Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
ELLIS
I find Josephine’s balcony door closed and locked when I finally get Zoe to bed.
As expected, the visit with Miranda rattled her. By mid afternoon, she had retreated into herself, not responding to questions and staring at the wall. To her credit, Miranda made an effort. She came prepared with books, toys, candy… none of it was accepted.
“She’s not a baby anymore,” I told her at the end of the day, following her out onto the drive. “She knows who you are. She sees other children with their mothers and doesn’t understand why it isn’t the same for her.”
My ex-wife stared at the dirt road beneath her designer shoes for a long moment. “I’ll call you in a few days,” she finally managed, then, smiling valiantly. “I like the nanny.”
My heart lurched, throbbing painfully at the thought of Josephine closeted away upstairs. She hadn’t come down all day, though my mother had gone after her and came down nearly an hour later, giving me a withering stare that said plainly just whose side she was on .
“She’s very good for Zoe,” I manage, and Miranda’s eyebrows lift.
“A little young for you , though.”
I stepped back toward the house. “I’m not having this conversation.”
Miranda only laughed, calling after me, “I’m sure I won’t be invited to the wedding, but I’ll be sure to send a gift!”
There won’t be a wedding, and the reminder is like throwing salt on a fresh wound. Only a few hours ago, the woman we’re speaking about told me she was finished with me, and I don’t blame her for it.
Her words about deserving better were true.
Her words about me not trusting her were too.
When my marriage ended, I felt vindicated in that I at least had the moral high ground. I had tried, I had been faithful, she hadn’t. I stepped up to raise Zoe full time, while Miranda took a job that would require her to be on the road eleven months out of the year.
Now, I have none of that certainty. I have no one to blame for the end of my relationship with Josephine except myself, and I can’t stand it. The need to race upstairs, to try to salvage this, is almost overpowering, but I don’t do it. After all I’ve put her through, the least I can do is respect her decision. I destroyed any possibility of a relationship between us, and now I need to live with it.
The rest of the day passed in a miserable, endless blur. Josephine didn’t come down for dinner. My mother snapped at me whenever I looked at her. Zoe had an epic meltdown over her mac and cheese being too watery. The first mercy I receive all day is both of them going to bed early. Being alone with my thoughts is worse. There’s nothing to distract myself with, nowhere to hide from my own regret and self-loathing.
My heart forms a new crack whenever I remember Josephine’s face when she walked up the drive toward me, Miranda at her side. She was broken. I had broken her, and still she put a smile on her face for my daughter.
I knew long before today that I didn’t deserve her, but now… Jesus .
In a bid to find something to do other than sit alone with my miserable thoughts, I wander downstairs to the library. My work is all where I left it yesterday— god, how was it only yesterday —when I went in search of Josephine and found her in the meadow.
Filled with a hollow, miserable acceptance, I sit down at my work station and hit the power button on my computer, taking the first book from the stack beside me. As I open it, a familiar piece of stationary flutters to the ground at my feet.
Mari,
The doctors tell me it’s cancer. It’s in my blood, my bones, my brain. They don’t say it, too busy waffling on about experimental therapies and treatments, but I know the truth of it. I’m a dying man. Which means I’ll leave this earth without ever again seeing your face, hearing your laugh or feeling your skin on mine. Not that it’s a surprise. It’s been years now since I gave up hope of our Second Edition.
But did I truly give up?
Still, I’ve collected the books.
Still, I’ve written the notes.
Still, I’ve remembered the days, weeks, months we had together, wishing they had been a lifetime instead.
If you find this—and I pray to god you do—please believe that I have regretted my choice every day since I made it. I was a coward, and I thought turning my back on the money, on my life, was too great a price to pay for one woman.
No one has ever been more wrong about anything.
I loved you when I was twenty-two years old and spotted you across the room at that party, and I love you still. These books, and the other shit, will be left to Weston. It brings me some peace to know that after I’m gone, you’ll have your hands on them at long last.
Your Luc
I must read it at least four times before my hand falls back to my side, still clutching the letter. Pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, and I can see clearly now why I’m here. Jean-Luc Perdue was in love with a woman who worked in the library at Weston University, and he made a decision that ended their relationship. He regretted it. The man spent the rest of his life hoping, but never got the second chance— the Second Edition —he so desperately wanted. When he saw that he was going to die without ever seeing her again, he left the school with everything in the hopes she would be here instead of me.
He wanted her to find the decades of notes shoved between the pages of thousands of books that were collected in dedication to a lost love.
The very room I’m standing in, and the reason I’m here, is because Jean-Luc Perdue’s mistaken belief that there is anything in this life more important than the people we share it with.
As the memory of Josephine’s tear-streaked face flashes in my mind’s eye, and I sink into my chair, heart in my throat. We are not Luc and Mari. Theirs is a different love, played out decades ago, and yet the parallels are too obvious to be ignored. There’s a difference, though. Luc never got his second chance.
I did.
It began the day I found myself unexpectedly reunited with the beautiful young woman whom I spent one night with, but was too broken and afraid to call. I’m still that man. Even with all I feel for Josephine, even knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she is nothing like Miranda, it hasn’t been enough because I’m broken .
She left, and I never spoke about it again. To anyone. For three years, I’ve focused on Zoe, allowing myself to get lost in the trials of single parenthood, and until Josephine, never realized how deeply the dissolution of my marriage had affected me.
Lifting the stationery, I read his letter again, the sorrow and regret seeping into my veins with each word. This time, my gaze lingers on the top of the paper. Mari. It’s an unusual way to spell Mary . That is, unless it’s not her full name. A connection occurs to me, one that must be coincidental… but what if it weren’t?
Could it be possible? I can barely bring myself to consider it. The odds seems too high, and yet it fits . She would be about the same age as Perdue. They would have gone to Weston around the same time.
My fingers are numb as I pull out my phone, which hasn’t been touched since I discovered the text message which put this entire, horrible day in motion. Scrolling through my contacts, I stop at the name of my mentor, the woman who waited to retire until she was confident I could keep Montgomery afloat.
Marian Silver.
It’s still early enough in the day for me to call her, so I do, filled with a terrible sort of anticipation. When it stops, replaced by a cheerful, “Hello?” it occurs to me I have no idea what I’ll do if I’m right.
“Hi Marian.”
There’s a delighted laugh through the phone. “Ellis! My goodness, it’s good to hear your voice. It’s been months.”
“I’m sorry about that. Life got away from me for a while.”
Marian sighs. “Yes, I would imagine it did. Why don’t you come for lunch this weekend? We have the grandkids on Sunday afternoon. If you come by then, Zoe can play with them. She and Adeline are the same age!”
I let out an uncomfortable laugh. “Unfortunately, that would be rather difficult. I’m in France at the moment.”
“You’re kidding! Well, whenever you get back then. Are you there visiting your mother?” In the background, there’s a loud mechanical rumble and Marian squawks in protest. “David! David! Oh, never mind.” A moment later, a door closes, and the sound lessens. “The man can’t hear a thing, and he leaves his hearing aids all over the place.” There’s an unmistakable fondness in her voice, though, the same one I recognized whenever she spoke about her husband during the four years I worked under her at Montgomery.
“I’m actually here for work.” My mouth has gone dry, “Can I ask, did you once know a man named Jean-Luc Perdue?” Marian is silent for so long that I lift the phone to my ear to check the connection. “Are you there?”
“Sorry. Yes. I’m sorry, Ellis. You just… you took me by surprise. I haven’t heard that name in a very long time. Have you seen him?”
“He’s dead,” I tell her with regret. “He passed away several months ago and left his estate to Weston University. There was a large collection of rare books. I’ve been here sorting through them.”
There’s a sniff. “I don’t know what to say.”
“How did you know each other?”
Marian sighs. “He was my boyfriend. We dated our senior year at Weston.”
“What happened?”
“I… well, I don’t mind telling you that it was a very passionate relationship. We loved each other. He asked me to marry him, actually. But, as you can see, his family had quite a lot of money, and they didn’t approve of him marrying a po or librarian from Queens. The daughter of a garbage collector.”
A hollow dread is growing inside me as I listen to her story. “So he ended it?”
“He did.” She pauses, and I wait, staring blankly at the books stacked beside me. “It took me a long time to get over it, but then I met David and he’s been a wonderful husband. I’m very fortunate. Luc wrote to me years later, after I was engaged, telling me it had all been a mistake and that he still loved me. He had this analogy about our second edition being better than our first.”
My heart seems to be beating differently than it was before, the hollow thud resounding through my chest and echoing into my head. “Did you respond?”
Marian’s answering laugh is watery. “Yes. Goodness, you have me tearing up. I haven’t spoken about this to anyone in decades. It took me weeks to write the letter, and another month to send it. At the time, I still loved him very deeply, and it was difficult to turn him away, knowing he felt the same way I did.” Her voice cracks, and I feel a stab of regret at causing distress to the kind faced older woman who saw me through the beginning of my career.
“I’m sorry, Marian,” I croak out. “I didn’t mean to bring all this up again.”
She shushes me. “Don’t be sorry, Ellis. I am curious how you found out about the connection, though.”
Telling her the story takes over an hour. There are a fair amount of tears on Marian’s part, and after we’ve bid our goodbyes—me promising to send the notes to her as I find them—I let the phone fall to my lap. I’m even more exhausted than I was before the call.
I feel confident that my former mentor doesn’t regret her choices. Marian loves her husband, just as she loves her children and grandchildren. Still, the pain in her voice was hard to dismiss. After all this time, decades of absence, an entire ocean, and a single terrible choice between them, Mari still loves her Luc.
Luc, who spent his entire adult life wishing he’d fought harder for the woman he loved, a woman who loved him back.
Mari, who had to live with the knowledge that by no fault of her own, she was forced to make a choice that closed the door on that love.
Is that what I’ve doomed Josephine and I to?
Vision blurring with exhaustion, I get to my feet, setting Luc’s last note with the others on my way to the door. The chateau, which has become so familiar to me, feels faded and surreal as I move silently through halls toward my bedroom. How is it possible that just last night, I was filled with joy? Christ, I was so sure that I’d done it, that I’d fixed us and we would have a real future. Now, the woman I love is laying behind a locked door, her heart broken because I didn’t heal mine.
I barely have the energy to undress and collapse onto the mattress. Even as I lay still, my eyes closed and my body pleading for sleep, my mind is wide awake and spinning. Once, I thought loving Josephine Sutton would be the ruin of me. Now, I know that my end would come from living with the knowledge I could have loved her, but ruined it.
There’s one more difference between me and Jean-Luc Perdue— I still have time.
And I have no intention of wasting it.