Chapter 24 #2
The packaging makes me feel like we’re spies performing the world’s least-covert handoff of confidential information.
My fingers tremble as I pinch the metal clasp together and open the flap.
I stare blankly at the contents, trying to figure out what I’m looking at.
I expected a stack of beaten-up opened envelopes, or a bundle of folded, aged paper like the one I have in my backpack.
But there’s just one sealed standard envelope and a small book with a worn brown leather cover.
I pull out the envelope, which is crisp and white. It looks brand-new. Like taken straight out of an office supply closet this morning. “I don’t understand,” I say. “I thought you said letters, plural. I assumed you were going to give me the letters Rose wrote to Elsie.”
“Oh, sorry, no. I don’t think Elsie kept those. At least, I never saw them.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay. And um, what’s this thing?” I hold up the brown leather book.
“The letters,” she says. “The ones she wanted you to have.”
This is making about zero sense to me, and I’m getting more and more annoyed with Tammy. Which is probably not even her fault.
If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Hollis’s. If he hadn’t used me, betrayed me, he’d be here with me right now.
We’d be doing this together. That’s the worst part, I think.
The part that is making me extra grumpy.
I thought I wasn’t going to have to face any of this alone.
But here I am. Alone. More alone than I’ve ever felt in my life.
“Well, thank you,” I say, rising from my seat. “I appreciate this, but I have to get going now.”
“No problem. I hope you have a safe trip back home.”
“Thanks.” I turn to leave but suddenly remember what brought us here in the first place. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own grief I forgot I’m not the only one who lost someone I loved. “Um, I’m really sorry for your loss, by the way. From what I know about Elsie, she was an amazing person.”
“Thank you,” Tammy says. “She really was.” She gives me a brittle smile that feels like the most genuine thing we’ve shared in the last ten minutes. “And you too. I mean, I’m sorry for your loss as well.”
For the briefest moment I think she’s talking about Hollis. That loss is the most fresh and at the forefront of my mind. But no, that doesn’t make sense. Mrs. Nash. She’s talking about Mrs. Nash.
I hurry away from the Starbucks to avoid awkwardly running into Tammy again and find myself sitting on a curb outside of a nail salon.
A pigeon lands beside me and bobs its head toward a piece of old gum on the sidewalk.
Determining it’s not the tasty morsel of food it expected, it struts around in disappointment.
“I know how you feel, pal,” I say, looking down at the yellow envelope balanced on my knees. “It’s been that kind of day for me too.”
It coos a trilled response.
One gorgeous spring Friday right before she died, while people-watching in Dupont Circle, Mrs. Nash explained to me the best method of grabbing a bird, honed during her pigeoneering days.
“Both hands, and come at it from above,” she said.
“That way if it takes flight, you’ll still catch it.
” The memory replays in my mind as the pigeon approaches, and I cup my hands over it.
But it ducks and runs along the sidewalk, then flies away.
···
I don’t know how long I’ve been wandering around the shopping center’s parking lot like it’s my own personal meditation labyrinth.
I’m considering going back to the hotel to see if they have another room available.
Or maybe I’ll retrieve my bag and find somewhere else to stay.
Maybe I’ll pay some Lyft driver an exorbitant amount to drive me to Miami so I can hop on the next flight to DC.
I consider—for longer than I probably should—the possibility of befriending some rich old man with a sailboat and making a long, leisurely journey up the East Coast, postponing a return to real life while still getting the hell away from here as soon as possible.
I wonder if Mrs. Nash was this eager to leave the Keys.
All she said about her discharge from the Navy in late summer 1945 was that she was still hopelessly in love with Elsie despite also blaming her for the end of their affair.
That she had a fiancé and a new life in Chicago waiting for her initially only exacerbated her heartbreak.
The morning she first told me about Elsie, I sat on the floor in front of her chair with my legs crossed like a kindergartener at library story time.
“Please don’t think I didn’t love my husband,” she said.
“I always had extremely warm feelings for him growing up, and I grew to love him very much during our marriage. Dick became a wonderful partner, and my dearest friend in the world. But when I married him, it felt like he was snatching me away from the life I wanted to live. The one with Elsie. For a long time, I believed she might have allowed me to stay with her if I hadn’t had any other options after the war, and I had a good bit of resentment toward both of them for a while.
But I think now that Elsie was never fully convinced of my love, and nothing could have changed that.
She didn’t know how to believe that I would have chosen her out of everyone, no matter the cost. From what she told me about her childhood in Oklahoma, I’m not sure anyone had ever made her feel worth it before.
I hope some lucky woman eventually did, and that Elsie let her. ”
I glance down at my phone. It’s buzzing with an incoming call. My heart flutters until Dani’s name pops up.
“Hey,” I say. “What’s up?”
“You need to call your parents, Millie. They won’t stop checking in with me every hour to see if I’ve heard from you. For some reason they think you might be in jail?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll tell them to chill. I’ve just been busy.”
“Yeah you have,” Dani says with a verbal wink.
“Not that. We’re actually... that’s done now. He was just using me.”
“Oh shit. Give me an address and I’ll come kick his ass, cuz.”
“You’re even smaller than I am,” I point out.
“Hey, I’ve been taking kickboxing classes. But if you need the big guns, I’ll have Van come down there. The man’s built like Jason Momoa, and I’m covering his shift tonight, so he owes me a favor.”
“No, I’d much rather forget everything and go home.”
“Seriously, though. Are you okay? You sound... sad.”
“I am sad. I’m sad and disappointed.”
“You know who else was sad and disappointed? Pee-wee, when he found out the Alamo didn’t have a basement.
But that wasn’t the end of his big adventure, and this isn’t the end of yours.
” I hear Dani slapping the bar in emphasis of each word.
“Uh-oh, the boss man just came in and he looks pissed . Gotta go. Love you, cuz. I have every faith that you’ll find your bike. ”
She hangs up before I can thank her. Count on Dani to know how to get through to me without me ever even explaining to her what I’m doing in Florida.
As I shoot off a quick text to reassure my parents I’m alive and neither imprisoned nor on the lam so they’ll leave my poor cousin alone for at least a few hours, I realize that the issue isn’t that my bike is lost; it’s that I’ve lost track of what my bike represents .
Or rather, what is represented by my bike.
This is getting confusing already, and the passive voice is not helping.
The point is, I need to remember what I was searching for in the first place when I asked Geoffrey Nash for some of his grandmother’s ashes.
It wasn’t proof of love’s endurance to win an argument.
It definitely wasn’t my own chance at a happily ever after.
It was the trust I lost in myself.
I came here to find confirmation that it’s still worthwhile to be guided by my optimism.
I wanted reassurance of my inherent belief that lasting love is worth the pain and false starts it takes to find it isn’t stupid.
That I’m not naive to keep trying. To keep hoping.
This was never supposed to be about meeting Elsie, or starting a relationship with Hollis, or being handed a stack of letters by a highly caffeinated real estate agent.
All of those would have been welcome bonuses, but they were not my metaphorical bike.
So Dani is right—I can’t give up the search yet. And I think I know where to look next.