Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
The package arrives a week later.
Inside are two airline tickets to Maui, a hotel confirmation, and a letter in Caleb's handwriting.
You had eight days. I destroyed three and stole the remaining five. They belong to you.
Take Ivy. Take a friend. Take someone you meet at the airport if you want. Every reservation is in your name. I will not follow you. I will not contact you unless you contact me first.
At the bottom is a receipt showing the trip has been paid with proceeds from the sale of Caleb's vintage Triumph.
He bought the wrecked motorcycle when his first restaurant was still losing money and spent seven years rebuilding it one impossible part at a time.
It is not a family heirloom. It is the first beautiful thing Caleb ever bought simply because he wanted it, and the only expensive possession he has never tried to justify as an investment.
I call him.
"You sold the Triumph?"
"I sold my motorcycle."
"You spent seven years rebuilding it."
"Eight, if you count the year it sat in pieces while the restaurant tried to bankrupt me."
"Buy it back."
"No."
"I am not taking a trip paid for with something you love."
"That trip was already paid for with something I love. I am trying to give part of it back."
"That is an insane thing to say."
"Probably."
"What if I take another man?"
The silence lasts long enough to hurt.
"Then I hope he carries your luggage," Caleb says.
"You don't mean that."
"No. But the tickets are yours."
I take Ivy.
She refuses at first.
"That trip belongs to you," she says. "Take it alone."
"I spent three hours alone in that airport. I am not reclaiming anything alone."
"What about Caleb?"
"He is the reason there is an empty seat."
Packing is harder than leaving. The first time, I threw everything into a suitcase while my husband showered. Now every dress carries a memory of what I thought we would do together.
The red dress was for dinner beside the ocean. The white linen pants were for the road to Hana. A blue swimsuit still has the tags attached because Caleb said he wanted to remove them with his teeth.
I sit on the floor surrounded by clothes and begin to cry.
Ivy silently folds the swimsuit and puts it in the case.
"You can make new memories in it," she says.
"What if I don't want new ones?"
"Then wear the black suit and burn that one on the beach."
"The hotel might object."
"They have your credit card."
At the airport, the first digital display shows a photograph of me at eight years old, missing my front teeth and holding a fistful of wildflowers.
The second shows Ivy and me at college graduation.
The third shows me opening my business.
I stop walking.
Six displays along the departure concourse change as I approach. Me with my father. Me asleep beneath a Christmas tree. Me standing alone in my first apartment holding the keys above my head.
Caleb's restaurant group sponsors an annual food festival in this terminal. He once spent an entire dinner complaining about the price of a fifteen-second advertisement. Now he has bought the whole ninety-second rotation and turned it into my life story.
The final display shows only white text on black.
You deserved a honeymoon that did not become a divorce.
Then:
Take back the island.
Caleb waits near the security line beside Marguerite, Owen, several wedding guests, and my mother. They supplied the photographs.
People around us are staring. A woman lifts her phone to record.
I should hate the spectacle.
Part of me does.
Another part has spent weeks knowing strangers saw the worst moment of my marriage. Now they see my husband standing in public with no expectation that I will walk toward him.
Caleb hands me the honeymoon suitcase. The gold luggage tag still says MR. AND MRS. ASHBY.
Tucked beneath the handle is a second tag.
DAHLIA RENNER.
"Which one am I supposed to use?" I ask.
"Whichever one feels true."
"That is diplomatic."
"I practiced six wrong answers before arriving at that one."
"What was the worst?"
"Mrs. Ashby, obviously."
"And the second worst?"
"My wife."
I trace the gold lettering with my thumb. "I am still both."
"I know."
"You don't get to sound pleased."
"Internally, I am doing cartwheels. Externally, I am respecting the complexity."
I roll my eyes, but I leave both tags attached.
"You said no more public pressure," I tell him.
"You never told me that."
"I thought it loudly."
His mouth almost smiles. "I won't do it again."
"This is absurd."
"I know."
"You loved that motorcycle."
"I still do."
"Then why sell it?"
"Because the trip had to come from me, not our joint account, and I knew you would send ordinary money back."
That nearly breaks me.
Caleb looks at Ivy. "Make sure she eats."
"Stop recruiting my sister,” I tell him.
"Sorry."
"Stop apologizing for everything."
"Sor..." He catches himself.
I laugh.
Caleb closes his eyes as though the sound hurts.
"I won't contact you," he says. "Not once."
"What if I contact you?"
Hope moves across his face so quickly it feels indecent to witness.
"Then I will answer."
I walk through security without touching him. But I feel myself beginning to melt.
In Maui, we do everything Caleb planned. We eat the sunrise breakfast. We drive the coast. We swim beneath a waterfall where Ivy loses a sandal and blames the island personally.
On the second night, I wear the red dress to dinner.
The hostess looks behind me. "Just two?"
"Just enough," Ivy says.
I laugh, but later I stand alone at the waterline and imagine Caleb beside me. Missing him feels like betraying myself. Loving him feels like agreeing that what he did was survivable.
Ivy finds me there.
"Surviving something is not approving it," she says after I confess.
"When did you become so wise?"
"About twenty minutes after I threatened Jeremy with certain death.”
"What if I take Caleb back and he hurts me again? He cheated once before all this.”
"Then you leave again. You already know you can. You survived the time he actually cheated, you’ll survive this, and you’ll survive anything that life throws your way.”
The answer follows me to the balcony on the third night. The ocean is black beneath a silver moon. Ivy is downstairs terrorizing a bartender who called her cocktail order complicated.
I open Caleb's name on my phone.
He answers on the first ring.
"Dahlia?"
"I am not coming home yet."
"Okay."
"But I don't want a divorce attorney deciding our next conversation."
He says nothing.
"Caleb?"
His voice is rough. "I'm here."
For the first time since I left him in the shower, I tell my husband about my day.