He takes my luggage from me, and I yell back a “Thanks.”
I’d been waiting in the office so I could see the car pull in, and so I turn and lock the sliding door behind me. When I spin around again, he’s right there—only a foot in front of me. “Is that everything?”
“Yes, sir,” I say, nodding and holding up the keys. “I’m going to go return these. You should get back in the car and out of the rain. I’ll be right back.”
He does as I suggest without a word, and I run to the back deck of the main house. I find relief from the rain for a few seconds when I place the office key beneath a pot by the back door, next to a pile of work boots and flip-flops. It’s the first time I’ve been on the deck, and it gives an ample view of the backyard and beyond. It’s everything I imagine a home to feel like. There’s a covered patio area with a grill, rustic table, and bench seats. Beneath a large elm tree, there’s a man-made swing set, and next to it is an old wooden playhouse with the words Holden + Mia etched on a sign just above the door.
I’d seen the playhouse before—in the catalog Holden had given me. Mia had been the one to show me the picture in detail the night she came to see me at the diner. She recalled the moment the picture was taken and what Holden’s mom had said. “That girl looks at him as if he sneaks out every night and hangs the moon just for her.” It was over five years ago now, but I still hold on to every word she said. “Every day, the sun would go down… And the moon would rise. Just for me.”
Sometimes, I wonder if I was more like Mia, then maybe...
I step into the rain again and let the cool water soak into my flesh.
There’s no point in reliving the past.
Maybes are just as useless as almosts.
“That was quick,” Paul says as I slip off my backpack and slide into the passenger’s seat. He ducks his head, looking beyond the rain and toward the house. “You got no one to say goodbye to? No one to see you off?”
Shaking my head, I slide a hand along the goosebumps on my arm and ignore the dull ache in my chest. “I’ve said all my goodbyes.”
“Okay, then.” He watches me a moment, his stare making me shrink in my seat. “Ready?”
I reach into my pocket and pull out my pendant before buckling in. “Ready.”
Before Paul’s even made it out of the driveway, my phone alerts me to a text.
Maggie: So… what are you doing?
Jamie: Just got in the car.
She responds with an entire row of crying emojis.
Frowning, I start a reply:
Jamie: I’ll miss you so much, Mags. You’ve been
Tears are already welling in my eyes, and I don’t even know how to end the sentence. You’ve been… what? My saving grace? My best friend the past week? I know what I want to tell her; I just… I don’t know how to.
Last night, as I watched the minutes tick by, I kept thinking about the one question I would ask God if I was ever at Heaven’s gates. I wish I could change my answer. I don’t care if He knows my mother or not. The truth is, I want to know my mother—who she was before her disease got the best of her. I want to know what she would’ve been like had that disease not stolen so much of her soul. I want to know if she’d be anything like Maggie… because that’s what I hope for.
“That ain’t dahlia petals around that pendant, is it?” Paul asks, pulling me from my thoughts.
My gaze snaps to his before dropping to the pendant held loosely in my grasp. “Yeah, it is. You like dahlias?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, both hands on the steering wheel. “Couldn’t tell you much about the flower, but I can tell you about the metal and how I made that pendant for a love-sick young man a few years back.”
Eyes wide in shock, I sit taller. “You’re Peg—“ I cut myself off. “I mean, Jimmy! Paul, you made this for me?”
His shoulder lifts. “Well, I didn’t know it was for you at the time. Big H came into my workshop and asked me to make it, and then junior showed up a couple of weeks later to pick it up. Man, his face when he saw it—you’d think I’d just handed over a million dollars. He told me it was for a very special girl in his life.” He throws me a smile as he glances at me. “I thought it was for little Mia, you know? Those two were always together. But when I asked him, he said no. He said it was for his… his…” He squints, as if trying to remember. And I inhale sharply, as if I’d forgotten to breathe. “That’s right,” he says, nodding to himself, “his sunshine and solace.”
“Oh, my god.”
“Said he was going to give it to you when he got back… when he was going to tell you he loved you for the first time. How did that—”
“Go back!”
“What?”
“Go back!” I repeat, sitting forward to see what’s ahead. I can’t see much past the rain, and I have no idea where Holden’s driveway is. “I need to—”
Paul flicks on the blinker and turns off the main road. “I already got you covered, darlin’.”
Within a minute, he’s pulling up just short of Holden’s house, and I’m running, slipping through the mud to get to his door. I slam my fist against it, over and over. I don’t even care that there’s no shelter, that every second I stand here only drenches me more. “Holden!”
The door opens a crack. Just enough to see his barely awake face and the right half of his body. “Jamie? What are you doing—”
“I never gave up on us!” I shout, hoping he can hear me through his morning fog and heavy rain pelting down on the tin roof.
“What are you talking about?”
I attempt to wipe the wetness from my face, but with every wipe comes a fresh layer. “I never gave up on us,” I repeat, droplets flying from my lips with every word. “I went to see you. In Boston. You were in your second year there, and I’m sorry it took so long, but I needed to fix myself before I could even attempt to fix us. I went to your college, and I asked everyone I came across if they knew you or how I could find you, and after an entire day on your campus, I finally stood right at your door.”
Holden watches me, wordless, his lips parted slightly. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t stepped forward, or invited me closer.
I sniff once, trying to breathe through the uncertainty pumping through my veins. “You weren’t there, obviously, but your roommate told me I could find you at a bar nearby, and so I went. God, Holden… seeing you—it was like… like the sun breaking through the horizon for the first time in years, bringing me warmth and light. You were sitting in the corner near some pool tables, and you were holding a pool cue between your knees, and you… you had friends… and you were talking and laughing, and I stood there, frozen, wondering where I would fit in with this new life of yours. But then the pool cue you were holding was replaced by this… this stunningly beautiful girl. And you put your hands on her waist, and you looked up at her, and I… I realized that you had never looked at me that way. And then your friend said something, and you and your girl—you both laughed, and she turned in your arms, and you whispered something in her ear that had her smiling, and I… I left.”