Chapter 28 Diane
Diane
Afternoon presses down on the house, slow and thick, the sun a pale disk behind a scrim of coastal haze. Most days I love this hour, the way light slants across the floorboards, but today it only amplifies the feeling of stasis, like time has stalled out between heartbeats.
The low whine of the oxygen machine seeps through the closed door. I linger at the threshold, not wanting to disturb what little peace Sara has left, but I hear her voice summon me in.
“Diane? Honey, you lurking, or just hoping I’ll drift off for good?”
I manage a laugh, but it’s more exhale than sound. I slip inside and find her propped on pillows, smiling as if she’s been expecting me for hours.
“Sit,” she says, patting the mattress. “If you stand there any longer, you’ll wear a groove in the floor.”
I perch on the edge of the bed and take her hand. The skin is parchment, the knuckles swollen, but the grip is still decisive, a little bossy.
“Tell me,” she says.
“Tell you what?”
“Don’t play coy. You look like someone who’s eaten the last cookie and is bracing for judgment.” She cracks an eye, studies my face, and then sighs. “Is it Nathan?”
I want to say no, that it’s about you, it’s about Cassie, it’s about the impossible gravity of losing another anchor in a life already adrift. But instead I say, “I found letters. In his studio. From his ex.”
Sara makes a sound, not quite a laugh. “You went digging?”
“Not really. They were right there. Like he wanted me to find them, maybe.”
She lets that settle. “And?”
“And I lost it. I yelled at him, and then I just… I left.”
Sara says nothing for a while, just rests her head back and lets the machine’s pulse fill the silence.
“I thought you were braver than that,” she says, finally, and the words hit so cleanly I flinch.
“I’m not.”
She looks at me then, her gaze clear as the first cold sip of water after a fever.
“You know what I learned, after Andrew died? After the casseroles stopped coming and everyone went back to their regular programming. I learned that people don’t get over each other,” she says.
“Not the way you want them to. We drag the old loves with us, like broken shells in a pocket. Sometimes they poke through the lining. That doesn’t mean there’s no room for new love.
It just means you have to find a bigger pocket. ”
“That’s a terrible metaphor,” I say, which is all I can manage without crying.
“But it’s true.”
The effort of talking has left her breathless. I fetch the water glass, hold it to her lips, then watch her swallow. Her eyes flutter closed, lashes shaking.
“You think I should call him, don’t you?”
She tips her head in a yes. “But only when you’re ready to have a real, adult conversation. Consequences be damned.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You can,” she says. “But you have to forgive him for not being perfect. And yourself, too, while you’re at it.”
“I’m so tired of being afraid,” I say, and it comes out half plea, half confession.
“Then stop. It’s not a sin to want something. Even if you lose it later. Even if it’s messy.”
She squeezes my hand again, and I realize she’s shaking, not with cold or fear but with the effort of holding on.
“I don’t want to let you go,” I say, and I can’t stop the tears now.
“You have to. It’s the only way anything new can fit inside you.”
“Nathan tells me you think I’m a rain catcher, that I gather storms and hold them in, waiting for the downpour.”
“Yes, I do,” she says. “You know, I was once called a rain catcher, too, many years ago.”
“You?”
She nods, and I try to imagine her as she must have been, back when she was my age, hungry for every beauty and wound the world could offer.
“Jack used to say I could water an entire valley with the emotions I hoarded. He was wrong, of course. I could have flooded a dessert.” She manages a laugh, but it rattles in her chest. “For some reason, that always stuck with me. Judy was a rain catcher, too, and your mother...”
“My mother?”
“God, yes. She just hid it better.” Sara’s eyes go soft for a second before narrowing, settling on me again.
“You’re so much like her it hurts to look at you sometimes.
You think pain makes you real, Diane, but holding onto it is what makes you heavy.
And you’re not meant to be heavy. Neither was she.
” She coughs, the sound scraping. “Remember, rain catchers aren’t just repositories for storms, they’re a source of life-giving water.
They’re not meant to hold the rain, Diane, but to release it. ”
I laugh against the tears. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m afraid of releasing the rain. Maybe I’m afraid of what will grow in its wake.”
Sara’s eyes don’t leave mine; they anchor me in this moment. “Then let the rain fall, Diane. Stand in it, feel it soak you to the bone. Only then can you decide whether to run for cover or dance."
I swallow hard, the words hitting me like cold wind against my face. I give her hand a squeeze, and she returns it with a comforting firmness that belies her frail state. She's still here, still fighting, and it gives me the courage to stand.
"I'll try," I whisper.
"Good.”
We sit there, the two of us, tangled up in tubes and memory and the last dregs of daylight. I want to stay here forever, but I know I can’t.
When she falls asleep, I stay beside her, counting the seconds between breaths, willing each one to last. I let the quiet build until it fills the whole house, then tiptoe out, closing the door behind me.
When I return to the cottage, the answering machine is blinking with new messages. I check them. There’s one from Amaya, one from a neighbor, six from Nathan.
I pick up the phone and dial his number, my stomach twisting as each ring echoes in my ears. It feels like a lifetime before he picks up, and for a moment, all I can hear is the sound of our breaths—his surprised, mine trembling.
“Diane?”
It’s just my name, but it feels like an apology, like a plea.
“It’s me,” I say, my voice no more than a whisper. “Nathan, we need to talk.”
There's a pause, then a quiet, "Of course." His voice sounds raw, as if he hasn't spoken since I left him last night.
The conversation that follows is a dance of words and silences, hesitation and confession.
At first, we're both brittle. I say I shouldn't have yelled, that I was surprised by the letters but more surprised by how badly I wanted them not to exist. He confesses that he should have told me, should have trusted me with the story of her, with the version of the past that keeps intruding into his present by way of old envelopes and unsent goodbyes.
"I just didn’t want you to think that I still harbored any feelings for her.”
“Really? Then how do you explain what you wrote to her?”
There’s a pause on the line. “Honestly, I started writing that letter a few weeks after I got here, before you and I ever met. It was my way of processing everything that had happened between us. I would have told you that, but you ran out before I could explain.”
“But why did you keep it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I thought I would eventually send it. Maybe I just needed a safe somewhere for it to exist, so it wouldn’t keep repeating in my head. Regardless, that was before I met you, Diane. After that, the letter felt…irrelevant.”
I close my eyes, letting his words soak in.
“I know it might not be the right time to say this, but I love you, Diane,” he says, rushing past the awkwardness, as if daring me to contradict him. “I know I’m lousy at showing it, but I do.”
My throat closes up. I’m not sure if it’s what he said or the way he said it, like a confession or a key dropped into my open palm. I clutch the receiver tighter, needing to feel something solid.
I don’t say it back. Instead, I just listen.
He waits, and I hear him breathing. I imagine him doodling on a pad of paper, his mind jumping ahead to what I might say next and also bracing against it.
He doesn’t try to force it, doesn’t plead.
Just waits, the way you wait for water to boil, knowing you can’t hurry the process without ruining whatever comes after.
Finally, I take a breath so deep my ribs stretch, my whole chest expanding with the new air, and say, “I love you too.”