One True Loves(74)

Jesse’s arms slump down around him. His posture sinks. His eyes collapse shut.

It’s one of those moments in life when you can’t believe that the truth is true, that the world shook out like this.

I don’t end up with Jesse.

After all of this, all we’ve been through, we aren’t going to grow old together.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I have to go.”

“Where are you going to go? We’re snowed in.”

He grabs his jacket and puts on his shoes. “I’ll just go to the car. I don’t care. I just need to be alone right now.”

He opens the front door and slams it behind him. I go to the door and open it again to see his back as he walks toward the car, trudging through the snow. He knows I’m behind him but stops me before I can even say a word by lifting his arm up and giving me the universal sign for “Don’t.” So I don’t.

I close the door. I lean against it. I slink down to the floor and I cry.

Jesse and I were once ripped apart. And now we’ve grown apart.

The same hearts, broken twice.





Over an hour has passed and Jesse has not yet come back. I stand up and peek through the front window to see if he’s still in the car.

He’s sitting in the driver’s seat with his head down. I look around the front of the house. The warm sun has started to melt some of the snow. The roads in the distance look, if not cleared, at least a bit traveled. We could leave here right now if we wanted to. We’d just have a little shoveling to do. But my guess is Jesse is in no rush to be trapped in a car with me.

My eye drifts back to the car and I see him moving in the driver’s seat. He’s looking through my envelope. He’s looking at pictures and reading notes, maybe even the Beacon article about his disappearance.

I shouldn’t watch him. I should give him the privacy that he walked out there for. But I can’t look away.

I see a white envelope in his hands.

And I know exactly what it is.

The letter I wrote him to say good-bye.

He fiddles with the envelope, flipping it back and forth, deciding whether he’s going to open it. My heart beats like a drum in my chest.

I put my hand on the doorknob, ready to run out there and stop him, but . . . I don’t. Instead, I look back out the window.

I watch as he puts a finger under the flap and tears it open.

I turn away from the window, as if he spotted me. I know that he didn’t. I just know that I’m scared.

He’s going to read that letter and everything is going to get worse. It will be all the proof he needs that I forgot him, that I gave up on us, that I gave up on him.

I turn back to the window and watch him read it. He stares at the page for a long time. And then he puts it down and looks out the side window. Then he picks it up again and starts reading it a second time.

After a while, he puts his hand on the car door and opens it. I run from the window and sit on the sofa, pretending I’ve been here the whole time.

I never should have written that goddamn letter.

The front door opens, and there he is. Staring at me. He has the letter in his hand. He’s perfectly still, stunningly quiet.

I wrote the letter so that I could let go of him. There’s no hiding that. So if that’s the evidence he’s looking for that I’ve been a terrible wife, an awful person, a disloyal soul, well, then . . . I guess he got what he was looking for.

But Jesse’s reaction surprises me.

“What is this about going crazy on the roof?” he says calmly.

“What?” I ask.

He hands me the letter as if I’ve never read it. I stand up and take it from him. I open it even though I already know what it says.

The handwriting looks hurried. You can see, at the end, that there are splotches of ink where water must have hit it. Tears, obviously. I can’t stop myself from rereading it, seeing it through new eyes.

Dear Jesse,

You’ve been gone for more than two years but there hasn’t been a day that has gone by when I haven’t thought of you.

Sometimes I remember the way you smelled salty after you’d gone for a swim in the ocean. Or I wonder whether you’d have liked the movie I just saw. Other times, I just think about your smile. I think about how your eyes would crinkle and I’d always fall a little bit more in love with you.

I think about how you would touch me. How I would touch you. I think about that a lot.

The memory of you hurt so much at first. The more I thought about your smile, your smell, the more it hurt. But I liked punishing myself. I liked the pain because the pain was you.

I don’t know if there is a right and wrong way to grieve. I just know that losing you has gutted me in a way I honestly didn’t think was possible. I’ve felt pain I didn’t think was human.

At times, it has made me lose my mind. (Let’s just say that I went a little crazy up on our roof.)

At times, it has nearly broken me.

And I’m happy to say that now is a time when your memory brings me so much joy that just thinking of you brings a smile to my face.

I’m also happy to say that I’m stronger than I ever knew.

I have found meaning in life that I never would have guessed.

And now I’m surprising myself once again by realizing that I am ready to move forward.