Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
DARBY
Darby couldn’t believe Samesh had sent her flowers. Her students had pestered her all day, giggling and trying to get her to tell them who had delivered the festive holiday bouquet. Samesh had followed up with a text asking to meet for dinner.
She had typed at least five responses, all kind but explaining she wasn’t ready to rekindle their friendship. Likely, not ever.
Each time she started to hit Send, she stopped herself. She couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was the loneliness of the season. Or perhaps the part of her that wanted answers as to why Samesh had left those many years ago was winning an internal battle she hadn’t entirely realized she was fighting.
Instead of politely turning Samesh down, she found herself replying, Sure, and asking where to meet him.
They landed on an Italian restaurant downtown. Samesh explained that he was busy dealing with logistics for Passport to the Holidays and wanted to meet later, around seven. That was fine with Darby. It gave her time to grade student essays and go home to change and regroup.
The house she and Jim had bought shortly after their wedding was easy to spot.
It was a pale blue two-story bungalow with a wraparound front porch and a sweet front yard with raised garden beds.
Tonight, it was the only house in the neighborhood without decorations or holiday lights.
The exterior had been Jim’s department. He would start mapping out his plans for their Christmas display in early November.
Before they’d ordered a Thanksgiving turkey, he had lugged boxes of garlands, lights, and inflatables upstairs.
The year before he died, he had splurged on a computerized sound system that synced their lights with music.
Darby chuckled at the memory of Jim eagerly pulling her outside to witness his handiwork. It had been like a scene from Christmas Vacation. He had secured cheery red, white, and green lights to the eaves and strung them around each window.
“Watch this, Darby.” He had pressed a button on his phone that transformed their two-story bungalow into a light show that belonged on the streets of Disneyland.
Now the house looked dark, bare, and lonely. A few neighbors had offered to help her with the holiday lights, but she couldn’t stomach the thought without Jim.
She had managed to hang a wreath on the front door. Wreath sales were an annual fundraiser for the Key Club, and she couldn’t say no to that. However, since losing Jim, she hadn’t bothered with a tree or any other decorations. She had no interest in observing the season.
Lately, she’d been wondering if maybe it was time to sell the house.
The walls held so many memories. Some days she found the constant reminders of Jim comforting—the photos of their backpacking trip on the Milford Sound in New Zealand, snowshoeing around Diamond Lake, summer hikes through the Sierras.
Her breath caught in her throat as she passed Jim’s reclining rocking chair, with his reading glasses and newspaper resting untouched since the day he died, and went to search her closet.
What to wear to dinner with an old friend or boyfriend?
Did Samesh think this was a date, or did he want to catch up and reconnect?
Darby’s style was mountain casual. Her closet was filled with simple knee-length skirts, which she wore with fleece leggings and snow boots. She owned a couple of nice dresses but wasn’t about to wear one tonight. She didn’t want to send the wrong message.
She decided on a black skirt, thick tights, and a cream cable-knit sweater.
Darby studied her appearance in the mirror, reflecting on the lines etched around her eyes and her lips that had developed in the years since she and Samesh had lost touch.
Some of her friends dreaded aging. Not Darby.
She welcomed wrinkles. They were marks of wisdom—imprints in her skin from years of happy smiles and laughter. Aging was a gift.
She massaged her wedding ring. Jim’s was strung on a gold chain she wore around her neck.
It was like having him as her personal compass.
When sadness crept up on her, she would place her hand over it as a reminder of their time together.
That was the thing about grief. Darby would never exchange hurt and sorrow for a life without him.
Her grief was the ultimate expression of how deeply they had loved.
She brushed a tear from her eye and pulled her hair into a loose bun.
“Jim, what should I do?” Darby asked the empty room.
Her husband might not be in the same physical space, but Darby heard his gentle voice in her head nearly every day.
Move on, my love. Move on.
“I don’t want to.”
She was talking to a ghost.
Ah, but, my love, you must.
More tears spilled down her cheeks; so much for looking nice to meet Samesh. She was going to show up with tear-streaked makeup and smudged mascara.
Darby dabbed her eyes with a warm washcloth. “I don’t know if I can.”
You will. I sent you Samesh.
Darby choked on her tears and grabbed Jim’s ring. She knew hearing his voice was a coping mechanism. But his words sounded so clear.
“He sent me Samesh.”
“He sent me Samesh.”
Darby repeated it again and again.
If Jim was watching over her somewhere in the vast Universe, sending her Samesh was precisely what she would expect from him. The question now was, what should she do about it?