“I want to message him. I want to apologize. But I don’t know how to.”
“But you do, Navy. You know how to say sorry. You know how to reach him. You’re afraid. Your heart is pure. But you run from confrontation.” She let go of me, bracing her hands on my shoulders so I looked her square in the eye. “Keane knows that. Give him time to think.”
I hastily wiped my tears away with the sleeve of my sweater. “I’m afraid if I give him too much space, he won’t come back.”
Hollis tsked. “He’s not your mom. He’s not your dad. Give him more credit, Navy.”
She was right. It was easy for those thoughts to roll off my tongue so automatically, but if I stopped to think rationally, I knew Keane wouldn’t leave me for good. But that thought gave me little solace now, when I was missing him like I would miss the grounding, steady beat of my own heartbeat. Keane wasn’t responsible for pumping blood to my lungs, but I couldn’t breathe as well without him. As if something sat on my chest, placing a consistent amount of pressure that replaced the weight of his presence in my life.
“It was fear talking,” I admitted. “It’s easy to believe someone would walk away from me, when people have before.”
“Of course it is.” She rubbed a hand down the side of my head and held my hand as we walked upstairs to our bedrooms. “But anyone worth your love would be there in the heaviness, would hold your hand through it.” She squeezed mine. “Give it a few days. When your head’s clear, you both can talk through this and figure out where you go from here.”
She waited until I was settled in my bed to leave me. “I’ll be downstairs a bit longer.”
I could only nod. I took in my bedroom, my eyes landing on every poster on the wall, on every photo I’d lovingly framed and found a home for. My sheets were cleaned—thanks to Hollis—and my entire body relaxed into the mattress like it was a warm hug.
Feeling sleep overtake me, I rolled to my side and sleepily looked out my window. Just beyond, the moon shone brightly, steadfast in its position in the sky. Wherever Keane was, physically and emotionally, I knew the same moon peered down upon him. I just had to hope that we’d both find our way back to one another.
Aunt Isabel insisted on going to the cabin the next day to see Violet for herself. The twins came along too, and as they all caught up down by the lake, I stayed inside the cabin.
Keane wasn’t around, something which hurt and also relieved me. Such contradicting feelings, it was a wonder that I had the space for both of them within me. But if I had the space to love Keane as a friend and fall in love with him as a soulmate, I supposed my heart could hold space for more than one feeling at a time.
Keane had made a lot more changes in the nine days since I’d last been to the cabin. A new stove was in, the sink had a new faucet, and a new built-in pantry had been added. I glided my hands over the polished doors that he’d stained to match the rest of the kitchen. My fingers tested the bronzed knobs. He’d invested so much of his time here, but his heart too. It was in every small detail, including the fishing rod he’d recently dusted and mounted above the window that faced the water. The rod had belonged to his Gramps, and now it belonged to this place that held a piece of his heart.
I walked into the bedroom Violet had been staying in, taking in the bedding I’d purchased, and the filmy curtains Violet had put up on the windows. This room was definitely more feminine than Keane would’ve styled it, but somehow the white and the lace melded with the logs in the cabin, making it a dreamy, romantic space.
I entered the room that had been intended for the baby and stopped before I made it more than a foot.
Keane had begun painting, a pale yellow all over three of the walls. The fourth wall was striped white and yellow and there was a little navy-blue bear on the ground with a big yellow ribbon around its neck and I didn’t know why, but I suddenly burst into tears. Violet didn’t have access to a car. She wouldn’t have bought this paint, or the bear. Keane had done that and judging by the smell of the new paint, it was recently done. Oh, why did that just cleave my heart into two?
I picked up the bear, fingering its yellow bow, sloppily done—like the unfortunate-looking bow ties he’d attempted for all our formal high school dances. Bows I’d fixed on the car rides to the dances. I ran my finger over the satin, thinking of Keane and only Keane.
“He got that for me,” Violet said from behind me. I had been so wrapped up in the room that I hadn’t heard her come into the cabin.
I turned, still holding the bear. “Oh?”
“Yesterday.”
I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat as I stared down at the bear. The day after I’d kicked him out. It didn’t surprise me that Keane hadn’t been unkind to Violet after my fight with him—he was a good man. It had surprised me that he’d thought to buy a navy-blue bear for my sister the day after I’d hurt him.
Heartbreaks weren’t reserved for lovers. Friendships could cause them too.
I held the bear close to my chest, giving it the hug I wanted to give Keane and then turned to hand it to Violet. “The color in here is pretty. The yellow.”
“I told Keane to choose a paint color besides the colors of our names.” She gave me a small smile and looked at the bear. “But this bear was a surprise. He bought the ribbon for it too; told me he wasn’t sure if the bear would match the room without it.”
“It’s cute,” I said, barely holding it together. I knew there were tear stains on my face, but Violet didn’t press me for the reason. Which told me she’d sensed something from Keane too. I didn’t think my heart could hurt after I’d inflicted so much damage upon it already, but it was just another press to a bruise that hadn’t yet healed.
“Where’s Auntie? And the twins?”
Violet walked me to the window. “Talking to Asa.”
My heart thundered, echoing its reverberations in my ears as we approached the window that gazed out over Asa’s cabin.
“Keane isn’t there,” she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked and delivering a swift kick to my stomach in the process.
“Oh,” I said, nearly out of breath. “Right.”
Violet was silent for a moment as we took in the twins chatting up with Asa and our aunt taking in the sunshine. “I’m sure you’re upset about people knowing I was in Amber Lake. You’re worried it might get back to Tyler.”
I took her in. Yes, I was worried. And I’d placed all my anger on Keane, expected him to be the only one between him and Violet to have worried about it. It was if I had trouble separating Violet from the child I’d always protected, from Violet who was an adult. Who’d seen things I couldn’t understand. Who held her head up, despite the pain. “What will you do if he finds out?”
Violet shrugged. “I guess I don’t worry about it too much.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe that.
“Navy.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “You’re the one who got me out of Amber Lake, because you knew that’s the first place he’d look. So, if he’s looking, and if he finds out somehow that I was seen in Amber Lake, it’s not really much of a surprise. Is it?”