Chapter xxvii
xxvii
SOMETIMES THERE’S TOO MUCH ON MY MIND FOR me to function well—it feels like all the thoughts are fighting for attention, and it turns my mind into one big discombobulated mess.
When I landed in New York, that was what my mind was like, swirling with thoughts of Dax, and you, and Bashir, and your photographs. I ended up meandering through JFK, not quite sure which direction the signs wanted me to go. After finally making it through passport control and customs, I ended up at the bench that you and I sat on with Violet the day you told me your mom had died. What are the odds, right? This is why I can’t believe that life is random.
Not even in people’s choice of television shows. For years I’ve been watching NCIS . I discovered it after my divorce, though it’s been on since just after we graduated from college. I think you’d enjoy it. It’s kind of like Law & Order for the Navy, and you know how much I love Law & Order . Anyway, there’s this character in the first twenty seasons or so named Gibbs. And he has this list of rules that he lives by. There are a lot of them, but rule #39 is that there is no such thing as coincidence. He meant in criminal investigations, but it struck me when I heard it. Could that be possible? Could nothing at all be coincidental? Is there meaning in everything?
That day when I returned from Rome, when I saw the bench where you’d mourned your mom, it made me wonder: Is it finally time to tell Samuel the truth? I’d been living my life, moving forward, but always with this secret at the core, always with this piece of you I was keeping silent about. And as long as that secret was there, it seemed impossible to mourn you, mourn us, mourn what we could have been. Maybe that’s why it felt so natural to tell people in Italy who you were to me. Maybe that’s what my wish for freedom had meant at the Trevi Fountain. I realized that might be what I needed to share to heal my relationship with Jay, and with my parents, too.
All of that might not be enough to warrant shaking up our family again, except that as I’d spent time looking through Gabriel’s photographs, hearing from Bashir how you’d changed his life, and seeing those photos in the library on Lampedusa, I couldn’t help thinking that Sammy deserved to know you, too. To help him figure out who he is, where his talent came from, why he’s tall and blond and the rest of us aren’t. I thought of the feelings Dax had stirred up, the ways they’d felt joyous but also terrifying. Unburdening myself of this secret felt that way, too—the idea of freedom from the hold it had on my life was both joyful and terrifying. And it was the step I’d have to take to create a family based on truth, to let Sammy live a life based on truth. I hoped it would set us all free.
WHEN I GOT TO THE TAXI LINE, I MESSAGED DARREN : Just wanted to let you know I’ve landed. See you tomorrow. Also: I was wondering if you might have a moment this week to talk?