33. December Seventeenth
Chapter thirty-three
December Seventeenth
She woke up on the morning of December seventeenth and knew.
She could not have explained how she knew.
There was no single thing that had shifted overnight, no revelation that arrived in her sleep, no moment of clarity that she could point to and say that was it, that was the thing that changed.
It was more like the way December arrived in Pine Hollow, not all at once but gradually and then completely, the cold deepening by degrees until one morning you stepped outside and understood that winter was fully here and had been for a while and you had simply not named it yet.
She had been ready for longer than she had admitted to herself.
She got up and made her coffee and stood at the kitchen window looking at the Anderson Funeral Home sign the way she had stood at this window her entire adult life, and she thought about everything that had happened since August, the wedding and the rehearsal dinner and the outside of the Grange Hall and the office and the funeral home and Kali and the graveside and the snow on Main Street and Halloween and the diner and all of it, the whole accumulation of months that had brought her to this kitchen on this particular December morning.
She thought that she had been standing at this window alone for a very long time and she was done with it.
She was done being the most capable person in the room and also the most alone.
She drank her coffee and went to get dressed and thought about what to wear and then thought about the fact that she was thinking about what to wear and decided that was a good sign, the kind of sign that meant something had shifted in the direction of living rather than just managing.
She put on the green sweater that Kali had told her brought out her eyes.
She grabbed her good coat and went downstairs.
She had two arrangements to confirm for a service on Friday and she handled them first because the work did not stop and she was not going to let it stop and also because she needed the work this morning the way she sometimes needed it, as the thing that kept her grounded in herself while everything else was moving.
She made her calls and confirmed her arrangements and sat at her desk for a moment afterward looking at the oak tree outside the window, which was doing its December thing, bare and certain and entirely itself.
She thought that she had been looking at that tree her whole life and it had never once told her what to do, which was actually one of the things she appreciated about it.
She picked up her phone.
She looked at it for a moment and then set it back down because this was not something she was going to do by text.
She had asked for time and he had given it to her.
He had been patient for nearly three weeks.
Patient and yet determined to not let her not think about him every single day.
She had used it and now she was going to go to him the way he had been coming to her for months, in person, without announcement, because some things needed to be said in the same room.
She put on her coat and walked out into the December morning.
It was cold in the specific way of a Minnesota December that had settled into itself, not the fresh cold of the first frost or the dramatic cold of a blizzard but the steady certain cold of a season that knew what it was and was not apologizing for it.
She walked the four blocks to the Herald with her hands in her coat pockets and her breath coming out in small clouds.
The town around her was doing its Tuesday morning thing.
Harold Jensen's truck was parked in front of the feed store, Hayes Coffee lit and warm looking through its front window, the Herald sign above the door of the building where Ethan had been living since August and where he was now, she was fairly certain, sitting at his table by the front window doing his work.
She stood on the sidewalk in front of the Herald for a moment and looked up at the windows of the apartment. Hannah and Claire were both looking out the window at her. She they noticed her noticing them, they both waved.
She looked up at his apartment window. She could see him.
He was at the table the way she had pictured him, his laptop open and his coffee beside him and his attention on the screen.
She stood on the sidewalk in the December cold and looked at him for a moment, this man who had come back and told her the truth and bought a house on Elm Street and sent her small true things every morning for three weeks without asking anything of her in return, and she thought that she had been afraid for a long time and the fear was not gone now, it was still there, she could feel it clearly, but she had decided that Rachel was right and that being safe was not worth being alone and that whatever came next she was going to face it with both eyes open and her whole self present and not managed.
She went to the back of the building, climbed the flight of stairs and and knocked on the door.
She heard him move just beyond the door, the particular sound of a chair and then footsteps, and then the door opened and he was there, and he looked at her with an expression that moved through several things quickly before it settled into something open and careful and entirely present.
She thought that this was the expression she had been trying to name since August and she finally had a name for it.
It was hope. Careful and earned and not taken for granted. That was what it had always been. Hope. Pure, plain, simple and complete. Hope.
"Julie," he said.
"Hi," she said.
He stepped back from the door and she came in and he closed it behind her and they stood in the small living room and simply looked at each other.
She thought that she had walked four blocks in the December cold and was standing in front of Ethan Walker and her heart was doing something embarrassing and she did not care even a little bit.
"I got your text," she said. "About the house."
"I know," he said. "You didn't reply."
"I wasn't ready yet when I got it," she said. "I am ready now."
He looked at her steadily and waited, the way he always waited, with the patience of someone who had learned that patience was not the same as passivity, that waiting could be its own kind of presence.
She stood in the rented apartment of Ethan Walker that was located just above the Pine Hollow Herald in her good coat and her green sweater and took a breath.
"I have been afraid my whole life," she said. "I have been afraid of needing someone who might leave and I built everything I am around not needing anyone too much and I was very good at it and it kept me safe and it kept me alone and I have been alone for a very long time." She looked at him.
"I am tired of being alone, Ethan. I am tired of being the most capable person in the room and I am tired of Tuesday mornings without muffins and I am tired of walking past the Hendricks place and seeing the light on inside and knowing you are in there and not going in.
" She stopped. "I am not going to be afraid of this anymore. I am just not."
He looked at her for a long moment and she looked back at him and the building was quiet around them and somewhere outside a car went past on Main Street and Pine Hollow went about its Tuesday morning entirely unaware that something important was happening in the small apartment just above the Herald. Maybe the biggest story of the season.
"Julie," he said.
"I know," she said. "I know you told me you are staying and I know about the house and I know you meant everything you said in that booth and I believe you.
" She paused. "I am terrified and I believe you and both of those things are true at the same time and I have decided that the terrified part does not get to win anymore. "
He crossed the small distance between them in two steps and put his hands on either side of her face and he looked at her for a moment, just looked at her, and she looked back at him and she thought that she had been waiting for this since August and possibly since she was seventeen years old and she was done waiting.
He kissed her.
Not the careful kiss of Halloween or the snow on Main Street, those had been the kisses of two people finding their way toward something.
This was different. This was the kiss of two people who had found it, who had been through the full weight of eighteen years of missing and longing and the truth of all of it and had arrived here together, and it was not tentative and it was not managed and it was not careful.
It was everything.
When they separated she kept her eyes closed for a moment the way she had on Halloween and when she opened them he was looking at her with an expression that had nothing careful left in it, just the open unguarded face of a man who had come home.
"I have been in love with you since I was seventeen years old," he said quietly. "I want you to know that I am not going to stop."
"I know," she said. "I have been in love with you since I was seventeen years old too." She paused. "I want you to know that I am not going to stop either. And I'm not going to stop you."
He pulled her in and she went, and they stood in the small living room of the apartment just above the Pine Hollow Herald on a Tuesday morning in December and held on to each other the way you held on to something you had almost lost and had found again, completely and without reservation.
Outside the December morning went about its business and Pine Hollow went about its business and the world went about its business entirely unaware that two people who had been circling each other since they were teenagers had finally, after eighteen years and considerable cost to both of them, stopped circling and come to rest.
After a while she pulled back slightly and looked at him.
"Your coffee is getting cold," she said.
He laughed, a real one, the kind that changed his whole face, and she thought that she had been waiting to hear that laugh directed at her specifically for a very long time and it was exactly as good as she remembered.
"Come sit with me and I'll make fresh coffee," he said.
She followed him through the small living room and the bookshelf that had once held Hannah's books and would someday probably soon, hold another person's books or knickknacks.
He made fresh coffee and she sat at the table by the front window across from his computer and paperwork and thought about how this was like at her office.
She looked out at Main Street and thought that this was the view he had been looking at every morning since August, Pine Hollow from above, and she understood why he had stayed at that window.
The town looked like itself from up here, small and complete and entirely sufficient.
She thought that she had been looking at it from street level her whole life and there was something to be said for a different angle.
He set her coffee in front of her and sat down across from her and she looked at him and he looked at her and neither of them said anything for a moment because there was a lot to say and they had time to say it and there was no hurry anymore.
"The house," she said finally.
"What about it?"
"I want to see it," she said. "When you are ready to show me."
Something in his expression shifted and settled into something she recognized as the thing underneath hope, which was joy, simple and uncomplicated and entirely his. "I am ready whenever you are," he said.
"Saturday?" she said.
"Saturday," he agreed. "Or, we can go now if you would like to."
"Sure. Let's drink our coffee and go. I would love to see it now."
She drank her coffee and looked out at Main Street and thought about the Hendricks place and the maple tree in the backyard and the porch that needed work in the spring and all the ordinary future things that were waiting to happen.
She thought about Kali and what Kali would have said about all of this.
She thought she could hear it clearly, the particular voice of her friend saying, "finally, Julie Anderson, finally," with the satisfied expression of a woman who had been right about something important and had known she was right all along.
She thought Kali would have been pleased.
She thought she would have brought muffins.