Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between(63)

When she returned home over break, she let herself walk past his darkened house only once. She stood there for a long time, the snow falling all around her, remembering that night in the driveway, their last one together, and then she turned around and left.

Now she blinks up at the branches of a towering elm tree. The leaves no longer look like they did when she first arrived here, like they do in all the brochures: wild with color, an electric palette of reds and yellows and oranges. Instead, they’re green and new, and they smell like spring. Above them, the sun is a white dot in the cloudless sky, and the air is cool and brisk. Everything is so bright and dazzling it hardly seems real.

Clare looks down at the box again, then slides a fingernail under the tape at the corner. When she rips it off, it makes a sawing noise, and she pulls back the flaps to see what’s inside, what she’d known from the minute she’d picked it up would be inside: tucked in a nest of newspaper like an oversize egg, there’s a bright green bowling ball.

She laughs as she runs a hand over the smooth, marbled surface. In the sunlight, the color is brilliant, emerald green and as shiny as a precious gem. She can’t help wondering if he bought it or stole it, thinking back to their conversation all those months ago, when he reminded her that the hardest things are the ones most worth doing.

She has a feeling that it’s stolen, and she loves it all the more for that.

Just as she’s about to fold up the box again, she notices something else: a flash of white in the midst of all that green. In one of the three circular holes, there’s a rolled-up piece of paper, and she hesitates for a moment, marveling at the possibilities. Just seeing it there is enough to rattle her, to make her rubber-band heart snap back into place again, the twang of it jangling straight down through her toes.

She sits there for a long time, for what feels like forever, and then, when she’s finally ready, she removes the note gingerly, using both hands to flatten the page.

All it says is this: Is it later yet?

And here’s the amazing thing: Now it was.