He waved as she drove away, and her heart caught as she passed through the gates of the ranch. She stopped and looked back at everything he had built and loved so much, with the mountains watching over them. He had had the life he wanted. She got out and took a picture of it, and then she got back in the car and drove away. It was the last stop on her pilgrimage and the most important one. Even though they hadn’t been together, she knew that Andy was happy at last. Maybe that was what she had needed to know, that she hadn’t ruined his life by leaving him. She had freed him to follow his dreams, while she followed hers. They each had their own paths to follow and destinies to fulfill, and they had.
Chapter 8
After she left the ranch, Maddie went back to the B and B to pack. She had no reason to stay in the area after that. She had done what she came to do. She hadn’t seen Andy, but she had seen his family and his ranch, and knew the answers to all that she had wondered about for so long. She had a bittersweet sense of loss that she had missed him only by weeks. But she had learned everything she needed to know. She was exhausted, but at peace. She set his photograph on the nightstand and fell asleep. She felt him watching over her, and it was late afternoon when she woke up.
She could have stayed another night there, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to bother Becky and Sean by inviting them to dinner. They had a ranch to run, two young children, and were expecting twins any minute. She didn’t want to be an imposition. It was time to move on. She wasn’t sure where to go now. She had left herself plenty of time to stay at the ranch, if things turned out the way she had hoped. She hadn’t expected that to happen, but she had given herself and Andy the space to explore the options if they wanted to. She’d never expected Andy would be gone at his age. It was a reminder to her that death was not predictable. According to Sean, a year before, Andy had been vital, active, and healthy, and had gotten sick almost overnight with pancreatic cancer. It had ravaged him in a matter of months. It made every moment seem that much more precious and she realized too that Andy wouldn’t have wanted her to see him that way after so long. Maybe she had arrived at the right time after all, if she hadn’t come back years earlier, when it might have made a difference. But even then it wouldn’t have been possible. It never was, from the moment they met. It was an impossible love for both of them. And finally time had run out.
She remembered a trip they had taken to Big Sur once, and she had loved it. She decided to go there now, in tribute to him. She consulted her phone and saw that it was an eleven-hundred-mile drive, and would take seventeen or eighteen hours. She could make it in one day if she drove hard on a route through Sacramento, but she had time on her hands and didn’t need to rush. After a few days, she could visit Ben and his family in San Francisco, if they had time. Big Sur was only a few hours south of San Francisco, and an easy drive.
She loved the surf and the dramatic coastline around Big Sur. It seemed like a fitting place to honor Andy and gather her thoughts. They had stayed at the Post Ranch Inn, a beautiful, secluded place. They had gone on long walks together and talked about their future, which never happened in the end. And now it seemed a suitable place to end her trip to see him. There would be a sense of closure to it that was right, now that she knew he was gone.
She felt more peaceful than she had at the beginning of the trip, when her thoughts were in turmoil after what Deanna had said. It had all begun with finding the box of old photographs and letters that had led her back to all three men, then falling off the ladder and breaking her ankle. She felt steady again now, and sure of herself. She hadn’t spoken to Deanna since she left and didn’t want to. But she had a sure sense now that Deanna couldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Maddie was the master of her own destiny, and of how she wanted to spend the remaining years of her life.
She remembered Jacques’s words not to forget that she was an exciting woman, and that she needed more in her life than she had allowed herself to have in so many years. She would have been tempted to try again with Andy. She admitted to herself now that it had been in the back of her mind, but it would have been no more right for them now than it had been eighteen years ago when they met. His family’s life on the ranch was warm and wonderful and rewarding, but it wasn’t for her. She and Andy both knew it, or one of them would have reached out long before now, but they never had. She was a free woman again, in a way she hadn’t been for the past seventeen years. She felt stronger and less alone than she had in a long time.
She put the photographs of the ranch on Instagram before she left the B and B and she got a text from Ben quickly.
“How’s Andy?” He didn’t want to intrude but he was curious, and hopeful for her now. He had gotten a sense of how solitary she was, and wanted something good to happen to her, before any of Deanna’s predictions for her future could come true. He didn’t want her to be alone anymore.
Maddie answered him as gently as she could, not sure if it would upset him or not. “He died two months ago. The ranch is wonderful. Sean sends you his love. He has two little boys and is expecting twins any minute. Sweet wife.”
Ben took a few minutes to gather his wits before he answered. He could only imagine how she felt, especially if this entire odyssey had been to see him.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. Are you okay?”
“Sorry I missed him, and very sad,” she answered, “but things turned out as they were meant to. The ranch was his dream. It’s perfect.”
“You were his dream too.”
“I’m okay,” she reassured him. “Shocked at first.”
“Where to now? Staying for a while?”
“No. Big Sur. Any interest in a visit from me, five days or a week from now? No pressure. I understand if you’re too busy.”
“Not too busy. I’d love it. Let me know when. Can’t wait to see you,” he said, and he meant it. He felt as though he had gotten to know her better through her photographs in the last week on her Instagram. He suddenly had a deeper insight into her solitude, who she was, and what she wrestled with every day.
He told Laura about the visit when he got home from the office that night and she looked instantly uncomfortable.
“I just don’t think that’s going to work. We’re out almost every night for the next two weeks. I’m on the host committee of two major benefits only a few days apart. The kids are getting out of school soon, and we’re going to Hawaii the day they get out. We have a lot to do before then.” He looked at her in a way he never had before.
“Why don’t you want my mother here?” he asked bluntly.
“I didn’t say that. I love having your mother visit, and so do the kids. We’re just so busy in the next few weeks, maybe another time.” As he listened to her, he realized how often he had let her convince him to fob his mother off and postpone her trips to San Francisco so that they never happened, and he wasn’t going to let it happen once more.