Chapter 34
Ilean back against the padded headboard in Maggie and Jim’s guest room and pull the duvet higher up my bare chest.
In the week since Hugo’s shockingly wise pep talk, I’ve done my best to adopt a fresh mental attitude. Opening my mind to new possibilities has lifted me out of my funk, energized me, and I’ve found myself waking up earlier and earlier. This morning I grabbed my laptop and brought it back to bed to take care of some business I should have dealt with long ago.
I read my draft email one more time…not that I care whether it has typos.
Dear Mr. Slate,
After giving your request, on behalf of Ms. Louisa Worthington, serious thought, I’ve decided I will not be handing over the marital home in the South of France.
Should Ms. Worthington still desire to own the property, she is most welcome to offer fair market value and I will consider it.
Many thanks.
Tom Dashwood
I hit Send.
The satisfaction and finality that comes with it is more fulfilling than expected.
That’s it. Louisa’s off my plate. Never again will I cave to whatever she wants for a quiet life—like I did for the last way-too-many years.
I feel cleansed, like that life is finally in the rearview mirror and I’m staring ahead at the clear bright road to the future.
And that future has to include Hannah. It has to.
In the month after she left, I did the best I could to put her behind me and move on.
I got some rest. Slept in. But had to get up as soon as I was awake or else I’d just watch a mental reel of her shocked, beautiful face that first morning on the landing, her failed attempt to stifle a laugh when I realized we were about to make chocolate dicks, her triumphant moment on stage in London, and how it felt to be inside her as she quaked with orgasm on my lap.
I went to New York a couple times to see the guys. It was rejuvenating to have time to reconnect with them in person and see how they’ve changed—all for the better—after settling down with their soulmates.
I traveled with Walker and Emily to their fantastic new brewery resort off Cape Cod—it will be spectacular when it’s finished. They’re holding their wedding there this summer, and I wished beyond the stars that Hannah would be there with me.
I distracted myself with work, including signing Jane Doe and the Stags. All the while hoping that when Hannah eventually gets to see them on TV or hear them on the radio, she’ll realize they wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for her. That she found them. That she changed their lives.
And I tried to practice guitar but couldn’t manage more than five minutes before seeing nothing but the joy on Dylan’s face when he strummed his first clean chord. My heart hurt so much at the thought I’ll never get to complete his lessons, that I had to stop playing.
But even after a month of all these trying-to-get-over-Hannah activities, I couldn’t.
Then, Hugo’s visit last week made me accept that the reason I couldn’t move on was because it’s impossible to move on from the person I know I’m supposed to be with.
He was a shot in the arm and stunningly, given the subject matter, correct. This might not be the timing I wanted, but it’s the timing I have. And I can’t walk away just because of timing.
Another uncharacteristically observant thing Hugo pointed out? He was spot on about how I got over the end of my marriage in a flash but couldn’t get over just a couple weeks with Hannah. And I’ve now taken the time to listen to everything that tells me how I feel about her.
Not that I didn’t already know. Of course I knew that in the brief time Hannah and I had, I’d experienced what it was like to feel whole for the first time. Ever since the evening she walked out of the snug and left me standing by the fire, a part of me has been missing. Not a trivial part, not a little toe or something you can survive without, but a vital internal organ necessary to stay alive.
And as well as the constant churning emptiness inside me, there’s also the sense that I will never be fully myself without her. The idea that I might live out my days without being by her side, watching her being the best mom Dylan could wish for and fulfilling all her own dreams, is too much to bear.
And I also need to learn from how happy all the brousins are. They all know where they belong. And that’s right with the women they love.
I mean, if Max can move to the rural outskirts of a small town in upstate New York and learn to feed goats, I should at least open my mind to Los Angeles, right? It’s not stopped Max being himself—he still spends a night or two a week at his Manhattan penthouse when he’s in the city for work. And, likewise, I would still have to go back to London regularly. But I am coming around to the idea that I don’t haveto live there.
Perhaps it’s who you’re with that matters most, not where you are. Like Hugo said, that’s just fucking geography.
Whoever thought this man, who has shagged his way around most of the world and repeatedly shamed himself in the tabloids, would be the one to make me think so deeply about my own life?
He might be in a pit of despair about his own future, but his pain made me see that when life throws something at you, you shouldn’t walk away from it just because you can.
Hugo wasn’t planning on having a bum knee. But he’s stuck with it now. He can’t ignore it. He has to deal with it and figure out a new future.
I wasn’t planning on falling for Hannah. But I’m stuck with it now. I can’t ignore it. I have to deal with it and figure out a new future.
Hannah is my bum knee—not that romantic, but if that’s what it takes for me to realize I’m being a fucking fool, that’s what it takes.
I reach for my phone on the nightstand to check the time. Taking great care to avoid the glass of water.
I might not have wanted to bump into the love of my life that morning—particularly while stark naked—but it’s been impossible to extract myself from her gravitational pull ever since.
And just because Hannah doesn’t trust men and thinks her role as Dylan’s mother—as vitally important as it is—is the only thing she can be, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t at least try to show her otherwise.
I close the laptop lid.
If I can put Louisa and her nonsense behind me, I can put Hannah in front of me.
“No. I am absolutely not going to find out the address for you.” Jude rams her hands into her overall pockets with a defiance associated with mules.
She’s the only person I know who might have the address of Rachel’s new house. And if she doesn’t, as she claims, she could subtly find out for me.
“I get that you hate me, I do,” I tell her. “But I’m crazy about Hannah. And I have to find her so I can tell her.”
“Pfft.” Jude throws her gaze to the ceiling. “Yeah. Just like you were crazy about her before, then disappeared to London, and she never heard from you again.”
Oh my God, is there no one who can let go of something I did when I was six-fucking-teen?
“Look.” I rest my hand on the shop counter. Something soft and damp squishes under it. My palm is now coated with wet soil. Great. “That’s not how it will be this time, I promise you. And that’s what I’ll promise her.”
“Ask her yourself.” She yanks a withered leaf from a plant sitting at eye level on the shelf beside her. “She hasn’t changed her number.”
“There’s no way she’d tell me.”
“Exactly.” Jude moves behind the counter and drops the leaf into the trash can. “Because she doesn’t want you showing up on her doorstep.”
I sigh and try to knock the brown sludge off my hand. “Is there anything I can do for you?” Maybe she’ll take a trade. “Like, do you need…” I look around the shop. “New shelves, more stock, a new delivery van, or something?”
Jude studies me and tips her head to one side. “You want to bribe me for Hannah’s address?”
Oh, God, yeah, that was probably how it sounded. “No, not at all. I was just?—”
“Forget it.” Her expression is that of a cat deciding whether to knock something fragile off a counter. “Totally not telling you.”
She picks up a roll of ribbon and winds a loose end back on like she’s trying to strangle the spool. “Blood is thicker than assholes.”
And that’s it. Fuck. My one and only lead on Rachel’s address. Gone.
Any lingering hope of getting it from Jude has joined the leaf in the trash.
But all hope can’t be lost—there has to be a way.
I turn and head for the door.
I twirl the tumbler of scotch around and around in circles on the kitchen island while my other hand drags across my laptop trackpad, walking me along yet another Los Angeles street.
The wind howls outside the dark windows behind me, the only light in the kitchen apart from the glow of my laptop coming from the under-cabinet lighting.
Hannah once showed me a photo of the view from the land where Rachel and her husband are building the house. It was on the side of a hill and looked out over the city. I remember her pointing out the ocean in the distance, and I still have a vague recollection of what the skyline looked like.
After stabbing around on the map forthree scotches’ worth of time, I’m finally in an area that looks out at a similar angle—if I’m even remembering correctly.
If only I’d paid more attention to it, asked more questions.
I’ve now “walked” down numerous streets and can’t find anything I’m sure is exactly the right spot.
This is futile. And my eyes hurt. I knock back the contents of my glass.
“Oh, you’re still here.” Maggie’s a little startled to see me. She’s in a bathrobe and slippers and holding a bunch of envelopes. “You’re going into the village tomorrow, right?”
“Yes. Thought I’d send some people in the office gift baskets from The Jam Session since they’ve been working extra to cover for me.”
The Jam Session is a little deli that makes its own line of jam, honey, and other preserves. And obviously the name will give the music obsessives a chuckle.
“Great. While you’re there, would you mind stopping at the post office?” She holds up the envelopes. “This stuff needs stamps and mailing.”
“Of course.”
She drops them on the counter and yawns. “I’m turning in.” She squeezes my shoulder and gives me a good night kiss on my head, just like she did when Walker and I were the grieving kids who’d come to live with her and Jim.
“Night, Aunt Mags.”
I turn my attention back to the screen and move a little farther along the LA street. It’s probably completely pointless, but I’ve come too far to give up now.
“Oh,” Maggie says, stopping as she reaches the door. “One of them doesn’t need a stamp. It’s a redirect to Hannah.”
What?
My heart and stomach wobble, and my brain lights up with error codes.
“Night,” she calls back casually, blissfully unaware she’s just solved a mystery that was as confounding to me as the Bermuda Triangle.
I practically fling myself across the island and snatch up the pile of mail.
A tax thing.
Something for The Humane Society.
A padded mailer containing something she’s returning to an online gardening store.
And then there it is. The thing that should be accompanied by flashes of lightning, dramatic organ music, and a troupe of dancers—an envelope addressed to Hannah Hepburn care of this address, which Maggie has crossed out and replaced with a forwarding address in Los Angeles.
My heart pounds. There it is.
I drop my ass back onto the stool.
Maggie has had this information the whole time and I never thought to ask?
Could I be any more of a disorganized loser?
I stare at the address for a few seconds.
That’s where Hannah is. Probably right now.
I know where she is.
Then reality dawns.
Now that I know where she is, I have to do it.
This was all a great idea when it wasn’t possible, when trying to track her down was as difficult as finding the heavy metal singer who walked out on his tour to hide at a meditation retreat in the mountains of Bhutan.
But now this shit is real.
Where the hell is this place anyway?
I go back to the map.
Fucking hell, I’m already on the right street.
I check the number and have to grip the counter because my head’s swimming, and it’s nothing to do with Uncle Jim’s scotch. The address is literally three doors down from where I already am. One more click and I’m there, looking at an empty lot where Rachel’s house must now be.
With exactly the view from the photo Hannah showed me.
My heart stops and, as if acting of its own free will, my hand reaches out and my fingers brush against the screen.
Christ, I was so close to her. And didn’t even know.