An Unfinished Story(10)

Not only had she fallen in love with the beach, but she’d fallen in love with a boy on the beach. The young man in the photograph was five shades tanner than her, with hairy legs, and as handsome as could be. He’d grown up in a huge family in Tampa, and they’d rented a beach house every summer on Pass-a-Grille. He’d seen her walking the beach by herself and said hello. Her first love.

They saw each other again the next summer, but then the flightiness of youth and the miles between Florida and Illinois proved to be too great to carry their relationship forward. They lost touch, and Claire didn’t see him again for ten years. At the age of twenty-five, after Claire’s father had died and she’d sold the diner, she moved south, taking a job assisting a wedding photographer. During one of her first shoots, David was one of the groomsmen. He took one knee later that year, and she’d said yes.

The whistling pot brought her back to the present. After dunking the tea bag up and down and then discarding it, Claire carried the cup back into the living room, where she fished out the composition books. It was time to read.

Moving to the porch, Claire settled into a rocking chair with Willy curled up on her lap. She petted him while sipping her tea, smoking another cigarette and watching the cars with out-of-state license plates pass.

When she was ready, she thumbed through the pages she’d already read, found the second chapter, and fell back into David’s story, back into his arms. He hadn’t let her read his old mysteries, insisting that they were trash, but now she wondered. Maybe she could dig those up too. David had been such a good writer. She knew that from his emails and letters he’d written over the years, but to read a story he’d created caught her off guard. He’d had true talent.

Claire burned through the first composition book in two hours. Willy had settled onto his favorite perch: a bamboo table by the door. Climbing into the hammock, Claire tore into the next book.

A notion settled in. David had written this book as some sort of cathartic exercise—a way to heal from his pain. He’d put all the hurt she didn’t know he had into these pages, the sadness of being infertile, of never becoming a father. It wasn’t a sad story by any means. Anything but! Claire felt great inspiration pulling for the main characters. But disguised in those words were the layers of David she hadn’t known existed.

David had still wanted to be a father, even after he and Claire had agreed to stop trying. She’d forced him to stop bringing it up, to let go of the idea of parenthood. And she thought he’d been on the same page, that he’d moved on.

Claire’s bottom lip quivered as it became all too clear that her husband had never gotten over their misfortune—his low sperm count. After their attempts to get pregnant and the grueling effects of negative results—and then what they believed was a sure-thing adoption that fell apart at the last moment—Claire had drawn a line in the sand. As difficult as it had been to say goodbye to her hopes of one day becoming a mother, she felt she knew what was best for them. “I don’t want to talk about babies anymore, David. We have to let this go. I’m too hurt. I’m tired of being pricked and pried apart. And I can’t take one more up and down.”

Being the wonderful, loving, and supportive husband that David was, he’d given her a tight hug, encasing her with his love. “All I need is you, baby.”

The man who’d grown up the oldest of five.

The man who was an uncle to seven and counting.

Her husband who had confessed to wanting four children (two boys, two girls) on their first date.

All I need is you.

Clearly, he’d needed more. David was the man in the story, and this was his way to experience fatherhood. Claire knew exactly why he hadn’t let her read what he was working on. If she had, she would have known how much he’d been suffering, and without question, she would have blamed herself.

But the guilty feelings weren’t enough to keep her from reading.

As the sun fell and she reached the third composition book, a budding idea took a firm hold. One of the most painful parts of grief and loss was how the memory dimmed. The legacy faded. Shortly after David had died, their house had filled with people. Casseroles spilled out of both refrigerators and freezers. Each day, lines of people had come to pay their respects, reaching a giant crescendo at the funeral, where hundreds of people turned out. A few weeks later, Claire hadn’t had as many visitors. She hadn’t received as many phone calls. Most of the casseroles she’d either eaten or given away. Soon, it was the occasional drop-by from her dearest friends. Six months later, David’s memory was fading, and by the year anniversary of his death, his name was barely uttered. Here she was three years later, and even she was supposed to have moved on.

The buildings he’d designed, which Claire would always stop and admire, were all that would survive. Well . . . and his desk and chair.

And this book.

Claire had the idea that if she could get it published for him, she’d find a way to keep him alive. Or at least it would be a way to preserve his legacy, more words than any gravestone could hold. And perhaps it would help quell the guilt that was bubbling down in her depths. Maybe she could make right her wrong.

Claire returned to the final pages. She could feel the end of his story coming and hadn’t felt so invested in the characters of a book in her entire life. Had David intended this to be the last draft? She’d never know, but the story might be publishable as it was. Why hadn’t he shared it with her yet?