You’ve inspired that in me.
You made everything better. The months we played together are some of my best memories.
I love you. I always have.
I think I already said that. Anyway, I do. It’s okay if you don’t love me back. Well, it’s not okay. I feel like I can’t take a full breath thinking about it. But I get it. I did such a stupid thing. I’m sorry for that night. Not for punching Chagny; I’d probably do that again. But I am sorry I hurt you. So sorry. I only ever want to make you feel good. God, I’ve wasted so much time.
Like I said, not anymore.
I’m done.
I hope this letter finds you happy. I hope you are living the life you want to live. I hope you are spreading that light inside you now. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
Yours always,
Erik
I shoved the letter in an envelope and sealed it before I could change my mind. I’d send it to her house; her parents would ensure she got it. Writing it was crucial. My handwriting would prove my words.
Now for the part I dreaded. As the phone rang, regret had my anger boiling. But I didn’t want to indulge my anger; I was ready for apologies.
“Hello?” the voice answered.
“Andrew, it’s Devlin. I have a proposition for you.”
Chapter 38
You’re an angel when you play.
KIM
It was hard to know what to do or who to be when you couldn’t be trusted to make your own choices. I wasn’t the same person I was before I met Devlin, before I knew him and spent time with him and learned what it meant to feel alive again. I’d tried to go back to that. I’d tried to let Roddy lead me to what I thought was the safe choice, but that had been a failure.
I was back home now. Floating. Back to waiting for my life to start. Or something. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted at this point. But I knew the life Roddy had planned for me wasn’t it. I was proud of myself for moving past that and owning that choice. But still, there was a hole in my soul, and I didn’t know what to do.
“Kim?” my mom said from behind me. She was wrapped in an oversized pashmina despite it being the beginning of September.
“Hey.” I sat on the back porch swing looking out at the fireflies. My legs were tucked up under my chin and I rocked slowly in the breeze.
“Do you have a minute? Your Dad and I would like to talk to you.”
“Sure.” I got up and followed her into the kitchen where my dad sat with three mugs of steaming tea and a plate of cookies.
“How are you?” he asked. My dad looked old, tired. Maybe my bad mood had permeated the house.
“I’m—” How did I answer that? Did they really want the truth? I wasn’t bad, but I was far from great. Mom and Dad stared back at me with matching expressions. Their shared pair of squared-framed glasses were currently perched on dad’s nose. He took them off and placed them on the paper.
“I’m neutral,” I finally answered honestly.
They shared a look. It was one of their looks that always made me feel a million miles away. They were such a unit—twin planets rotating around each other’s axes—and what was I? A satellite? A cold dark moon a thousand miles away?
I grasped the mug and studied the swirling steam.
“That’s what we were afraid of,” Dad said. “I think we owe you an explanation.”
Mom took a deep breath. “As you know, when your father and I met, our lives were turned upside down. We always talk about how we left our partners and started a new life. It wasn’t always easy as that. There was actually a bit of drama in the beginning.”
“I was married,” Dad added. “To a very nice woman. Divorcing her was hard. I felt terrible. But when I met your mom, I knew I could no longer live that life.”
I’d heard all this before, but I didn’t know that it had been hard. It was a piece of history, but I realized now how complicated it all could be.
“We never thought we would be good parents. We were from a time where children were an expectation, the next step in the life plan, not a product of love. We never wanted that,” my mother explained. “We always said that if the universe wanted us to have a child it would be because we loved each other fully. And for more than a decade, it didn’t happen. Until it did. We were quite old and set in our ways, but we wanted that child to have everything, for you to have everything.”
“We were so set on being different from our parents and letting you be your own person and … well, we did our best,” Dad said sadly.
“That’s all anybody can do,” I said automatically. Were they saying this because they knew I had messed everything up?
They shook their heads in unison. “You don’t understand. We wanted you to have everything. We love you so much it terrified us.”
My head shot up. They’d never seemed afraid of anything.
My dad’s eyes watered. “When I met your mother, I felt an earth-shifting love. Literally, turned-my-life-upside-down sort of love. I would have done anything to be with her.”
My heart constricted in my chest. I knew this. I couldn’t quite breathe because I’d had a taste of that, and I’d lost it.
My dad gripped my mom’s hand and reached across the table and gestured for mine. I placed it in his. “Listen. When you were born, the love your mother and I felt for you made our love feel like …”
“Suddenly, after all these years of having a printed postcard of a Degas or Monet, suddenly we had the actually original art hanging on the wall,” my mom tried. “We loved you on a level that we never imagined possible. It was literally terrifying. We knew the stakes. Every choice and action, everything we said to you. You were this little wide-eyed miracle that came into our lives that made us feel wholly inadequate for the first time.”
“What?” I said.
“You cannot understand how terrifying it was. I swear. At age five you carried your tiny cello around everywhere with you. You were always wanting to be with the adults, and you were so wise for your age. We were in awe of you. You knew who you were and what you wanted from the beginning. It was awesome in the truest sense of the word. We were filled with awe of you.”
“I had no idea.” My throat constricted. “I’d always thought, I dunno, like you didn’t want to be around me.”
Dad squeezed my hand. “Sweetie, no. You were a miracle, but we were terrified of screwing you up, and then you seemed so perfect. Juilliard acceptance at seventeen. We were the proudest parents.”
Were.
“But we never felt like we had anything to do with it.” Mom shrugged.
“It was surreal,” Dad added.
“You came out of me as this perfect, fully-formed adult, I swear. We joked about it all the time. We were always so set on letting you be you and not pushing ourselves on you. We knew we would be oddball parents, so much older and more eccentric than the rest. We wanted you to be whoever you were going to be. We can see now that you put so much pressure on yourself to be perfect.”
Dad frowned and said, “Let me be clear about something. We never, ever, stopped being proud of you. Even now. I’m thinking we need to communicate better.”