Chapter 3
MARINA
F or the first few days we were in town, Kylie and I didn’t leave the cabin except to play in the snow or explore some of the trails that branched around our house. Tollin didn’t know where most of them went– I don’t know? The woods? But she knew where the main artery led.
“If you follow this path here, it’ll take you right into town,” she said, pointing down one wide, relatively clear swath through the trees. Then she pivoted and pointed down the other way. “And if you follow this path, it will lead you right to Anson Miller’s place.”
“Anson’s the guy who put together Kylie’s bed?”
“Yeah, but don’t bother taking him a muffin basket. He doesn’t like people.” Tollin crouched down in the snow beside Kylie, who was trying to mold the snow into a ball with her small, gloved hands.
“Noted,” I murmured, staring down the path.
Then I glanced speculatively at my best friend.
She was so pretty with her sleek, shiny black hair, winter white skin, and dark eyes.
He didn’t like people, but for some reason, he’d helped her out.
Could this Anson guy have a thing for her?
In an instant, I went from wondering to imagining.
My imagination leapfrogged into a wedding scene with Kylie as the flower girl and me making a speech about how I took full credit for my best friend’s happiness.
There would be something sweetly poetic about it, too.
I’d moved to Dasher to escape my own heartbreak, and in doing so, brought love into Tollin’s life.
I was getting emotional just thinking about it.
Tollin’s laugh rang out, and I realized she was looking back at me with a canny, knowing expression. “Marina, stop making me into one of your stories.”
“I’m not,” I protested, my cheeks flushing from more than the cold. “Okay I was, but I can’t help it. I’m a writer.”
“I know, but leave me out of the book, okay? I’m happily single.” Tollin and Kylie finished crafting the perfect snowball and stood up. Kylie cradled it protectively in the crook of her arm, guarded by her free hand, as we began walking back to the house.
“He is very attractive though,” Tollin said meditatively as we kicked our way through the white powder. The snow that had fallen overnight was sifting off the bare branches of the trees, creating a bright, clean, cold mist. “If you like that tall, dark, handsome, and handy type.”
I made a noncommittal noise. Allen had barely been able to put air in his own car tires, and he had been the all-American boy type.
It was funny; even though I’d seen cancer shrink him down to the bone before it stripped the life out of him completely, when I pictured him, I still saw the tall, cute boy with golden brown hair and brown eyes who had sat next to me in sophomore English, introduced himself, and then asked me out. I was grateful for that.
“Very mysterious though,” Tollin went on as we trooped back inside and paused in the small vestibule to wrench off our snow boots. “No one knows anything about him, and he’s been here for years.”
“That’s… weird,” I said, struggling to catch my mind up to what we were actually talking about versus where it had slipped. Back to Allen. Always back to Allen. “Is he a jerk?”
Tollin snorted. “Depends on who you ask. He can be. But he can also be nice. I was crying by the time I gave up on the bed and walked over to his place. I thought I’d broken something and you’d have to order a whole new bed and Kylie was going to be so disappointed.”
“Oh, Toll,” my heart twinged painfully at the idea of her getting so upset. Did she really think a broken bed could bother me after what I’d been through? “You didn’t have to worry about it. I’m pretty handy myself. I could have figured it out.”
“Yeah, but the whole point was for it to be ready for you. Anyway, I walked over, literally sobbing, and he just grabbed his toolkit and followed me back. He didn’t even mention how I interrupted his dinner or how he had to basically unbuild the entire thing and put it back together.
Then I tried to give him the cash I had, and he told me the best way I could repay him was to never pick up a screwdriver again. Then he left.”
I couldn’t help grinning a little at that.
Tollin wasn’t very handy. She was crafty as anything.
When we’d met in kindergarten, she always had the best snowflakes and handprint turkeys.
When we got to elementary school, she saved her allowance to buy a sewing machine.
In middle school, she’d become the go to person for set and costume design.
Then her parents had moved her to Dasher, entirely against my will, and now she ran the community theater in addition to teaching preschool.
But she’d never been able to put together so much as a basic Ikea bookshelf.
“You could bedazzle the shit out of his toolkit,” I suggested as we made our way into the kitchen for cinnamon rolls and coffee.
She snorted. “No. Anson is not the kind of man you try to bedazzle. He’s too rugged.”
Kylie insisted on putting on Christmas music before we sat down around the table.
Tollin was happy to oblige her. Ostensibly, she had taken the day off to help me finish unpacking, but I think it was mostly because she knew I needed someone to entertain Kylie.
I didn’t care what the reason was–I was happy to have her around.
The cabin was as cozy as a chunky knitted blanket, but after two days of being there with just my daughter, I was getting a little lonely.
I couldn’t help letting my imagination wander into what if territory.
What if I hadn’t moved here because Allen died?
What if we’d moved here together?
The full-sized bed tucked into the eaves would feel a little cramped, especially for his rangy length, but oh how sweet it would be to have his arm beneath me instead of the pillow, to hear his heartbeat beneath my ear when I laid on his chest. To wake up and see him already sitting up in bed, holding a cup of coffee, watching the snow pattern itself against the mullioned windows.
It was enough to break my heart all over again, and I couldn’t keep doing that.
I was afraid that eventually the fractured pieces wouldn’t meld back together, and Kylie couldn’t lose any part of anyone else.
I was her only parent now, and I had to show up with everything I had, just like Allen always did.
After breakfast, Tollin took Kylie back to her room and said, “I’ve got an acrylic set and I can draw anything. Tell me what you want, kid, and it will be done.”
While Kylie directed her to paint a full scene from Frozen on one wall, I was able to get the rest of the boxes unpacked.
There wasn’t actually that much. Allen and I hadn’t accumulated many possessions in our five years of marriage.
We hadn’t even gotten the traditional wedding gifts because, as people awkwardly and painfully realized, those implied that the bride and groom had some sort of future.
Couples who had an expiration date didn’t need eight place settings in matching China. We needed a miracle. So instead, our friends and family pooled money together to send us on a honeymoon. It had been a welcome respite from the doctors and the hospitals and the ax hanging over our future.
And now, I unpacked two framed photographs–one of us on our wedding day, and one of us in the Bahamas–instead of crystal goblets and napkin rings.
“What do you think?” I murmured, looking into twenty-year-old Allen’s eyes.
I knew he approved. Allen had been the one to plant the seed in my head to move to Dasher. He loved the pictures Tollin showed us when she came to visit. We’d always planned to visit her, but there had always been another appointment. Another procedure. Another grim prognosis.
“But wouldn’t it be great if this all went away, and we moved there?
” he speculated one night, toward the end.
He had so many tubes and wires running in and out of him, his body looked like the Lincoln Tunnel.
His scalp had a few patchy wisps of white hair.
His eyelids were thin and gray, and they were half closed over his dull eyes.
He was exhausted with the effort of staying in this mortal world with me and Kylie.
But his voice was as alive and vibrant as it had been when we were fifteen.
Wouldn’t it be great if we went to the movies? Just you and me. Yeah, like a date. You do know me, I just told you my name is Allen .
Tears sprang to my eyes and burned with a discomfiting familiarity.
I wondered if tears would ever feel fresh again, or if we would always be this intimately acquainted.
Allen’s twenty-year old face blurred, my heart tripled in weight, and just as I was about to go on a real crying jag–Tollin’s voice interrupted me.
“Um, Marina? I really hate to tell you this, but your refrigerator just went out.”
And just like that, I didn’t have time to cry about the past anymore.
And in a weird way, I was grateful.
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