, to let that help get me through it. Why?” I narrow my eyes at him and try to get Dom to return my gaze.
At last, his green eyes focus on mine, and they are filled with pain so deep, I feel like someone has punched me in the stomach.
“Este, he was a hero. Mine.”
Dom’s eyes close as my heart rate picks up. What the hell does he mean?
“What?” I shake my head in confusion.
“Listen. About three years ago, my Ranger unit was tasked with a mission alongside Delta Force. We only got the news a day before. The job was to clear out a suspected Al Qaeda safe house. I can’t say where.” Dom’s voice shakes.
I stand there, staring. Stunned. This can’t be real.
“We met the Delta guys the night before, nailed down the schematics, and then gathered before first light. We had to walk into town because a vehicle might have given an alert. Anyway.” Dom’s Adam’s apple moves as he swallows.
“On the way, shit got jacked up, and we were ambushed. A whole bunch of guys, armed to the teeth, and out of nowhere, a kid with a vest walked out onto the road, headed right for me. I didn’t see him right away, but Coleson didn’t hesitate.
He flew at the guy, knocked him off his feet, wrestled for a second, and then the suicide vest went off. ”
“Under Colin?” I whisper, not quite believing the words Dom is saying to me. I’m numb, confused, and disoriented, and goosebumps rise to my skin.
“Yes. Coleson didn’t get clear fast enough. He…” Dom gulps, “Saved us all. But mostly me. I was closest, and I took some shrapnel, but Coleson—Cole—was gone immediately. There was nothing that could be done. I didn’t even know him, but I owe him my life.”
I hear loud noises, and I don’t recognize that they are screams coming from me. Standing, I take a step and then fall to my knees, setting my hands in front of me to catch myself at the last minute, and buckle forward onto the floor.
It’s a bright, beautiful morning.
Just like the morning when I learned Cole had died. The sun had some fucking audacity to shine then.
To shine now.
My heart cracks open. Maybe it had never healed. All I am is a pile of broken pieces.
Pain radiates through me as I break all over again.
My lover is only here because my husband died for him?
What kind of fucked up fairytale is this? Here, I’ve been gallivanting around thinking I’ve found the second love of my life, but he’s only here because my first one was obliterated in the desert?
I can’t bear it.
“Get out!” I hear myself shout.
It’s been three years since I’ve heard myself wail like this, and it’s something I never wanted to experience again in my life.
Knowing now why Cole couldn’t have the open casket that he would have wanted.
Understanding that there were probably parts of him scattered all over a roadside in some fucking nation we never belonged in to begin with.
Dom, hovering over me, rubs my back in the kitchen of the house I purchased with Cole’s life insurance money.
Alive. Unharmed.
Cole—dead.
The day I met Cole flashes in my head, our first handshake, our first kiss. The moment I said, “I do.” It all comes rushing back, my stomach turning all the while.
“Please go,” I whimper as tears spring out of my eyes like a fountain; I finally close them and lie face down on my kitchen floor.
Sobs wrack my body, and I barely hear Dom when he tells me, “I didn’t know it was you. I swear, Este, please believe me. I never knew you were his widow. Or I never would have—I never would have…” He stammers. “And every day, I’m grateful to him. I will never forget I’m here on borrowed time.”
“Please just go.” I can only whisper the words.
I turn my head and see Dom’s feet walking toward my room. He’d moved many of his things in since he stayed with me the month I was recovering from surgery. When he returns, he’s pushing a big suitcase, and he starts to walk my way, but I shake my head and lamely ask him to leave.
Dom is only alive because Cole isn’t. Like the universe had made a perverse fucking trade, swapping one for the other.
And now I have, too.
Pieces of Reed’s father are in a casket, decaying, while Dom gets to live a long, happy life. I just can’t be the woman who does it with him.
Finally, I hear the front door close and throw up all over the tile.