Chapter One Caroline #5
“Well.” Caroline wavered. Her mother would tell her to come back to New York, to leave Van and his baby and the Palmer Preston Fellowship behind. “I was actually calling because I’m stuck on today’s crossword. Did you get seven letters for ‘layer’?”
“Oh, yes. It’s ‘stratum.’ S-T-R-A-T-U-M.”
“Perfect. Thanks so much, Mom.”
“All right, darling. Speak soon!” Gwendolyn hung up.
She could abandon the fellowship. She could go back to New York and reapply to other writing programs, ones that came with stipends or houses on Whidbey Island or little baskets of lunch delivered to your door.
She could leave Greenhead and pretend she’d never met Van.
But the truth was that she didn’t want to.
What she wanted, more than anything, was to go back in time, to have it be exactly as it was two days ago, when she was falling in love with Van and he with her.
The previous Sunday, waking up from a weird dream, Caroline had rolled over to see Van reading a book next to her, propped up on a pillow. “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked him, her voice still thick with sleep.
Van put his finger in the book to mark his place. “Not really.” He looked at her seriously. “But when I was in the third grade, I became really obsessed with them.”
“You did?” Caroline asked.
“My grandmother died, and someone said something to me about how she would always watch over me.”
“Kind of a heady concept for a kid.”
“I took it really literally. I felt like she was always there. Like when I was sneaking Halloween candy in my room or when I was using the bathroom.”
“You thought your dead grandmother was watching you pee?”
“It fucked me up for a while,” Van confessed.
“I bet!”
“Then one day I just forgot about it.” Van shrugged.
“I saw this thing where Neil deGrasse Tyson was talking about ghosts.” Caroline rubbed her eyes sleepily.
“He said that there have been more than eighty billion people who have lived on earth. And there are about eight billion people now. So if ghosts existed, there would be ten ghosts for every person here.”
“Wait, so you’re telling me not only was my grandmother watching me in the bathroom but so were nine other ancestors?”
“It’s just math,” Caroline whispered, and as she crawled into his arms she pretended that all ten of Van’s ancestors were hovering over the bed, dressed in old-fashioned Patagonia.
Over the years Caroline had been in her fair share of relationships.
She had dated guys for six months, even a year, but she had always felt like she was somehow tricking herself into calling it “love,” like she was overlooking some fundamental incompatibility for the sake of being in a relationship.
After a lifetime with her difficult mother, Caroline was good at getting along, good at containing herself in the service of someone else, so that’s what she had done.
But with Van it was different. There was nothing about him she didn’t like.
There was nothing about herself she felt she had to conceal.
She hadn’t known that it could be this way.
And now that she knew, she couldn’t ever go back to the tepid and accommodating romances of her past.
On Saturday morning Caroline drove to Van’s house and knocked on his door. When he answered, handsome and sleepy in boxers and an old hoodie, a giant grin spread across his face. “Are you here to see the fox skull?”
“In a minute.” Caroline tried to be serious, but it just felt so good to look at him again. She wanted to fall into his arms, into his bed. “I need to ask you some things.”
“Of course,” said Van.
Caroline took off her jacket and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair. She had worn her favorite jeans, a sweater with little buttons up the front that showed her collarbone, and she could feel Van’s eyes on her, could tell he was as happy to be looking at her as she him.
“I’m sure you’re still getting used to the idea of having a baby,” Caroline started. “And neither of us can know what it’s actually going to be like.”
Van nodded quietly.
“But is there a world in which you want to try to be with Bailey? To raise the baby as a couple?”
“No.” Van shook his head firmly. “Neither of us wants that.”
“I can’t be the reason this kid doesn’t live with both parents. That would be such a terrible thing for me to do.”
“You wouldn’t be.”
“This isn’t a crush for me, Van. This isn’t infatuation. What you and I have is real to me.”
“This week has been terrible. I thought I had ruined everything.” Van looked anguished.
“So you want to try to make this work?” she asked.
“Yes.” Van took her hand in his. “Please don’t break up with me.”
“Okay.” Caroline pulled Van’s arms around her.
And so it was decided. Caroline and Van would muddle through this awkward and messy thing, they would fall fully and completely in love, they would meet this new baby, and they would make a new kind of family.
It wouldn’t end in tears, Caroline repeated to herself, because Van said it didn’t have to.