This Is Not How It Ends(83)

He grinned and fell back in his chair.

“Will we see you before we leave?”

“I hope so,” I lied, because it was too hard, all these goodbyes.

“Okay.” He jumped up to leave. “Carla made me promise not to be long.”

“You don’t want to keep Carla waiting.”

We were facing each other, and it tore my heart in two that I didn’t have kids.

Without warning, his arms came around me.

“I’m going to miss you, Charley,” he said, capturing the accent we’d all grown to love.

I kissed the top of his head and told him I was going to miss him more.

We walked to the door together and said our goodbyes. When I returned to my desk, my phone buzzed, and it was him again. My father. I didn’t hesitate, picking it up and placing it to my ear. He was talking. I sank into his words, tears falling down my face.

“I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”





CHAPTER 39

December 2018

Hearing my father apologize this time felt different. Sins were sins, no matter the breadth and depth. Was I any better than he? That he returned to me as Philip was leaving didn’t go unnoticed. I racked my brain to try and understand Philip’s motive, eventually deciding it was one of life’s hidden messages. Philip leaving me with a gift. Philip wanting me to understand myself better. Perhaps Philip knowing all along what I needed.

“I’d like to meet,” he said. “When you’re ready. I know this loss is especially difficult for you. I have a partner. And we have a daughter, Polly. You don’t have to be alone.”

The announcement came as a surprise, a slick line of envy for the girl who got to know my father through proximity and parenting, whereas I barely remembered our seven years. But then I thought of Philip. And Ben. And Jimmy. And I thought about the families we create for ourselves. And I thought about the life I’d lived—half lived—because I was unwilling to venture through a closed door. While Philip and I had boundless love and laughter, we were two people damaged by emotional wounds. Abandonment leaves a painful mark. It inks you for life, if you let it, making you believe you’re not worthy, leaving you distrustful of wishes and dreams, when they only disappoint. Philip and I clung to that notion as long as we could, until it broke us. The idea of a sister enveloped me. I could feel myself succumbing.

“I’d like that.”



Liberty and I were on a walk with Sunny when I broached the subject.

“Philip dying . . . I had so much more of him in his leaving . . . and now my father’s back and I have a sibling . . .”

This revelation was long coming. I had spent weeks hunkered in the dark with the shades drawn, only leaving to go to work at the clinic. I’d been toying with leaving the Keys altogether—there was no reason for me to stay. The people, who I’d once found cheery fixtures, taunted me with their weathered faces. “Too much sun and too much alcohol,” Philip used to say. NAET had satisfied me for a while, but it was no longer enough. It was time to get back to teaching.

Philip’s voice haunted me at night; I missed him, and how his body pressed against mine in our bed. Sunny had the difficult job of consoling me through another period of grief. We’d spoon each other at night, his even snores lulling me to sleep. After a while, I forgot what Philip’s emaciated body looked like. I forgot the pungent odor of acid-soaked breath. My mind returned to the two of us falling in love—a stagnant place—untouchable and unspoiled, where he both offended me and swept me off my feet. That first kiss opened the door to a thousand more, a silky ribbon that tied us together, heartbeat to heartbeat. Now my heart beat alone, its sound echoing the emptiness of our home and our bed. I’d spend hours smelling his pillow, fanning my hands across our sheets, feeling the fragments of him against my palm.

Liberty told me it was time to wash the linens, but I’d refused.

“I’m not ready,” I’d said.

But even I knew the scent was fading, his memory slipping away as days turned into weeks and time forced me to forget. I tried to fight it. I did. I tried tugging at the moon and slinging my arms around the sun to make time stop. And still the sand slipped between my fingers. Each day a moment faded. Each star-spotted sky a reminder he was gone.



I ran into Ben on a warmer-than-usual December day at Ocean Reef. It was one of those afternoons I was feeling particularly fragile. The irony of Philip’s death was never lost on me, how once his absence drove us apart, but now it brought us closer than ever before. I wore my engagement ring like a badge of honor, never taking it off, and it became a symbol of our love, the diamond a testament to strength. I was staring at it over lunch, after I’d decided to pack a bag and enjoy our membership. I’d brought a book and tried to focus on the words while lazing by the pool, and the echoes of families and small children made the void evaporate—for a time.

Alone, seated near the crowded pool bar, I saw him before he saw me.

Two tables over. Ben. I could tell by the way his hair touched the back of his dark polo. His arms filling out the sleeves. Claudia was across from him, her hair pulled back in a ponytail while she propped her chin up on her fists. She was eyeing him with an affection that made me feel a lot like a voyeur. His hand wrapped around a frosty beer, and I tried not to stare. My eyes clamped shut, and Kelsie crept nearby, her strong winds coming close.