to call her and smiled when they ended the call. She was real. She existed. And he was the luckiest man in the world. For a few hours, while she was on the flight, he felt as though he had imagined her and she was a mirage, a wish he’d had all his life and never believed would come true. And now it had.
She was quiet, thinking about him on the drive from the airport. The city was all lit up, the Empire State Building standing tall to greet her. She wanted to salute it. She had left three weeks before, feeling broken and old. But she had returned feeling whole and strong, and renewed, and just young enough to enjoy it, but not young enough to be foolish. She was in precisely the right space, which proved that you never knew what life had in store. At the darkest moments, the sun could pierce through the clouds.
The driver helped her with her bags when she got to her house and she smiled as she looked up at the firehouse. No matter what Deanna thought of it, it was home, and where she belonged.
She felt like her old self when she walked in. She put her purse down and walked across her studio to her office. There were neat stacks of papers to go through on her desk, thoroughly organized by Penny, according to priority, and then she saw a vase with two dozen long-stemmed red roses that were the tallest she’d ever seen. The card read simply, “I love you, William.” She had known they were from him the moment she saw them, and she wondered what Penny must have thought. She hadn’t told her about William yet. She needed time to digest it herself and figure out if it was real, or just an interlude on her freedom trip. But it seemed very real now, and so were the roses.
She walked upstairs to her bedroom and remembered the nights she had spent there in pain with her ankle, her deep hurt over Deanna’s words, her sudden doubts about the future and about herself. It was all washed away and it felt good to be back. She knew the box of old letters was back in her closet, on the top shelf, but there was a new chapter now. The old letters and the men who wrote them were history, even Andy, who was gone, and had been when she left New York even though she didn’t know it. Her trip to see him had been pointless, except to confirm that she’d been right to end it, and to lead her to William, which was how life worked. Each part of the journey led to another. Each door opened to reveal another one. And then finally the view you had been seeking, and hoped was there but were never sure, appeared. She was sure now about getting there. And she loved the feel of her home, and knowing it was hers. She knew it was going to take some adjusting to get used to sharing it with someone, if that was how things turned out.
She worked at her desk until midnight to see what was there and determine what she could take care of quickly. Other things would take longer, but it had all waited for her. And no one had died because she’d been away for three weeks. That was a good lesson for her too. Everything that seemed so dire in the course of every day usually wasn’t and could wait.
She went back upstairs then to unpack. She set the photograph of Andy on a table in her small sitting room. She smiled as she looked at him, and felt a twinge of sadness again, for what they had shared, what they’d never had, and what a fine man he was. It made her think of Bert in Mendocino again, and how glad she was that Milagra had him in her life and had shared that with Maddie on her trip. So many good things had happened in the three weeks she’d been away, her time with Ben and his family. Meeting William. The bond she had renewed with her younger daughter. She still had Deanna to contend with but she felt strong enough to deal with her now too. In the end, the men she had gone to see were unimportant. It was everything else that mattered. They had turned out to be brief