I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(42)

“Anne of Green Gables,” I said, finishing his thought.

“Yes! And she said she was, and then added, ‘Thank you for noticing,’ in this very solemn voice, and I said, ‘Are you in a play?’ and she said, ‘No,’ politely but also like she was a little miffed at my question, and her dad smiled and said, ‘Yesterday was her birthday, and all she wanted was an Anne of Green Gables outfit, a real one, not a ready-made costume with Velcro up the back. So she got this. If she ever takes it off, it’ll be a miracle. This kid lives and breathes those books.’ And the thing is, the truly amazing thing, Clare, and don’t think I’m crazy, but her voice was totally a kid version of yours, and her eyes, they were your eyes, big, brown, same shape, eyelashes, expression, everything. And if you remember, you said the same thing to me about those books, the exact same phrase, that you lived and breathed them. So I took it, I took her, this amazing kid who looked like she’d just time traveled from the turn of the century, as a sign.”

He paused, audibly winded.

“A sign that you should call me at three in the morning?” I said, not mad, still channeling Edith’s firm, kind, implacable calm.

“Yeah, sorry about the timing, but it took me a long time to get my nerve up to talk to you about this, and I wanted to call before my nerve stopped being up, which would probably have happened sooner or later.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, you’re talking to me now. What would you like to say?”

I sat up, leaning against the headboard of the bed, and waited for him to answer, totally and surprisingly unracked by dread or anxiety.

“Let me come see you,” he said. “I can get on a plane tomorrow. I just feel strongly that we need to sit in the same room—or maybe take a long walk—and have a conversation. No yelling, no accusations or insults—and I’m obviously referring to me here, not you, since I’m pretty sure you haven’t raised your voice even once throughout this whole ordeal—we’ll just be two adults talking. How does that sound?”

I waited for the impulse to run for the hills to hit me, but it didn’t.

“It sounds—very civilized,” I said, truthfully.

“Doesn’t it?”

“What were you thinking we should talk about?”

“I don’t know, exactly. But I think we should talk, now that we’ve let go of all the anger. At least, I have. I hope you have, too.”

“I’m glad you have. And I don’t honestly think I had any to let go of. Lots of other emotions, I guess, but not anger.”

“Good! Then it’s all settled!”

He sounded happy. More than happy. Jubilant.

“My flight arrives at 10:25 a.m., so I can be at your parents’ house by 11:30 tomorrow morning. You want to go to lunch? Or I could bring lunch? You know what? I checked the weather and it’s supposed to be nice. So how about a picnic? What do you think?”

His jubilation rose with every word, so that by the end of this he was almost singing.

“Hold on,” I said. “Your flight? You don’t mean you already have a ticket?”

“Yeah, I do. Come on, I knew you’d do this for me; it’s how you are.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by this, but I didn’t demand to know, as I might have done a few months ago. I didn’t even feel particularly curious about it. Whatever insights Zach had, or thought he had, about my character, correct or not, they belonged to him. I didn’t begrudge him them, but I also didn’t need them anymore.

“But still, I might not have actually bought the ticket,” he went on, “I just—I don’t know, when I saw that little girl, that clinched it. I took a leap of faith.”

Buying a nonrefundable airplane ticket because you saw a brown-eyed girl in a boater hat at the park seemed like a dubious decision, even for a hard-core Anne fan like me, and for a moment, I worried about Zach’s mental state. But then I reminded myself—and I knew this from my own experience—that if you went out into the world looking for a sign that you should do something, a go-ahead from the great beyond or wherever, you were highly likely to find one.

There was a time, even after our breakup, when I would’ve so dreaded bursting his bubble that I would have told him okay, hung up the phone, and jumped in the car to drive home. But there, in Edith’s house, I could instead say, “Zach, I think we should get together and talk sometime. But I can’t tomorrow.”

“What do you mean you can’t?” he said.

“I can’t tomorrow.”

“You’re, what? Busy?” An edge entered his tone. Whether it was an edge of hurt or anger, I couldn’t tell yet, but I knew I’d find out soon enough.

“I am, actually. I’m sorry, but I really am.”

“Clare, this is important. And it’s all planned.”

“I know, and I wish you’d talked to me about it before you made those plans. Because tomorrow doesn’t work. Another day would, I’m sure, but not tomorrow.”

In the pause that followed, I could hear Zach taking deep breaths, trying to steady himself, something I knew didn’t come easily to him. He tried, he always tried so hard to do the right thing. I wished he had the spirit of Edith there to help him; he might have needed her even more than I did.