Chapter Forty-One
As Andrew took slow, measured steps across the room, he was surprised there was still ground underneath him on which to walk. The entire foundation of his world had been rocked. His entire perspective, upended.
Every decision he’d made in the last eight years, he’d chosen based on the fact that Della didn’t love him.
That she didn’t want him. That she’d rather be banished to the countryside alone than be with him.
He’d fled the country, roamed all over the world, and eaten up scraps of her attention, all because he thought he couldn’t have her.
To know that he could’ve . . . that every day of the eight years they’d spent apart, she was thinking of him the way he’d been thinking of her .
. . nothing had ever made him so angry. It wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t his, but he couldn’t let her see him like this.
He felt poised to explode, and he wouldn’t have her hit by shrapnel.
The room was largely empty but lit by giant, west-facing windows.
The furniture wasn’t much to look at, but those windows were a vision.
For a moment, Andrew was startled by the beauty before him.
Rolling hills and verdant trees, an over-bright sunset in splashes of the brightest orange and the lightest purple.
He walked toward the window, mesmerized by those colors.
His gaze caught on the tallest tree he could see.
It was skinny and unstable looking, and he’d almost bet it was half dead and in danger of falling.
It brought him back to childhood, to the version of Della he’d done nothing but lose.
If their younger selves were out there right now in those fields, he’d be climbing that sickly, half-dead tree just to impress her.
As if watching it play out in front of him, Andrew continued to imagine them there. He’d be overdressed, wearing one of his father’s cravats and old boots he’d still shined. She would have a ribbon in her hair, and she’d be carrying a book around with her at all times like a beloved pet.
He would start to climb that tree, and she would gasp.
He’d always treasured those gasps of surprise.
Back then, he’d thought they were expressions of unexpected amazement.
He thought she couldn’t believe how daring he’d been.
Now, even in his own mind, he saw that version of her differently.
He saw her, on the ground, looking up at him with widened eyes.
He thought she might be nervous, terrified of him falling.
As he watched his younger self climb back down to safety, he remembered how she’d sigh.
He’d always interpreted that as something wistful or longing.
That was naive of him. Now, he could see it for what it was: relief.
It was that sense of peace he always felt around her. Had she really always felt it, too?
Andrew had climbed all of those trees because she always smiled at him when he came back down to the ground.
Perhaps he’d never had to impress her at all.
Perhaps all he’d ever needed to do was stay on the grass by her side.
If he had, maybe the past eight years would’ve been full of those never-ending smiles.
None of those terrified gasps, and none of those gut-wrenching sobs he’d heard today.
As darkness began to take over, he tried to imagine the future instead of the past. He tried to forget about the possibilities of which they were robbed.
Eight years’ worth of smiles and laughter and kisses and dreams. Thousands of mornings they’d both woken up alone, silently wishing for each other.
All of those letters. Though they’d been a sacred connection between them, they seemed so shallow now.
So many missives back and forth about the minutiae of their daily lives, all while they hadn’t been able to say a word of what they truly meant to each other.
With the sun, his anger faded. His heartbeat slowed as he overthought each and every one of his feelings.
Once he worked through the immediate, surface-level rage, there was a deep well of grief for all of that lost time.
The worst thing about grief, though, is its longevity.
There’s no cure for it, no remedy for relief.
There was no way to get all of those years back.
At some point, once he started counting stars, he realized he’d already missed entirely too many sunsets he could’ve spent with Della. It had all been out of their control, those years they’d spent apart. Now, though, they were sitting in the same room, looking up at the same inky black sky.
Andrew counted the stars in his field of vision one more time, just for good luck. Then he prayed that would be the last of Della’s sunsets he’d spent with her so close but still so far away.