35. Nova
When you lose someone, grief is inevitable. It comes like the flash of an atomic bomb and suddenly, there’s a crater in your chest. Your body aches and you cry until you feel all your airways fusing shut and feel like you’re going to vomit on the bathroom floor until you fall asleep. Your dad wakes you, carts you off to bed and tucks you in like you’re a little girl again. Days pass. Time passes and the pain is still there, but you become so calloused to it because hurting won’t bring them back. It won’t erase the guilt. They’re dead, and you start to realize no number of tears is enough to reverse time.
When you lose someone and they’re still alive . . . that’s a whole different story.
It’s not grief I’m feeling.
It’s hollowness.
The days seem to drag. The nights are even longer. The only time I feel comfortable is when I’m asleep and even then, it feels empty.
The island is depressing. The winter brings cold, harsh winds and hot soup, but nothing warms the chill in my body. Instead of vibrant blues and greens, everything is white or brown. Gray.
I know everyone says to lean on your friends and family in times like these, but I don’t want to. I guess it’s my own stubbornness, but maybe it’s also because they don’t know me.
Not like you do.
People only know what you tell them and I’m not willing to share anything, so I can’t fault them.
The kids ask about you constantly. I lie and say you called and said hello because I just can’t bear to tell them you’re gone and you won’t be coming back.
I know it’s wrong, but . . . sue me.
My friends are concerned because I’ve been going through the motions. I don’t see why. Life is no different than it was before you were here, yet I see the way they watch me, cautious as if I’ll launch off the deep end at any moment.
I was invited out last month for drinks and karaoke. I didn’t go.
After that, they didn’t ask again and I’m thankful.
At night, I sleep on the couch because sleeping in the bed feels foreign. Too comfortable when I fall asleep. Too empty when I wake a couple hours later. I’ll take the aches and pains of curling up with a cat and dog on a tiny couch any day over that emptiness.
I don’t take days off, filling my time with work on the inn, work in the classroom. Really anything I can do so I don’t have to walk by that damned porch swing where we sat and talked for hours. I thought about taking it down, but then the panic and disgust with myself for still caring this much set in and I walked away.
I don’t paint. Not since you left. I don’t even look at the docks because I know Hope’s Grace is still here, waiting for her new owner. I know if I grow used to seeing it every day, I’ll break down when it’s gone.
I spend my time at home watching trash TV that I know you would hate because I need a reason to cry.
Except I don’t.
I guess, after everything . . . I just feel numb.
How am I supposed to be sad when I’m still in love with you?
How do I stopbeing in love with you?
No matter what I’m doing, you trickle into my brain and I pause because that’s all I can do. Relive the memories of our short time together and wonder what it was about you that made me throw caution to the wind and let myself live for once?
Maybe it’s because you were so carefree that it was magnetic. You forced me to challenge my inner demons and in turn, taught me how to deal with the pain that I’ve left unchecked and simmering beneath the surface for years.
I’ll be forever grateful for that.
There’s no possibility I’ll ever see you again, but it’s like at any moment, you’re going to trudge up the steps and walk in the door, asking about dinner and shooting me that devil-may-care smile I love so much.
I don’t watch the news. I know that one day, your name could come across it and I don’t know if I could stomach it if something bad happened.
At least with you in the world, it seems a little less bleak. No matter how far away you are.
I know I wasn’t supposed to. We promised not to.
But I fell in love with you. Too fast and way too recklessly to be normal.
Perhaps that’s why I’m writing you this letter you’ll never receive. I won’t send it out. I don’t even have stamps.
Now all that’s left are the memories and a hole in my chest until one day it will either scab over or kill me.
At this point, I’m not sure which would be worse.
Love, Nova
For the last two months, my Friday night routine consists of old True Blood reruns, cheap frozen Chinese from the Quick Mart and a bottle of wine.
I don’t even like the taste anymore, but it dulls the nothingness, so I drink it.
That’s what adults do, right?
Tonight is no different. After I eat, saving half because my appetite has been as checked out as I have recently, I lay back on the couch, Creamsicle above me and Toast with his head on my hip as Sookie tries to decide which of her three men she is in love with this week.
I mean, what’s so great about her? She’s pretty and all, but can she hold down a real job with all those men running around?
God, I sound bitter. I love Sookie Stackhouse. Boy problems and all.
It must be the cheap grocery store wine talking.
Since the couch has also become my bed, I nod off easily while sitting on it. Not to mention, I barely sleep all the way through the night anymore, so I’m always exhausted.
A loud, shrill screech wakes me this time, and I fall to the floor, tangling myself in a mess of blankets and pillows.
“Ouch,” I grumble, shooting the old phone on the wall a look. “Fuck you, phone.”
I never replaced my cell phone. I just didn’t want to. I like being in the quiet.
Disentangling myself from the mess, I hurry to grab it, annoyance bubbling through me when I answer.
“Hello?” Who dares disturb my Friday night ritual?
There’s a moment of silence, but I hear breathing, I’m about to hang up when a soft voice filters through the line.
“Nova?”
I freeze. I know that fucking voice.
“It’s Anne.”
Slowly, I sink to the couch, afraid to even breathe. My ex-mother-in-law and I haven’t spoken in years. In fact, the last time I heard from her, she told me Jack’s death had been my fault. The day of his funeral.
“Hello, Anne.”
Silence stretches between us as both of us waits for the other to speak. The angry, spiteful side of me wants to lash out, to be mean and make her feel like she made me feel for all these years.
The other side, the one numb, but right on the cusp of breaking, couldn’t care less how she feels.
“What can I help you with, Anne?”
I can hear crickets where she’s at in South Florida. It’s probably still warm there.
“I spoke to your mother the other day.”
I grind my teeth. I wasn’t aware my mother still spoke to Anne. I would have expected her to completely cut ties with her, even if she and Anne had been good friends most of their lives. There are just some lines you can’t cross and Anne did that when she told me I murdered Jack.
“I hadn’t spoken to her in a long time. She said you aren’t doing well.”
“Forgive me for being crass, but that’s none of your concern. I haven’t spoken to you since Jack died.” I know I’m being rude, but once I start letting it out, I can’t stop. Everything I’ve been pushing down for the last four years is rising to the surface, mixing with the wine in my system and the raw, uncontrolled pain of losing Reid that’s finally starting to rear its ugly head.
I want to fight with someone. I want someone to scream at me instead of tiptoeing around like I’m on the verge of a mental collapse. Like I’m weak.
“Not since you told me I killed Jack.”
“Nova,” Anne starts, but I cut her off, continuing on with my verbal vomit rant, spewing every single thought I have at her.
“No. You don’t get to blame me because my husband drowned, okay?” Tears form in my eyes, running down my face and my voice breaks, but I don’t let myself stop. Stopping will lead to more crying and then I’ll be forced to feel the things I’ve been hiding from since September. “I was in that car too. I know you loved him. I know he was your son, but I lost him too, goddamnit, and you will not make me feel guilty because he helped me get out of that car! Not anymore.”
When a surprising sob breaks from me, another follows. I lay my head on the couch, the phone beside me, even though I think she hung up. All that I hear from her end is silence.
Good. I hope she can feel as bad as I have the last four years. I hope she feels even a semblance of the guilt I have.
“Nova,” I hear, Anne’s voice sounding like she’s crying too. It doesn’t make me feel as good as I’d hoped it would. “I did blame you. Irrationally. For a time.”
I press the phone back to my cheek, wiping the wetness from my face and sucking in a deep breath.
“Jack was my world,” she explains. “I didn’t think I could have children, so when I was blessed with him, he was everything I had ever wanted.”
She’s quiet for a moment, contemplating. When she speaks again, I think I must be dreaming, because there’s no way this woman is speaking like this. The woman who said all kinds of nasty things, who spread horrible rumors about my fidelity to the rest of Jack’s family when in fact, I was holding onto a marriage that had ended the moment he spoke to my sister.
No, not this woman.
“Losing Jack was the greatest pain of my life. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.” Her voice breaks and I sit, listening in horror at my making her cry. I’m not someone who relishes in someone else’s pain. I’ve never been that person. “I realize it wasn’t your fault, Nova. There’s nothing you could have done. I know he wasn’t good. I know he did things that hurt you.”
“It is my fault,” I admit finally, the guilt that’s been wearing on me for four years finally breaking free. “I panicked and he had to help me. He couldn’t get out after that. We ran out of time.”
I shiver as memories of that night come flooding in. The cold water. The mud in my eyes and nose. The nasty, earth-flavored water in my lungs, drowning me. The distant cries of Jack’s that I imagined that weren’t real.
“No!” Anne snaps harshly, her voice ringing out like a whip into the receiver. “Don’t say that. Nova, you’re stronger than you think,” Anne says quietly, her voice as hollow as my chest feels. “Jack didn’t get you out of that car. You got you out of that car.”
“Stop.”
“No,” she rushes on. “I was there, after they pulled him out. He didn’t drown, Nova. He died from head trauma. Jack didn’t rescue you from that car that night. You rescued yourself.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do.”
“No!” I snap and she goes silent for a moment. My heart rages in my chest, my head spinning. Jack was there. He told me to get out. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
“No,” she says gently. “Things happen and maybe he was there, just not in the way you think. Either way, you need to stop living with this guilt. He was gone before the car sank and there isn’t a single thing you can do about it. Jack knew he didn’t have much time left.”
I pause, my lungs feeling like glass on the precipice of breaking.
My mind has always been foggy about that night. I swear Jack was looking at me, forcing me to get out of my seat belt and slip out of the window.
I know what I saw.
“What did you say?” I ask quietly, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Nova, I’m so sorry. I should have told you sooner . . .”
“Told me what sooner?”
I can hear her weeping into the phone, but all I can focus on is what she said.
“Tell me!” I yell, losing my patience and sitting upright on the couch. Toast and Creamsicle both jump when I raise my voice, looking back at me, scared and confused.
“Jack—” she starts, her tears making it harder to get the words out. “He had a brain tumor. Cancerous. One of the most aggressive types. They didn’t find it until it was so well-developed because he refused to go see a doctor until he passed out at work one day. That’s when we found out.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” My chest constricts painfully as my brain struggles to process the information. He took his mother. He trusted her with the information.
“He made me swear not to. Nova, he loved you. So much more than I understood at the time. He didn’t want to ruin the time you had left.”
“How long before he died did he find out about the cancer?”
“Six months. The doctors gave him a year, a year and a half, at the most, to live.”
“Is that why he . . .” I start, but my voice trails off, ending on nothing. She knows what I’m talking about. The first time Jack ever slapped me, I called her. She told me to watch what I say to him. That he’s not in charge of his emotions right now.
Suddenly, all the fights, all the times he yelled at me, called me names . . . It makes sense. His headaches, his vomiting in the morning when he thought I couldn’t hear him. Those violent tendencies took the forefront in his brain when he started to die.
“Oh my God,” I breathe, covering my mouth with my hands. Across the room, our wedding photo is on the mantle and Jack’s face is smiling back at me, bright as ever.
“Yes. The cancer made him mean.” She sucks in a deep breath and I pick up my wine bottle, finishing the last of it. “I can’t make excuses for anything he did, Nova. Cancer doesn’t excuse it all. He wasn’t a good husband to you. I can, however, give you his apology.”
“What?”
“I mailed you a letter he wrote to you. About two weeks ago. You should have gotten it by now.”
I glance at the stack of unopened mail on the kitchen table.
“Just . . . Know I regret not sending it to you sooner. And I’m sorry I wallowed in my own self-pity. I just . . . wanted someone else to hurt like I was.”
I open my mouth to thank her, but she doesn’t deserve it. I feel like the world is crashing down on me and there’s no Atlas to hold it up. Just me fighting through the rubble alone.
There’s nothing to say. At the end of the day, she has to live with the burden of knowing she kept this from me. Four years, I wondered. Four years I fought with myself as to why he would save me and not himself.
I guess the answers were there all along. My mind just couldn’t process them.
“Goodbye, Nova.”
Anne hangs up the phone without another word and I toss it to the couch beside me and leap for the dining room table. I toss bills, junk mail, and coupons aside until I stumble across a single envelope, Anne’s sprawling cursive written on the surface.
I don’t pause before ripping it open. I know if I do that, I’ll only put it off for another day.
Inside is a piece of paper with my name written on the front in Jack’s handwriting.
This is going to suck.
Nova,
I have brain cancer. Feels good to finally say that to you. I know you probably feel betrayed because I kept it from you. God knows I would. I just couldn’t stomach seeing you be sad every day. I know that probably makes me selfish and I’m sorry, but we both know I am.
I’m sorry for a lot of things, actually. I know this letter doesn’t make up for the hurt I’ve caused you. Every time I yelled at you, I hated myself a little more. I don’t even want to be in the same room with myself.
I didn’t want to ruin our last couple months together, but I know I am. We were fighting before I even found out.
I slapped you. They say it’s the cancer making me act this way, but I’m scared it’s something else inside me. Why would I do that? I love you more than anything, but I can’t get control of my anger lately. I’m so sorry.
I’m so scared you’ll leave before I pass. I’m getting weaker by the day and my head pounds constantly. So much so that it’s hard to even sleep. I can barely hear you when you talk sometimes.
I worry one morning, I won’t wake up, but you will, and you’ll have to face that alone.
I hate myself and what the cancer has done to me, but I love you, even if I suck at showing it. I hate the flares in my temper and I hate that it’s like a switch has flipped inside me that I can’t turn off.
You deserve better than this.
I asked Mom to give you this letter after I go because I know you’re going to feel guilty. Like you could have known. There’s nothing you could have done to save me and I don’t want you thinking that. No amount of money was taking care of my issues. I guess I should have listened when you told me to go to the doctor.
You’re a great girl, Nova. The fucking best.
I’m sorry I couldn’t give you kids. A house. Even a dog because you’ve been asking for one for years.
I know that after I’m gone, someone along the line is going to come along and give you everything you’ve ever wanted. You’re going to have babies together. Grow old together in a beautiful, colorful home. Probably surrounded by all your random pets.
If you find yourself slipping, just please think about it. Even if you don’t want to keep moving forward, do it for me. Live for me. I told you, I’m selfish.
Just don’t take anything or anyone for granted because they might not be here tomorrow. Know that I love you. I always have. Even when you told me I was gross when we were eight . . . yeah, I still remember.
I love you, Nova.
Love, Jack
Jack was my first love. My first kiss. First time.
But he was also my first heartbreak.
It was a girl’s love.
A girl who hadn’t seen the world in one person’s eyes. Who hadn’t experienced heartache. Who hadn’t had to rebuild, knowing the world would tear it back down again.
A girl who’d never felt the sting of a slap across her cheek and the guilt of moving on after grief.
My love for Jack was natural. Simple. Young and carefree, until it wasn’t anymore.
My love for Reid is different. Strong. Powerful, like a storm at sea. Dangerous. Inevitable. I know . . . I won’t find another love like that.
Reid came to me when I was at the most frightening time of my life. The moment when I felt like my legs were trapped in cement and I couldn’t break away from the past. When the water felt like it was closing in on me, threatening to swallow me whole into the depths of the ocean. He pulled me out, literally and figuratively, and showed me that I can be whole again.
And I don’t need anyone’s permission.
I can still love Jack for the time we shared together and I can be inlove with Reid.
I’m not betraying one by falling for the other and I’m not hurting Reid for having been in love with Jack in the past. I’m simply living.
Cancer is a bitch. It doesn’t excuse what he did, because, let’s face it, Jack and I had problems that started very early on into our relationship. Still . . . it hurts to know he was hurting. For the boy with the soft blue eyes and the hair like nutmeg.
All these thoughts hit me the moment I open my eyes. I’m still laying on the floor of the living room, curled up in a ball with Toast on one side and Creamsicle on the other. I sank down after I read Jack’s letter and I didn’t have it in me to move because the thought was inconceivable.
When I stir, so do my pets and both look at me with wide eyes and sniff like they’re surprised I’m alive.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur, voice hoarse, and scratch Toast behind the ears. “You deserve better than this.”
He eyes me with those sad, puppy dog eyes.
He’s hurting, too. I think that hurts the most.
Forcing myself to move, I stand, wincing at the stiffness of my limbs. My body is sore, eyes burning, and my cheeks feel swollen and stiff from crying well into the night. I feel like I was broken and forced back together again in my sleep like a porcelain doll held together by scotch tape.
I can’t cry anymore. I think I’m out. Is it possible to run out of tears?
I let Toast out to do his business and feed both him and Creamsicle before taking a shower hot enough to melt my skin. When I’m done, I throw on some jeans and a t-shirt because, well, I’m not winning any beauty pageants at the inn.
The day moves quickly. Probably because I’m in a daze. I feel like something was set in place last night. Like a silent acknowledgement that Jack is forever gone and I am in love with a man I’ll never see again.
It’s time to move on.
The people around me must notice I’m struggling because they keep their distance and I’m thankful. I work alongside Manto in the kitchen through dinner rush, and I’m grateful for his silence. He never pushes. He’s just there.
I work until I physically run out of things to do and then, I find something else to keep me busy. It’s not until I’m on my way home when I catch site of the boat docks.
It’s late. The sun has all but set, but I don’t care.
Hope’s Graceshines like a beacon, beckoning for me to join her in the water.
“You know what, fuck it.”
Storming toward the docks, I’m thankful no one is out. The town buttons up early in the winter, with how cold the breeze gets.
As soon as I’m stepping on to Hope’s Grace it feels like I’m being transported to another time. Inside, everything is as he left it, even the old captain’s hat. My fingers run over the steering wheel, the leather cold under my touch.
It’s been two and a half months since he left and in those two months, the world seems to have stopped spinning.
At least for me.
Forcing my legs to carry me down into the cabin, I’m hit with a wave of sorrow.
It smells like him. Like he was just here. Like salt and the sea and something so delicious my mouth waters.
The bed is still made. I check the drawers and they’re empty. He took everything that was his, leaving no sign that he was even here.
I pause at a new picture, hung on the wall. Hope’s Grace sitting at the dock, right where it is now. It’s sunny and bright . . . a different lifetime.
I want to take it, but I know it won’t help.
“Reid . . .” I whisper to the nothingness, even though I know he’s gone.
Both Whitaker house and Hope’s Grace feel like secret rose gardens, where we hid away when the world was searching for us with pitchforks. Like a different time and place. Our own dimension where only we held the keys.
I haven’t been back to Whitaker House since he left. I can’t.
Then it dawns on me.
What am I doing?
I take one last look and step out of the cabin, shutting everything back up and leave the boat docks, vowing to never let Hope’s Grace drag me down here again.
I stay in the school longer than I’m supposed to the next night. I just . . . didn’t feel like making the trek back up to the cottage after the kids all left.
It’s dark out and I find myself staring at the blue lobster Cody drew months ago.
I’m so entranced that when a throat clears behind me, I jump so hard I almost spill the cold coffee in front of me.
“Staying late?” Sophie asks, her face twitching nervously as she hangs out in the doorway.
As if the day couldn’t get any worse.
I almost tell her if she’s come to try and sleep with another man I’m seeing, she can go home. My bed is empty.
But . . . I just can’t bring myself to be bitter and angry anymore.
“Just about to head out,” I murmur, mouth suddenly incredibly dry. I start to gather my things, but to my absolute shock and horror, she steps forward, placing a warm travel mug in front of me and perches on the seat opposite my desk.
“Such tiny chairs,” she muses, flipping her gloriously long, sleek hair over her shoulder. Sophie belongs in magazines. Not sleepy little Port Nova. I’ve always secretly admired that about her. Or maybe it was jealousy. Honestly, I’m too tired to care which.
She stares at me, eyeing my cup and her mouth twists.
“It’s decaf. French vanilla cappuccino.”
“Thank you.” Confused by her kindness, I pick it up, sipping it and burning my tongue in the process.
“Good, right?”
“Sophie, what are you doing here?”
She pauses, like I just asked the million-dollar question. We’re sisters, but only in blood. We will never be close.
“Nova, you know I adore you, right?” Sophie asks, raising her sharply drawn brows that could cut my jugular if I dare to argue.
“Could have fooled me.”
She actually looks guilty. Her blue eyes flash with something sad, replaced by a mask of indifference moments later.
“You’re beautiful,” she shrugs. “You’re kind. Sweet. People love you. You take care of everyone.” She shakes her head as if she’s disappointed. “People couldn’t care less where I’m concerned.”
“Stop.”
Jesus, save me the pity party.
“It’s the truth.” She shrugs. “Nova, I’m a horrible person.”
Well, shit.
Now, I feel guilty and I’m not the one that slept with another woman’s husband.
“I owe you an apology. For Jack. And Reid.”
“Sophie, please,” I whisper, tears gathering in my eyes. I don’t want to talk about this. Not after the letter and the call from Anne and Hope’s Grace. I can’t.
“I need to get this out,” she argues.
“I need you to leave.”
“Nova, I’m not leaving until I say what I came to say.”
“Well, I don’t care. You can’t always have what you want, Sophie.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” she snaps, tears welling in her eyes. Guilt washes through me, but I refuse to let it hold any merit. She’s the one in the wrong. She’s the one that cheated with my husband. She’s my sister, for God’s sake.
“You really have to ask?”
“I didn’t sleep with Jack.”
“Okay, then what did you do because, either way, you guys fucking suck?”
“You aren’t perfect, Nova.”
“I know I’m not, but I would have never done that to you.”
“You’ve been doing it our whole life!”
The audacity.
“How?”
“With Dad.”
“He was my dad first. I just wanted my family back.”
“And I wanted a sister!” Her screech brings about a silence loud enough to drown out the racing of my heart.
She stares at me for a beat, both of us locked as if it’s a challenge before, finally, she collapses back into the chair.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, hastily wiping a tears slipping down her cheek. “God, you don’t get it, do you?”
For once, I have the good sense to keep silent and listen. She stares at me a beat, tears and anger in her eyes and my heart cracks just a hair. Just enough that I realize I might not have always been the best sibling to her.
“I was so jealous of you,” she whispers. “I still am. You got to keep your family. Mine was split down the middle all because I was born.”
“It’s not your fault,” I breathe.
“No, but they made it my fault. My mom and dad hated each other after I was born because he went back to your mom and groveled his way back in. She’s still bitter, all these years later. Dad and I don’t have the relationship you do. Every time he looks at me, he just sees a mistake.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” I realize, maybe I was too harsh on her over the years. When she’d come to spend time with us, I didn’t want her around. I ignored her because facing her reminded me that Dad was not always the good, doting husband he had grown to be.
Like I could erase her if I didn’t look at her.
“I’m so sorry about Reid. I don’t know what came over me, but suddenly, I was eight years old again, watching you blow out the candles on your birthday cake while the entire family crowded around you. For my birthday, it was just Mom and me and I know that’s no excuse, but I just . . . I wanted to be in your shoes, for once. Feel what it felt like to get chosen. I’m a shitty person and I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t get chosen,” I murmur after a moment, tears burning hot and unhinged in my eyes.
Guess my tear ducts have been refilled.
“I never slept with Jack. I can’t say what he did with anyone else, but I couldn’t do it. I met him one night, but I left because the house was filled with pictures of you and him and he looked like he knew he was doing something he shouldn’t. I knew I loved you, even though you hated me and I just had to leave.”
She takes a deep breath, her voice shaking when she speaks.
“After that, I cut it off. I never spoke to him again.”
“Why him? Out of everyone in the world?”
She shrugs, offering me a sad smile. “I felt important. I felt like someone was choosing me.”
I almost feel bad for her. She thought Jack was choosing her. “Jack chose himself. Right until the very end.”
She nods solemnly. “I know,” she whispers. “I was so terrified when Dad told me what happened. I thought you were going to die and that would be the end.”
I think back to Reid. Him pulling me out of the water. Forcing the water out of my lungs.
“You need to leave the island, Sophie. Move. Start somewhere new.”
She shakes her head, chuckling. “I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
She wraps her arms around herself, shivering, though the building is warm.
“What would I do?”
I shrug. “There’s a whole world of possibilities beyond Port Nova.”
“You came back,” she points out.
“Because this is where I want to be. I like the quiet. I like the peace. You’ve lived it your whole life. It’s time you go do something else.”
She pauses, picking at the purple fingernail polish on her fingers, biting her lip.
“I know you’ll probably always hate me—”
“I don’t hate you. I hated the idea of you. I’m sorry for making you feel like you were second rate when we were growing up. I can’t make up for that, just like you can’t make up for trying to sleep with my husband.”
“Or for Reid.”
I wince at his name. Hearing it out loud is painful. Like a knife cutting through freshly healed scars.
“You know,” she says, reaching for her coffee cup and sipping. “I would have asked him to stay.”
I shake my head. “He was ready to move on. We weren’t permanent. We both knew that.”
“Yeah, but you love each other.”
Ouch. Hearing that hurts.
“I knew he loved you the day I went into his room,” Sophie murmurs, breaking through my thoughts. “He saw you standing there and it’s like a panic set in because he had to get to you. I think that’s when I came to my senses.”
“He didn’t love me, Sophie.”
“He loved you enough that he asked Pappap if he should stay.”
I pause, ice filling my veins. “What?”
“I overheard, before you jump to conclusions. I stumbled on them in the back garden one day. Pappap told him that if he had to ask, he wasn’t ready.”
Does everyone in my life hide things from me?
“What made him so special? I’ve never seen you open up quite like you did when he was here.”
I swallow past the hard lump forming in my throat.
“He saw me,” I whisper, as if speaking it into existence makes it all too real.
“And you’re willing to let him go?”
I stare at her, unsure what the hell she’s getting at.
Finally, she sighs, clapping her hands on her knees and standing.
“It’s getting late. All I’m saying is, if it were me, I’d swim to wherever that boat is and drag his ass back home.”
There’s a weeping angel in the cemetery where Jack is buried that people find so beautiful, you’ll often find flowers left at her feet. Perched on top a large stone covered in moss and cracked from at least a hundred years of cold Maine weather, she looks out over the grounds like a silent guardian, surveying the land and punishing any that dare to desecrate it.
I, unfortunately, do not find her beautiful. In fact, after Jack died, I saw her in every nightmare I had, like a bad omen promising only the worst to come.
Walking past her now, as I make my way to Jack’s grave, I face her head on in a silent battle of wills.
“You don’t scare me,” I murmur and, of course, she doesn’t respond.
Am I losing my mind? Talking to statues in the cemetery like they can hear me?
I shoot her one last warning look, even though I have no idea what I would do if statues were suddenly able to come to life and she came to murder me in my sleep.
Walking amongst the graves, the leaves have fallen, so I have to be extra careful not to trip over someone’s tombstone. I have a feeling that would piss the weeping angel off more, so I sidestep and make sure I’m as careful as can be when planting my feet.
Jack’s buried under a tree by his father, near the back of the cemetery. It’s a hike to get here, but Anne wanted him to be with his dad and I can’t say I blame her.
I pause when it comes into view—the headstone bearing Jack’s last name and just stare at it. I changed my last name back shortly after he died, out of shame for what I had done. Now I know that was just the guilt.
I haven’t been here in almost two years. It became too painful when I was struggling enough already to have some semblance of a normal life. Moving to Port Nova gave me a good excuse to never come back to Portland.
I almost turn and leave, but a promise I made myself last night after speaking with Sophie, forces my legs into action. I kneel by the grave, fall over, and just decide to sit in the damp grass anyway.
“Hey, Jack,” I greet, suddenly at a loss for words now that I’m here beside him. Or at least, the representation of him. “Sorry. I didn’t rehearse this.”
Now I really feel like I’m going crazy. Talking to a tombstone and being nervous about it.
Come on, Nova. Suck it up and get it over with.
“I’m sorry . . . you were sick.” I suck in a deep breath, expecting tears, only none come. “I’m sorry how the last couple months of our marriage went. I harbored a lot of resentment, not only for you, but for myself for a long time.”
I draw my knees up to my chest, and lean my chin on one, trying to picture Jack there beside me, just listening like he would before he got sick.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “Maybe we just grew in two separate directions. Maybe that’s what happens when you marry your high school sweetheart.” I pause, brushing a stray leaf off the granite piece that’s rooted into the ground. “I still loved you. I do love you, even if I recognize that you’re gone now. You aren’t coming back. Maybe we weren’t in love, but I did love you.”
I roll my eyes, feeling stupid in the moment.
“I was so mad at you those last couple months. I can’t decide if you deserved it or if I should have tried to understand. You just . . . changed. Not for the better. You were a lying, cheating, abusive asshole. You were selfish. You’d get jealous. You’d hit me. You hurt me. But . . . you were you and I can’t bring myself to hate you. Even now.”
Hastily, I wipe at the tears threatening to freeze on my cheeks.
“If you were here, you would say something dumb to lighten the mood,” I chuckle, dusting my hand off on my pants. Silence fills the air, save for a bird chirping happily in a tree not far from me. I imagine he probably sees this all the time—people coming out to talk to the emptiness, knowing full-well that whoever is buried here can’t hear them.
“I’m in love, Jack.” I have to say it before I chicken out. Somehow, telling Jack makes it okay. Like he can accept it. “He’s a nice man. He’s good to me. He helps me grow.” I chuckle, nervously. “I’m not afraid of water, anymore. Well—kind of, but I’m getting better.”
I shake my head, remembering Reid telling me to jump into the ocean with him and that he would catch me. He did.
“He always did,” I murmur, like Jack knows what I’m talking about. “I’m going to find him, Jack.”
Why have I been so focused on denying myself the things I want most in life? Why have I never felt worthy of love or happiness, just because I couldn’t save Jack. It wasn’t my job to save Jack, just like it wasn’t his job to save me.
“Fate.” Silence follows, even from me as I struggle to process the rampant thoughts hitting me over and over again. “It was fate, Jack, that lead me to Reid. I was so focused on missing you and feeling guilty for things I couldn’t change that the only way I would have ever gotten away from my own brainwashing would be to find someone so hellbent on making me see that I deserve more.”
I suck in a deep breath, hoping to calm the shakes rolling through my body, but it does nothing.
“Reid. I need to find Reid. I need to tell him that I love him.” I go to stand, but stop myself, almost forgetting the letter stashed in my pocket. Stooping back down, I grab the small hand shovel I had shoved in my pocket and open up a small hole above Jack’s grave. Finally, I curl the letter into a scroll and place it along with my wedding ring in the hole, covering it with dirt and letting the words I poured over last night until three in the morning sink into the earth.
“Hopefully, you’ll read this,” I murmur. “And hopefully, wherever you are, you’re happy. I hope your pain is gone and I hope you don’t have to struggle anymore. I hope you won’t forget me. I won’t forget you.”
Leaning down, I place a kiss to the top of his tombstone and force my legs to stand.
“Goodbye, Jack.”