The Keeper of Happy Endings(121)

“Is it?” he asks softly. “Is it finished for you? Because it isn’t for me. I wanted it to be. When I came home and found you gone, when I saw the pictures of you with another man and thought . . . I would have given anything for it to be done.” His breath comes hoarsely, and a tiny pulse has begun to beat at the hollow of his throat. “I tried to drink you away, but that just made it worse. You were like a poison, your face, your voice, running in my veins. Even now . . .” He breaks off, raking a hand through his still-damp hair. “There hasn’t been a day in the last forty years that I haven’t thought of you, Soline. Haven’t wondered if there wasn’t a way—”

His voice breaks then, and he closes his eyes, as if taken unaware by a sudden sharp pain. When they open again, they’re red-rimmed and dull. “Before, when you asked what happened to me, I told you about lying in the road, waiting to die. I said I made my peace, but I didn’t say how.”

My throat tightens. I don’t want to hear any more, don’t want to imagine him bleeding and broken—afraid. “Please, Anson . . .”

“I pulled the rosary out of my pocket and said your name over and over, out loud, like a prayer, until I could see your face. Because I wanted it to be the last thing I saw. If I could just see you, it would be okay. I could . . . let go. When I came to in the hospital, the rosary was lying next to me. And it felt like you were too. That’s why I kept it all these years. Because as long as I had it, I felt like I was still connected to you, that what we had in Paris never really ended. When you handed me this . . .” He looks down at the shaving kit and shrugs. “I thought maybe you’d kept it for the same reason.”

My eyes are dry in the wake of his declaration. I want to believe him, to trust him. But the pain of forty years remains lodged in my chest. “Why did you never come to me, Anson? I was here. All that time, I was right here, learning to make a life without you. You say you wanted to see my face, but you never saw my heart if you believe I could betray your memory with another man. There was never anyone but you. Not then, not now, not anywhere in between. We could have been together, but you let your father win. He wanted you to hate me, and you did.”

“No. I never hated you. I wanted to. I tried to. But I did hate myself. Who I became after the war and the hospitals. Bitter. Hard. Lost in a bottle most of the time. You were right when you said I was like him. I let that happen. I used the war as an excuse—and you. Until I looked in the mirror one day and saw him instead. Everything I hated about him staring back at me. That night I went to my first AA meeting. I’ve been working my way back ever since.”

“Back to what?”

“To this,” he says hoarsely. “To you.”

I resist the words. Words are easy. “But when Rory went to San Francisco . . . When she told you . . .”

He looks away, as if pained by the memory. “Twenty years sober, and I never needed a drink like I needed one that night. I can tell you, club soda isn’t much help for that kind of news. It was like she ripped the scab off all of it. My mistakes and my bitterness, my goddamn pride, everything I’d thrown away, and I couldn’t bear to look at it. She was asking me to own it, and I wasn’t ready.”

“And now?”

“Now everything’s changed. Last night, I saw your face, and all the poison came rushing back. I thought I’d come here tonight to end it, that I’d hand you back the rosary and it would be over. Now I realize it’s never going to be over, and I don’t know what to do with that, except to finally own it—and say I’m sorry. About the years we lost. About our daughter. About believing my father’s lies.” He reaches for my hand, stroking the back of my glove with a tenderness that makes my breath catch. “And about this.”

When I don’t resist, he raises my hand to his lips. I feel the warmth of his mouth against my knuckles, and I turn my hand, cupping his face as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, as if no time has passed at all. The memory can play tricks. The heart too. And I marvel at how the simple touch of a cheek, the landscape of a face, can erase years of loss and pain—and leave you vulnerable.

He covers my hand with both of his, as if afraid I might pull away. “Tell me what you want, Soline, and I’ll do it. If you want me to go, I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again. But if you want me to stay, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to give you back the years we missed.”

My eyes pool with tears until his face begins to blur. “We can never get those years back, Anson. They’re gone.”

He nods and lets his hands fall, stepping away from my touch. “I suppose they are.”

My throat closes as I watch him move toward the door, and I think of the morning I left Paris. If I had known then that forty years would pass before I saw him again, would I have allowed us to be separated? Can I allow it now?

As if in answer, Maman’s words drift back to me. There are times for holding on in this life and times for letting go. You must learn to know the difference.

And suddenly, I do know.

He’s turning up his collar, preparing to duck out into the downpour, when I catch his arm. Because I don’t have another forty years to waste, and neither does he. “We can’t get those years back, Anson, but perhaps we can make something of the ones we have left.”