He was okay because he decided to be.
He still loved her, and my God, how he loved her. He'd simply allowed himself to surrender to what he knew would make her okay. What he hoped and believed made her happy.
And as long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
I close the pages, rest them on my aching chest, cover my face with my hands, and mentally repeat the last line like an obsessive mantra.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
As long as she was somewhere being happy and okay, that's all he needed.
Everything I gave Isla before she left will equip her to eventually be happy and okay, and that’s all I need.
It really is.
And maybe, if I say it enough times, I’ll believe it.
SEVENTEEN
ISLA
Present
“YOU NEED TO EAT, my little daughter,” Mamá says in Spanish for about the fifteenth time since I entered the kitchen thirty minutes earlier. She reaches across the table where we’re sitting with a spread of tapas at two in the afternoon and pokes me in the ribs. “You are very skinny.”
I flinch and shift away from her. “I’m not hungry, Mamá.”
She gestures at the food. “Does none of this look good? I can make you something more simple.”
I shake my head and sip from a teacup. “No, Mamá. Thank you. I’m not hungry.”
She folds her forearms across the table and arches one black eyebrow at me. “You have not eaten much all week. You cannot live on tea by itself.”
“I haven’t only had tea.” I sigh listlessly and turn over my palm to gesture at the table. “I had toast for breakfast.”
She purses her lips, eyeing me. “You know, if you are this sad over leaving him, you can always change your mind.”
I scowl. “It doesn’t work like that, Mamá. It is a complicated situation, and I’m allowed to have complicated feelings about it.”
She tsks as she plants her palms on the table and pushes herself to stand up. “This divorce was a terrible idea. You clearly love him. I know he loves you. You have had your differences and your struggles, but you have an entire life’s worth of closeness. You could have worked out your problems. That is what marriage is all about. It is not all just the puppy love you had as children. Marriage is hard. It takes sacrifice. It requires both of you to—”
“Okay, Mamá.” I shove my chair away from the table and stand. “I’m going to my room. I promise to eat at dinner if you promise to stop lecturing me about this.”
“It is my job to lecture you,” she calls after me as I start leaving the kitchen. “You will eat dinner, but I will lecture you again later if you need it.”
I sigh again, more loudly this time, as I cross the house to climb up the stairs and return to my room. Once there, I flop dejectedly on my bed and stare at the ceiling.
It shouldn’t be surprising that I pretty much hate my life. And mulling over that reality naturally causes me to mentally return to the ordeal that appears to be the catalyst for everything about my life falling apart. I haven’t started therapy yet, but I would venture to guess the therapist will advise me that coming to terms with everything that happened years ago will provide me with closure, and then maybe I’ll feel better. Maybe then, I won’t hate my life anymore.
Boredom and restlessness cause me to reach for my phone and open my email app. I scroll way back in time to eleven years ago and reread all the emails. The one from Elise sticks out to me this time. I never got in touch with her again after all of that, which seems inconsiderate if nothing else, even though I obviously had a good reason not to. I wonder if she still has the same phone number. It’s right there in the signature of her email, and I’ve got nothing better to do, so I dial it.
It rings three times before she answers. “Elise Wellington.”
I’m briefly disoriented and speechless because her quick, efficient greeting, as well as her new last name communicate about a million life changes. We were really close during my brief time at Columbia, and I feel a small pang of sadness at the fact that all of the shit I went through stole that from me also.
“Um, hi, Elise.” I pause. “This is Isla Reyes. We were friends back at—”
Elise’s sharp gasp pierces the line. “Oh my goodness, Isla!” There’s a flurry of activity on her end, and then the sound of a door closing. “Oh my goodness. I haven’t heard from you in about a million years!”
She’s so delighted and chipper that I can’t help smiling. “I know. I feel terrible that I haven’t reached out to you in a while.”
“Oh, don’t think anything of it!” She chortles. “I’ve seen from the society papers and such that you’ve been quite busy recently. I saw that you and Malachi finally got married. The wedding was stunning.” Another carefree laugh drifts over the line. “You’ll have to tell me what royal life is like.”
“Oh.” My stomach turns. “It’s actually…” I pause again because it seems I’m going to have to explain a lot before I can ask her about that weekend. “Things are a little complicated right now.”
“Oh no.” Concern abruptly saturates her tone. “Can I ask what happened?”
I cast a glance at my bare ring finger. I’d grown accustomed to the heavy weight of the absurdly large stone on my finger, and its recent absence is still foreign. “It’s a really long story.”
“Well.” She offers yet another light chuckle. “I have about an hour before my next meeting if you want to spill your guts like we’re teenagers again. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
I smile again. “We certainly do.” Nerves grip me, and I briefly redirect the conversation to buy myself some time. “What kind of work do you do now?”
“I’m the Director of Communications and PR for Stark and Mabry.” She sighs. “Financial sector. It can be very dry. So, please.” She chortles again, and she’s so chipper. Did I used to be like that? “Distract me with everything going on.”
“Well.” I bite my bottom lip. “So… yes. Malachi and I got married last year. But prior to that… actually, for quite a number of years prior to that… we had become pretty… estranged from each other.”
“Oh no.” I can practically see her knitting her light brown brows like she used to. “As in you broke up?”
“We did. Something happened. It was… I mean, it was all just… hard.”
“I can imagine.” There’s an audible frown in her voice. “Do you want to talk about it? I obviously missed all that.”
“Yeah… actually…” I swallow as my stomach turns with nerves again. “That was kind of why I finally reached out to you. I saw an email from you from years ago that I never replied to, and I wanted to ask you about it.”
Elise inhales sharply. “Ohhh… Yes, I know exactly the email. And I honestly don’t blame you for not replying. The entire ordeal was…” She pauses for a span of seconds. “It was awful. I know much more so for you, but it honestly messed me up for a long time. I completely understood your reasoning for totally going off the grid after that. I withdrew a bit after it, too. I never went to another party again.”