Chapter Twenty-One #2
“No. It isn’t.” Adam’s intonation isn’t entirely convincing.
He sets down the bakery box, kneads his hands together.
He doesn’t say anything else just yet, instead taking a minute to look at the ground.
“It was to tell you that 198I had a dream about you the other night,” he admits.
“The night I got to New Hampshire. The day I stopped by and saw you at the house.”
It’s hard for Grace to pinpoint what she feels in this moment. Anger? Regret? Sadness? Nostalgia? Relief? Or is it all of these things, the emotions twisted up like adjacent plants whose roots have grown into each other, the sentiments intertwined and tangled up?
“Don’t you want to know what it was about?” Adam asks.
“I’m not sure,” Grace admits.
He keeps his hands folded, slowly looks up.
“It was about us,” he states. “That first autumn we were dating back in the city.” Adam stops, presses his thumbs together.
“You were so happy. All these heartaches of the last few years weren’t so much as a thought yet.
” He picks at his fingernail. “It made me miss you. That version of you. That version of us, maybe.”
Before Grace can speak—to shout or spew a litany of questions or something in between—Adam stands.
“Here.” He hands her the bakery box, the iced coffee still perspiring on the step.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to stay or not, so I booked myself a room at one of the old motels a few blocks south.
” He doesn’t try to hug Grace or kiss her or touch her in any way.
Instead, he meets her eyes. “If you want me to come back—if you need anything—all you have to do is say the word.” Adam moves to his SUV, opens the driver’s-side door. “Grace?” he says before he gets in.
She looks at him, not sure she wants to hear what comes next.
“I know your second book didn’t sell nearly as well as your first one,” Adam says. “Even so, I wish the draft you’d been looking at the other day had been the one inspired by us instead.”
Back inside the house, the evening lasts forever.
The hours refuse to speed up and pass. Grace attempts to eat—cereal, leftover candy, nothing with actual substance—but her stomach is too 199much of a mess.
She sits at the kitchen table, then tries and fails to process all that’s transpired these last few hours in her journal, though none of her thoughts come out right.
By the time it’s dark, she clicks on the television and watches one of Birdie’s Hallmark movies all the way through.
Nothing helps.
The feeling inside her, it isn’t just grief anymore.
Grief implies a deep feeling of sorrow over something you’ve lost—something that, despite all your longing and bargaining and wishing, you can’t ever get back.
A piece of your past that’s gone forever.
A picture of your future that won’t come to be.
What happened this evening out on the steps was something different—having something, someone, she thought she’d lost turn up out of nowhere and make her question everything all over again.
Now it’s the middle of the night. The credits for another movie roll across the screen, the next one already queued up behind it—another charming story where everything works itself out.
Grace mutes the TV but doesn’t turn it off.
The glow feels comforting. For a few minutes, she watches it without any sound and thinks about Adam, his comments about her creative work, his dream, that first season they spent together and the many seasons that came after it, all of which landed them here.
Grace looks at the items she’s collected this week, laid out on the coffee table. The sand dollar. The arcade tickets. The paper bracelet. The chunky necklace. The highlighter. Her copy of The Tides, the cover curled back. The unopened bakery box sits next to it.
Slowly, she peels back the lid. Inside is a perfect pink confection, just like the ones she and Adam enjoyed together the first birthday of hers they were together.
The night of her actual birthday, they celebrated with Birdie in Sea Drift—blue crabs on the patio, swirl cones on the boardwalk.
The following week, Adam planned a fancier evening.
Dinner in the city. A champagne toast. Cupcakes at some of-the-moment bakery. Cocktails and dancing with friends.
200
It hits Grace now. All of it. Their past, cut short. Their future, potentially still ahead. Not knowing if she’s meant to go forward or backward. If she should begin again or let it all go.
Grace tosses down the cupcake box and runs toward the bathroom, her hand pressed against her mouth until she makes it inside, all the feelings she’s been processing but unable to put into words finally finding a way to come out.
She gargles and splashes cold water on her face, her body empty of nearly everything. From the living room, she grabs her phone, too tired to click off the TV, then heads to bed.
Before she shuts her eyes, Grace taps her device to life, then opens her message screen.
I changed my mind, she types. I need you. At the beach house. I don’t want to be alone.
She doesn’t wait to see if the signal catches.
Grace is dreaming by the time the message finally goes through.