“I’ve told you I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” I say to him. “How are we supposed to be honest with each other about our future if you won’t even tell me the most basic elements of your past? You say that you know that everything can be exactly how it was, but before you left we never had huge parts of our lives that we just didn’t talk about. We didn’t have any history that we didn’t share. And now we do. I have Sam and, c’mon, Jesse, you have scars on your body. Your finger is—”
Jesse slams his fist into the pillow cushions underneath us. It would be a violent action if it hadn’t landed in such a soft place, and I wonder if that was by design or by accident. “What do you want to know, Emma? For crying out loud. What do you want to know? That the doctors found two types of skin cancer? That when they found me, you could see the bone of my wrists and my ribs through my chest? That I had to have four root canals and it feels like half my mouth is fake now? Is that what you want to know? You want to know that I was stung by a Portuguese man-of-war as I swam looking for safety? You want to know I couldn’t get it off of me? That it just kept fucking stinging me? That the pain was so bad I thought I was dying? That the doctors say I’ll have this scar for years, maybe forever? Or maybe you just want me to admit how awful it was living out on that rock. You want me to tell you how many days I spent looking out at the sea, just waiting. Telling myself I just had to make it until tomorrow, because you’d come for me. You or my parents or my brothers. But none of you came. None of you found me. No one did.”
“We didn’t know. We didn’t know how to find you.”
“I know that,” he says. “I’m not mad at anyone for that. What I’m mad about is that you forgot about me! That you moved on and replaced me! That I’m back and I still don’t have you.”
“I didn’t replace you.”
“You got rid of my name at the end of yours and you told another man you’d marry him. What else could that possibly be? What other word would you use?”
“I didn’t replace you,” I say again, this time weakly. “I love you.”
“If that’s true, then this is simple. Be with me. Help me put us back together.”
I can feel Jesse’s eyes on me even as I look away. I turn to look out the window, to the blanket of snow covering the backyard. It is white and clean. It looks as soft as a cloud.
When I was a kid, I loved the snow. Then when I moved to California, I used to tell people I’d never leave the sun, that I never wanted to see snow again. But now, I can’t imagine a green Christmas and I know that if I left, I would miss that feeling of coming in from the cold.
I have changed over time. That’s what people do.
People aren’t stagnant. We evolve in reaction to our pleasures and our pains.
Jesse is a different man than he was before.
I am a different woman.
And what has confused me ever since I found out he was alive is now crystal clear: We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love.
You can’t capture love in a bottle. You can’t hold on to it with both hands and force it to stay with you.
What has happened to us is no one’s fault—neither of us did anything wrong—but when Jesse left, life took us in opposite directions and turned us into different people. We grew apart because we were apart.
And maybe that means that even though we can finally be together . . .
We shouldn’t be.
The thought cracks open my chest.
I am perfectly still but feel as if I’m caught in a riptide, barely able to see how I can get my head out and above the water.
I don’t think I was ever afraid that loving both of them made me a bad person.
I was afraid that loving Sam made me a bad person.
I was afraid that I would pick Sam. That my heart would love Sam. That my soul would need Sam.
You’re not supposed to forsake the man who journeyed home to you.
You’re supposed to be Penelope. You’re supposed to knit the shroud day in and day out and stay up every night unraveling it to keep the suitors at bay.
You’re not supposed to have a life of your own, needs of your own. You’re not supposed to love again.
But I did.
That’s exactly what I did.
Jesse moves closer to me, gently puts his hands on my arms. “If you love me, Emma, then be with me.”
It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? That every single person on this planet could lose their one true love and live to love again? It means the one you love could love again if they lost you.
But it also means I know Jesse will be OK, he will be happy one day, without me.
“I don’t think I can be with you,” I say. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think we’re right for each other. Anymore.”
Jesse’s arms slump down around him. His posture sinks. His eyes collapse shut.
It’s one of those moments in life when you can’t believe that the truth is true, that the world shook out like this.
I don’t end up with Jesse.
After all of this, all we’ve been through, we aren’t going to grow old together.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I have to go.”
“Where are you going to go? We’re snowed in.”
He grabs his jacket and puts on his shoes. “I’ll just go to the car. I don’t care. I just need to be alone right now.”
He opens the front door and slams it behind him. I go to the door and open it again to see his back as he walks toward the car, trudging through the snow. He knows I’m behind him but stops me before I can even say a word by lifting his arm up and giving me the universal sign for “Don’t.” So I don’t.
I close the door. I lean against it. I slink down to the floor and I cry.
Jesse and I were once ripped apart. And now we’ve grown apart.
The same hearts, broken twice.
Over an hour has passed and Jesse has not yet come back. I stand up and peek through the front window to see if he’s still in the car.
He’s sitting in the driver’s seat with his head down. I look around the front of the house. The warm sun has started to melt some of the snow. The roads in the distance look, if not cleared, at least a bit traveled. We could leave here right now if we wanted to. We’d just have a little shoveling to do. But my guess is Jesse is in no rush to be trapped in a car with me.
My eye drifts back to the car and I see him moving in the driver’s seat. He’s looking through my envelope. He’s looking at pictures and reading notes, maybe even the Beacon article about his disappearance.
I shouldn’t watch him. I should give him the privacy that he walked out there for. But I can’t look away.
I see a white envelope in his hands.
And I know exactly what it is.
The letter I wrote him to say good-bye.
He fiddles with the envelope, flipping it back and forth, deciding whether he’s going to open it. My heart beats like a drum in my chest.
I put my hand on the doorknob, ready to run out there and stop him, but . . . I don’t. Instead, I look back out the window.
I watch as he puts a finger under the flap and tears it open.
I turn away from the window, as if he spotted me. I know that he didn’t. I just know that I’m scared.
He’s going to read that letter and everything is going to get worse. It will be all the proof he needs that I forgot him, that I gave up on us, that I gave up on him.
I turn back to the window and watch him read it. He stares at the page for a long time. And then he puts it down and looks out the side window. Then he picks it up again and starts reading it a second time.
After a while, he puts his hand on the car door and opens it. I run from the window and sit on the sofa, pretending I’ve been here the whole time.
I never should have written that goddamn letter.
The front door opens, and there he is. Staring at me. He has the letter in his hand. He’s perfectly still, stunningly quiet.
I wrote the letter so that I could let go of him. There’s no hiding that. So if that’s the evidence he’s looking for that I’ve been a terrible wife, an awful person, a disloyal soul, well, then . . . I guess he got what he was looking for.