Chapter 31
Anne
A sinkhole opened in my chest. I’d handled the six-and-a-half-hour drive on the highway and the emotional confrontation with my former friend/boss and the business of packing up my life into my mother’s car without once falling apart.
But the sudden appearance of my ex-boyfriend at the door of my former apartment was the One More Thing to Deal with Today I wasn’t prepared for.
“How did you get into the building?” I asked.
Chris looked surprised at my tone. “Someone propped open the security door.”
Oops. “That was me.” Hard to carry boxes and manage the heavy outer door at the same time.
He frowned in concern. “You should be more careful.” His gaze dipped briefly before refocusing on my face. “Anyone could get in.”
“Somebody did.” I crossed my arms over my braless chest. Keeping it together. “What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t answer my texts.”
Memories swirled in my brain of all the times my messages to him had gone unanswered, the busy shifts, the nights he worked late. I let them go. It didn’t matter anymore. “I’ve been busy.”
“Me, too.” He offered me a small, hopeful smile, his hazel eyes as beautiful as ever. “I was hoping I could talk you into that drink.”
Once again expecting me to fall in with his plans.
“I’m not exactly dressed to go out.” Also, I needed a shower, but screw that.
His gaze traveled over me, taking in my filthy jeans, my sweaty tank top. I hiked my arms higher over my breasts. “Can I come in?”
I shrugged and stepped back. I was too tired to fight. It was hot in the apartment, but as he followed me inside, I snatched a shirt from the arm of the couch to cover my nippage. Joe’s shirt. My heart twinged.
Chris surveyed the almost-empty bookshelves, the pile of winter sweaters on a chair. “You really are moving.”
“Yep.” I didn’t owe him an explanation. But force of habit or a memory of when I used to care made me offer, “You want something to drink?”
He gave me another long look, like a doctor assessing a patient, deciding on the best course of treatment. “A glass of water would be great.”
I filled the retro fruity juice glasses I was leaving behind at the tap and added ice.
“So, what’s up with you?” I asked as I sat on the couch.
Chris moved the blanket and sat beside me. Too close, but the only other chair was stacked with my clothes.
As he talked, my mind wandered to Joe. I wondered how he was doing. Had he even noticed I was gone? “A couple days away will be good for both of you,” Mom had said, but it was hard to be patient. To give him space.
Chris was going on about the hospital system and Atlanta like a real estate agent showing a house. “…decent public transportation,” he said. “And the park is just a few blocks from the apartment.”
He paused, which I recognized as my cue to respond.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” I said, which was mostly true.
“Not completely happy.” He gave me a significant look. “It gets pretty lonely sometimes, being away from my family. And you.”
“What about…” I tried to remember the name of his work wife. “Your friend? The one who was going to Boston.”
“Lauren? We called it off. Not that we were ever really on,” he added. “It’s hard to coordinate two medical schedules, especially long distance.”
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
“It’s fine. We could never be together long term. She didn’t understand my focus has to be on my patients.”
“No,” I said with gentle irony.
“It made me realize how much I depended on you,” Chris said without missing a beat. “At the end of the day, you were always there for me. You fit into my life in a way Lauren never could.”
Because I’d made myself smaller, I thought. He’d never made room for me.
“I miss our Sunday mornings,” Chris said. “I miss your smile and your things all over the bathroom and the way you connect with people.”
Pretty sure he was lying about the bathroom. Which made it hard to believe the rest. “Thanks,” I said.
“Dr. Jacobs was saying the other day how easy you are to talk to,” Chris added.
I searched my mind. Jacobs? The elderly physician from the dinner at the Drake? “That was nice of him. Chris, is there a point to all this? Because—not trying to be rude here—I have a really long day tomorrow.”
Chris gave me a small, reproachful smile. “I guess I deserve that. The point is…” He cleared his throat. “I came here hoping we could move on. Start over.”
“I have.”
“Yes, I can see that.” He glanced around the apartment before turning his gaze on me. “I haven’t even asked you how your job is going.”
“I quit.”
He smiled broadly. “That’s great.”
“Erm. Thanks. I think.”
“There’s nothing to hold you here now. No job, no apartment. You could come to Atlanta.”
“What would I do there?”
He shrugged. “Whatever you want. Find a job. The difference is, we’d be together.”
My mind temporarily blanked. “I have a job. On Mackinac. I’m a substitute teacher at the school. Not full-time, not permanent, but I’m going to use the opportunity to really focus on my writing.”
“You could do that in Atlanta.” He reached across and took my hands in his strong, clean, capable ones. “Anne, don’t you see? The timing is perfect. I’m settled. You’re ready. We could have the life you always wanted.”
The life I’d imagined would make me feel safe and normal and less alone.
I tried to tug my hands back. “Chris, I’m not asking you to…That’s not what I want anymore. I need a life that doesn’t revolve around you.”
“I suppose I deserve that, too. But it would be different this time. Better.” He released me to dig around in one pocket.
“I wasn’t being fair to you before. I was asking you for a commitment, but I wasn’t giving you anything in return.
” He pulled his hand from his pocket and slid from the couch to one knee. “Marry me.”
I gawked. “That’s a ring.” A classic diamond solitaire offset by two smaller baguettes in a platinum band.
He nodded. “It was my mother’s.”
Mrs. Dr. Harris. “What does she think about this?”
“She gave it to me after her birthday dinner last night.”
Which didn’t really answer my question. Or maybe it did.
“I’m sorry.” My voice was husky. “I can’t.”
Chris’s face clouded. “But I love you. I thought you loved me.”
“I thought so, too.” I didn’t want to hurt him. “I thought we were soulmates. But you’re Roy Gardner.”
He levered off his knee to perch back on the couch. “Who the hell is Roy Gardner?”
“In Anne of the Island? Anne falls for him when she goes away to college. She thinks he’s her One True Love because he fits her romantic ideal. He brings her flowers. He writes her a poem for her birthday.”
He glared, incredulous. “You want poetry.”
I tried and failed to imagine Joe writing a sonnet to my eyebrows. Yeah, no. He couldn’t even find the words to tell me he loved me, even though I was positive—almost positive—he did.
“I don’t need poetry,” I said. “The thing is, Anne doesn’t really love Roy. She’s in love with the idea of him. He’s perfect. He’s just not right for Anne. She’s been in love with Gilbert all along.”
Chris’s hand closed tight on the ring. “You mean, there’s someone else.”
I was still mad at Joe. He might be done with me. But whatever happened, he was there, a part of me now. I’d never had to make myself smaller when I was around Joe. He’d never asked me to be less than myself. He’d always encouraged me to be more.
“That’s really none of your business. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.” Chris got off the couch and started to pace. “What am I going to tell my mother?”
“You don’t have to tell her anything.” I was pretty sure Mrs. Dr. Harris would do all the talking.
“Anne, you can’t throw away everything we’ve shared, two years of our lives, because of some rebound relationship.”
“I’m not throwing away anything. I’m grateful for…for the time we had together. It taught me what I want.”
And what I didn’t.
I stood, ready to walk him out the door.
I’d always had this picture of how my life was supposed to look, based on a world that didn’t exist anymore and the girl I used to be.
Whether things worked out with Joe or not (Please, please let them work out), it was time for me to follow my own path, to find my own voice, to make something beautiful and useful of my own.
Not derived from a book I read or a story I told myself, but built from what I found along the way. All the moments. All the love.
“Goodbye, Chris.”
—
I stood on the upper deck of the ferry, watching the approaching shoreline. The Grand Hotel rose like a castle on the hill. The waves danced. The air sparkled.
After the heat and grit of Chicago and the white-knuckled drive on I-75, I was grateful for the wind that whipped the clouds into horsetails and swept my mind clean.
“Almost home,” Zack Bartok said beside me. We’d spent half the trip from St. Ignace to Mackinac talking about Daanis, admiring pictures of Rose with baby Namid.
Another thread in the web of connection tethering me here.
I used to think there were four kinds of people on Mackinac: the tourists, the part-timers, the islanders who stayed, and the ones who moved away.
But the truth was, the island didn’t judge.
The island was simply there, the place where I belonged, at least for the next nine months.
The place where my roots would always be.
I filled my lungs, but there was still an anxious ache in my heart, a Joe-sized hole in my chest.
The boat slowed to a crawl. The tourists crowded to the rail to take pictures. Zack went below to prepare for docking. I fiddled nervously with the drawstring on my hoodie. I should do the same. But I stayed in place, searching the shore as we pulled in.
There, beyond the bicycle porters and the tourists waiting in line to catch the next ferry, beside the dockworkers and the horse-drawn drays. A tall, hot, bearded man with a fluffy golden dog. Joe.
Everything inside me, all the color and light, all the yearning and ache, narrowed to a single focus.