This Is Not How It Ends(94)

“What’s wrong with Nicholas Sparks?” my father asked. “I love his books.”

“Of course you do,” I laughed. “Maybe there are people in the world who are meant to be alone. Maybe they touch lives for brief moments, intermittent connections with long-lasting effects. Maybe we’re meant to learn from goodbyes. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s all a bunch of nonsense that sounds good in theory but rips you apart, leaving everything broken.”

“I don’t believe any of that, Charley Myers.”

“Stafford,” I corrected him.

“Charley Stafford, you were meant to be loved.”



My father returned to Nashville, promising to visit with Julius and Polly. Our goodbye was different from before, and we embraced, vowing to stay in touch.

Sunday was spent at a farmers market and on a quick visit to Island Home, a nursery just down the road. I’d decided I’d work on the backyard landscaping. Without Philip tending to its needs, the flowers and plants were overgrown and sickly. He employed staff to maintain the area, but I’d fired them, which was snippy and shortsighted of me. Island Home had beautiful plants and flowers, and I’d decided early that morning, in my feverish melancholy, that I’d spruce up the garden with new ceramic pots. I can do this.

By five o’clock I had a mild case of heat exhaustion. I was dehydrated and could barely breathe. My fingers were filthy, blistered, and raw, plus I had painful burns on my shoulders. The backyard was a disaster. I slunk back into the house and found the number for John, the landscaper, in my phone. He made no effort to conceal his laugh. “Mrs. Stafford, I’ll send the guys over now to take a look. We’ll have it fixed in no time. My condolences, ma’am. Philip was a good man.”

I headed for our enclosed cabana and changed out of my damp, dirty clothes. There was a blue-and-white bikini hanging on a hook, and I slipped it on my body, eager for a dip in the pool. When I came out, a giant iguana was slithering around the water, taking a big crap. Philip would have taken out his BB gun, his voice filtering through the air. “You bloody bastard.”

The ocean behind the pool was a peaceful blue. With a towel slung over my shoulder and a yellow raft under my arm, I crossed the backyard. Along the way, I passed the iguana who’d left his mark in our pool, stifled my annoyance, and walked the wooden dock until I reached the tip. Teenagers on Jet Skis passed by, heading toward the sandbar. I dropped the float in the water, attaching it to the rope hanging from the dock. A pair of sailboats followed the teenagers, and I jumped on the float, fell back on the thin plastic, and studied the sky.

As I tugged on the handle, there was a part of me that wanted to untether the cord and drift far, far away. Far away from Philip’s memory, far from Ben’s rejection. And then it occurred to me I’d ripped the letter. Thrown it in the garbage. Philip’s last words, his confession of love and forgiveness, were in a waste can in Manhattan. And I was sick.

The screeching sounds of tires on gravel, plus a friendly honk to alert me they’d arrived, meant John and his team were here. I looked up and saw a few of them coming up along the side of the house, meandering around the deck with ladders and equipment. Sunny was barking wildly in the house, and I hollered to John, “Do you mind opening the door and letting Sunny out? I think the doggy door may be stuck.”

Soon I heard Sunny’s paws thumping against the wood panels, his nails clicking so that I knew they needed to be cut. John’s footsteps were beside him, and I sat up on the raft just in time for Sunny to swoop down for a slobbery kiss.

Behind him wasn’t John. It was Ben.

The raft moved beneath me, and I held on tight. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s not much of a welcome,” he said.

I was at once aware of my body, and I climbed off the raft and covered myself with a towel.

I asked again. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.” As we headed toward the patio, I sensed his gaze on my back. John and his crew were busy assessing the damage I’d caused and informed me they’d return in two days with everything they’d need to do an overhaul.

Which left Ben and me alone.

It was almost ninety degrees in the Keys, though I shivered under the towel. Sunny was at my feet, tasting the sea on my toes, licking my blistered hands. Ben just stood there, grinning. Ben. His eyes a brighter green, his hair this new short length. His nose appeared sunburned, and I wondered if it was from the weekend away with “the Mrs.” Already his scent filled my nose with memories. Ben and the warm sun, like drops of ocean on my cheeks.

He took a seat on the hammock, and I sat rigid on the lounge chair across from him.

He didn’t say anything, only reached in his back pocket and dropped a ragged piece of paper on the small table between us. It had been taped together.

“I think this belongs to you.”

I stared at Philip’s letter.

He exhaled. It was long and pronounced.

“My bartender gave it to me. He said the woman who came in to see me—the pretty woman—was noticeably upset. He didn’t mean to pry, or be nosy, but he thought there might be some significance to the paper you crumpled and asked him to throw out.”

I couldn’t face him when he said this, choosing to watch the crashing waves, the birds flying overhead.

“Look at me, Charley.”