the toll it takes to do the wrong thing for the right reasons. But that’s a line I don’t think I should cross. I watch her grow smaller and smaller until she disappears.
Three children. A boy and two girls. We saved them tonight, Lara. Billy reaches for my hand and I take it in mine.
What if Kreskey hadn’t found you in the woods that day? What if he hadn’t taken me and Tess? What if I had left when I had the chance, not gone back for her? What if “he,” that raging beast inside me, had never been born?
Would we have been here tonight? Would three other children have been lost instead of us?
There are so many questions that have no answers. Acceptance of these mysteries is the only way to peace. I’m finding my way. I hope you are, too, Lara.
SIX MONTHS LATER
FORTY-FIVE
In the end, the hero finds his way home.
After the trials have been faced, the demons bested, the hero returns and is welcomed into the arms of his love. Sexist, of course. Facile, definitely. There are no happy endings really. We just choose where we stop telling the story.
But am I a hero? Or am I villain? Do I deserve a happy ending?
I don’t know the answer to that. But as Beth cooks in my kitchen—a savory chicken marsala—and we drink from a bottle of wine I’ve opened, listening to a band she favors, The Civil Wars, a peace has settled over me. For the first time in my adult life, I feel a sense of home.
Beth. Her body is lush; her hair—these glorious dark locks that are silky and thick in my hands. Her laugh never fails to make me laugh. Her eyes are expansive as sky, filled with wisdom and kindness. My feelings for her—it is not like what I felt for you, Lara. It’s not young, impulsive, not grasping and clinging. It’s not a passion that consumes like a wildfire, burning everything else to the ground. No, this is a love that lets other things grow, that breathes life, gives room. It allows for expansion.
“Sounds to me like you’re in grown-up love,” says Tess from over by the window.
“I am.”
“What’s that?” Beth asks, turning from the stove to look at me.
“Nothing,” I answer. “I was going to say—I am happy. Happy you’re here.”
Tess offers a little chuckle. “Well, good for you.”
Today, she is as she was that morning. A skinny kid with thick glasses and pigtails. I see her less and less. Which is a shame. Because she has been with me so long. I miss her humor, her unflinching honesty, her unconditional love. “It’s about time.”
Beth turns, wipes her hands on the apron at her waist—a thing she does that I find pleasantly old-fashioned. “Me, too.”
Her smile wavers a little.
“I’m nervous,” she admits.
I find this surprising. Dr. Beth Reynolds is a clinical psychiatrist, a researcher, a writer who has published in major journals. She is a speaker, a caring doctor with a searing intellect, deep intuition, a powerful aura of authority. I’ve not yet seen her nervous.
“Rain Winter—she’s famous, first of all. Maybe more so, she’s iconic in your life,” says Beth.
“She’s just a friend,” I answer, though this is not quite the truth.
“One who shares the most complicated part of your past.”
“But that’s the past,” I answer. “Isn’t that what you always tell me? This is now.”
“Right.”
Beth is the only person who knows about him. She has spoken to him, calmed him. She has accepted him as part of who I am. She has worked with me to help him integrate—I need his strength, his power. He needs my calm, the things I’ve learned as an adult and a doctor. We are no longer split as we were. Not entirely. But two parts of the same whole. He is not a beast in a cage.
Beth even knows about Tess. There are significant pieces of my history that I have not, cannot, share with her. And she knows better than to pry, because she is, above all her other sterling qualities as woman and physician, very wise. But I have shared those two with her, because really—it’s me, isn’t it? And Beth is the first person I’ve wanted to share all the parts of myself with. Everything. Most things.
When the buzzer rings, I open the gate. Then, after you’ve made your way up the drive, I watch as you emerge from your car, gather your things.