Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was a bluebird day. The kind of day that makes you wonder whether there really is any delineation between earth and heaven.
Rose felt like a bear fresh off a long hibernation.
She rolled the car’s window down, high off the smell of tulips.
The air was thick with pollen and she sneezed four times into her elbow, Cordelia laughing each time.
Landon held the steering wheel loosely, with the bearing of a man who has won something.
He took a bite of the croissant they’d stopped for after their long, slow morning spent pushing Cordelia on the swings and letting her toddle over rubber mulch, and Rose decided the day was too lovely to scold him for the flaky mess he was making.
“I know I told you I wouldn’t get ahead of myself, but I think we should do this every day,” he said.
Rose laughed. Landon never passed up an opportunity to push his luck. “It’s only April. The weather could turn on us on a dime. Just because you’ve said that, we’ll probably wake up to a storm warning tomorrow.”
“We can do this in the snow. I’ve got snow tires.”
Rose took another deep breath: tulips and daffodils and the scent of slowly warming water.
She wasn’t quite ready for it to be over yet.
“I’d like to see the lake,” she said. “What if we take her and dip her toes in?” She turned in her seat to make sure Cordelia hadn’t drifted off.
Their daughter’s gray eyes were wide open, taking in the day with the same wonder that Rose felt.
“Fantastic idea,” Landon said, drumming the steering wheel. “You know, we should take Deedee to my parents’ this summer. The lake by their house usually warms up by mid-August, and we’ll be able to spend the whole day in the water.”
Rose’s heart fluttered. “You’re already planning vacations?”
“No, no,” he said, trying to backpedal. “I’m not planning anything. I was just thinking about the lake, and the water, and I just thought—”
“Today, Landon,” Rose said, her wonder slightly dimmed. “And maybe tomorrow. But not this summer. I’m not ready to talk to you about this summer.”
“You’re right,” he said, another approach their couple’s therapist had encouraged. Move on quickly. Acknowledge fault. Own impact, no matter the intent. “I got caught up. I’m sorry.”
Rose glanced at him, hurt written all over his face for having upset the new and tenuous balance between then. Maybe they could do this, she thought. Maybe it would just take time. It would be different. But different was better than an ending, wasn’t it? “It’s okay,” she said. And she meant it.
Landon looked like he wanted to say something more—like he was surprised she’d let it go so easily and had taken his apology at face value. “Hey,” he said, “should we go for ice cream?”
“One and a half croissants wasn’t enough sugar for you?”
He smiled. “Feels like summer. I started thinking about ice cream the second I opened the front door this morning.”
“Then by all means, let’s make your dreams come true.”
“Do you remember that amazing soft serve in Prospect Park? You said it tasted like childhood, and I swear that’s what I think of whenever I have a craving for ice cream.”
Rose froze. “That wasn’t me.”
“What?”
She pressed the button on the passenger door, and the window rolled shut. “I said, that wasn’t me.”
“Are you sure? I mean, I remember—”
“That. Wasn’t. Me.” The anger was immediate and all-consuming, her face hot and hands clammy.
“Rose,” he said, losing his cool quicker than he usually did in response to her outbursts, “who the hell else would it have been?”
“I don’t know!” Rose said. “Someone who made a big impression on you, I guess.”
“I’m going to be honest with you,” Landon said. They’d come to a large intersection at the center of town, and he eased the car to a slow stop when the tenor of the conversation could have easily led him to slam the brakes. “I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what it is I did wrong.”
“You can’t just rewrite our story.” The blind optimism that had drawn her to him in their early years had soured an already harrowing newborn experience—his propensity to see only what he wanted to see the bane of their couples counseling. “What actually happened matters!”
“Okay, but in this case—”
“In every case.” Rose knew she was reaching, drawing parallels that were far larger than this small moment.
What did it matter that she hadn’t said those exact words to describe their favorite ice cream in New York?
Why punish him now, when he’d said so many thoughtless things over the years that warranted her anger far more than this misstep?
The thought that she hadn’t had the courage to say out loud yet in their counseling sessions buzzed in her ear: Would she ever be able to forgive him?
“Will it always be like this?” she asked.
Landon turned to face her, his eyes stained red. “It doesn’t have to be,” he said. “We can choose not to let it. We can just choose each other, Rose. Choose to trust each other until it all feels true again.” Landon reached out a hand.
She realized, then, that he’d said something more profound than their couples counselor had managed to extract from either of them in all their sessions.
Even if their souls knew each other, Landon had never been an inevitability.
She had chosen him a hundred times; a thousand times.
She’d chosen him through heartache, through loss, through joy.
If they were going to make it, she would have to choose him again.
To someone else it may have seemed too small a distinction to matter.
To Rose, it was power. It wasn’t perfect.
It might never be the same. But it was her decision to make. She reached for him.
The light turned green, but Landon did not see. A car swerved around them, impulsively. Then, another. Someone wailed on a horn. They were holding hands when the truck struck them.