The Last Goodbye

by Fiona Lucas

  “Hah! That sounds like a marvelous idea.”

  Anna unraveled the concept a little further. “And why don’t we not do New Year’s Eve together?”

  “Spend all evening on the phone?”

  That was what she’d been going to suggest, but she suddenly realized there was a better option, an option she instantly knew she wanted more than anything. “No. Let’s do it in person.”

  There was a stunned silence for a few seconds. “What?”

  Anna held her breath for a moment then said, “Brody, I think it’s time we should meet.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  You want to meet up on New Year’s Eve? Face-to-face?” Brody said, sounding more than a little stunned.

  Okay, Anna thought. Even though New Year’s Eve was still more than three months away, and the idea had just popped into her head and she’d run with it, she hadn’t expected this reaction. She’d thought Brody would be excited about the idea, even though up until that moment their relationship had been exclusively, well . . . audio.

  “What . . . what about Jeremy?”

  “What about him?”

  “Won’t you want to spend New Year’s Eve with him?”

  Oh. She supposed that was an option. One that hadn’t even been on her radar, apparently. “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t even know if there will be a Jeremy in a few months’ time.”

  More silence.

  “Really?” he said, obviously skeptical.

  “Yes, really. We’ve been on one date, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in recent years, it’s not to trust what the future might bring.”

  “But you’re making plans with me,” he said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s different.”

  “Why?”

  Anna stared up at the twinkling stars. “Because I know you.” He went quiet again, but this time it was one of those full silences. She could tell he was thinking carefully about what she’d suggested. And the more she thought about it, even though her suggestion had been a bit out-of-the-blue and random, it seemed like the perfect plan. It would save both of them from being miserable and lonely and give them something to look forward to over Christmas, which was never easy after you’d lost someone special.

  “So, what do you think? Shall we do it?”

  He cleared his throat. “Why on earth would you want to spend New Year’s Eve with me?”

  She wasn’t sure if she should be insulted that he hadn’t jumped at the idea, or sad that he didn’t dare believe she meant it. “Because I would like to look you in the eyes and say thank you, for all you’ve done for me.”

  He made a dismissive noise. “I haven’t done anything, really. It’s you . . . It’s all you.”

  “No, Brody. It’s you too. You listened when no one else would, when no one else could . . . Not in the way I needed them to. And you haven’t been afraid to tell me the truth when I needed to hear it.” She looked helplessly up at the stars, as if maybe they could help her convince him. “I wouldn’t have made it through this year without you . . .”

  She trailed off, suddenly wondering if she was reading more into this relationship than there was, but then she thought about how he’d said that he’d called just to hear her voice and it made her feel even more confused.

  “I would love to spend New Year’s Eve with you, Anna. I just . . . can’t.”

  Anna waited, sensing there was more to come. An explanation of some sort, at the very least, but when the silence stretched on longer than she could bear, she said, “Brody . . . ?”

  She heard him exhale heavily.

  “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”

  She could almost hear him wrestling inwardly with his answer. Tell me, she urged him silently. Tell me what it is. Trust me like I trust you.

  She heard the kind of intake of breath that only occurs when someone is about to say something. Something big.

  And then he let the air out again.

  “It’s nothing for you to worry about.” There was a finality in his tone that told her it would do her no good broaching this topic again this evening. But she wanted to meet Brody. She wanted to see his smile, not just hear it. She wanted to give him a hug and thank him for his friendship.

  It had saved her.

  For too long she’d been the leach in their relationship, sucking the strength and wisdom out of him because she’d been desperate and grieving. Okay, she was still grieving. But she was no longer desperate, she realized. Somehow, her mourning had entered a new phase, and it was time to stop feeling that she and her pain were the center of the universe and to start looking outward again. She closed her eyes with shame at how utterly self-absorbed she’d been.

  Was she doing it again now? Was she just thinking about what she wanted and not taking his feelings into account?

  Maybe, she had to admit.

  Perhaps she needed to back off the idea for now. But that didn’t mean she and Brody couldn’t find some other way to connect further, did it? “Okay,” she said, her mouth forming the beginning of her sentence before her brain had fully formulated her thought. “Well, we’ve been virtually anonymous to each other for the five or six months we’ve been talking on a regular basis. I’m pretty sure you’re not an axe-wielding serial killer by now—”

  He let out a huff of laughter, and it was as if, in the last few minutes, Anna had developed superhero-like sensitive hearing where he was concerned. She heard the mirth but, underneath it, she also heard what he was desperately trying to keep hidden—relief. He was glad she hadn’t kept pushing that they meet.

  “So, I’m going to tell you my last name,” she finished. “And where I live.”

  The silence at the other end of the line changed. As if he was no longer smiling to himself. As if he was frowning. Wary.

  Why?

  “My name is Anna Barry and I live in southeast London. Bromley to be exact. Well, not actually in Bromley town center, more Sundridge Park . . .” She was babbling now. “And I’m going to send you a picture . . .”

  Was she? Where had that come from?

  But the moment she’d said it, she knew it was the right decision. If Brody couldn’t—or wouldn’t—FaceTime, this was the next best thing. She wanted to have a mental image of him when she talked to him, not this fuzzy, shifting idea in her head made up entirely from her imagination, and she wanted him to be able to picture her too. She wanted him to know who she was on the outside the way he knew her on the inside.

  She switched her phone to speaker and navigated to where her photos were stored and chose one to text him. Was it weird that in all the time they’d been communicating, they hadn’t once sent a written message? It had always been talking. Voices.

  “Anna? You really don’t need to . . .”

  Anna wasn’t listening. She was too busy scrolling down her photo library, trying to find the right one to send to him. The nicest pictures of her were way at the top, quite a few of them with Spencer, and her vanity almost made her want to select one of those, but she paused before she tapped the screen. No. This wasn’t like choosing a picture for an Instagram-perfect display that bore no resemblance at all to real life. This was Brody. She needed to find one that showed who she was now, wrinkles and all, one that was honest.

  “I’m going to have to hang up,” she told him. “I can’t work out how to do this without cutting you off. Phone me back when you’ve got it.”

  She ended the call before he could protest and chose a photo of herself taken sometime in the last year. She wasn’t being cute or sexy (not that she was sure that she knew how to take a selfie that was cute and sexy). It was a snap Gabi had taken during a walk in the fields around Farnborough one Saturday morning in February. She’d called Anna’s name and had taken the photograph the moment Anna had turned her head. She was staring straight at the camera, a half smile on her lips and weariness in her eyes that said You’re really doing that now? It was very her. All the bett
er for having been caught in the moment.

  She tapped her phone to select it and then, before she could talk herself out of it, she pressed “send” and it was gone. She held her breath and waited.

  It took a long time for Brody to reply. So long, in fact, that it got too chilly to stay outside and she had to scurry back indoors to the warmth of her kitchen. She turned off the bright overhead lights and made do with just the one from under the cooker hood, put her phone on the table, sat down and waited.

  What was holding him up? She wasn’t that ugly, was she?

  She knew she wasn’t. Okay, she wasn’t stunning, and she didn’t have the sparkle that Gabi did around her eyes that made Anna think of the word “pretty,” but she didn’t have a bad bone structure. She could look nice on a night out if she made the effort.

  Her phone binged and vibrated against the tabletop. She snatched it up. She had a text from him. A picture!

  It took a few moments before her brain made sense of the image on the screen, all shaggy gray hair and large, soulful eyes filled with mischief. She tapped to enlarge it and then she let out a half-frustrated, half-amused sigh. She shook her head, picked up her phone and dialed his number. “I take it that is Lewis,” she said when he answered.

  “He’s much more handsome than I am,” Brody said gravely.

  “He is handsome,” Anna had to agree, with his wavy, silvery fur. “What kind of dog is he, anyway?”

  “Cairn terrier. Think Toto in The Wizard of Oz.”

  Oh, yes. Anna could picture that. And, from what she knew of Lewis, he was just as spirited and naughty. “Tell me,” she said, smiling as she asked the question, “are your eyebrows also that fluffy?”

  There was a heartbeat of silence before he answered. “Fluffier.”

  Well, that might explain the lack of a photo. Maybe she’d been right about him being self-conscious about the way he looked. Oh, Lord. She was pushing again, wasn’t she? A whole lifetime of being a meek little mouse, and now that she’d finally found her assertive side, it was starting to run away with her. “I didn’t mean you had to send one back,” she added quickly. “I’m sorry if you felt steamrolled into something . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he said, a bit more seriously. “I’m not sure I’ve got a photo of myself on this phone anyway. I’m not big on taking pictures of myself. Maybe another time.”

  “Maybe,” Anna echoed, not quite sure if this was a legitimate excuse or whether he was fobbing her off again. Brody was all arm’s length facts and hidden motives this evening.

  “But I can tell you my name. I’m Brody Smith. I live in a lane that doesn’t actually have a name and is probably too insignificant to have a road number either, but the nearest village is Hexworthy.”

  “Thank you, Brody Smith.”

  “It was nothing,” he replied, but he was wrong.

  This evening, Brody had changed from being a voice on the end of the phone into a real person. Oh, she knew he’d always been real, but somehow, there was a part of her that hadn’t thought of him that way. He’d been like something out of a dream. Or a fairy tale. A rather gruff and opinionated fairy godmother, maybe. But somehow, by revealing his last name and as much of an address as he had, he had solidified into something from this world. If she wanted, she could get in her car and drive to that place.

  Not that she would, of course. Not without him saying she could first. That would be a bit too much like stalking. It was enough to know it was possible for now.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lewis barked at Brody then went to sit by the back door. Brody was still staring at his phone after ending his call with Anna, and hardly noticed. Lewis barked again. “Sorry, mate,” Brody muttered and went over to let him out.

  Lewis immediately ran into the middle of the courtyard and instead of doing what Brody had assumed he’d wanted to do, he just started barking, and then the noise changed into what could only be described as a long, mournful howling, as he sat on his hindquarters and looked up at the moon.

  It was a rather spectacular moon, large and full. Almost within reach, it felt like.

  “Stupid dog,” Brody muttered. “What do you think you are, a wolf? Just because it looks close, because it feels like you can get to it, it doesn’t mean you can.”

  But Lewis ignored him and kept going. Well, Brody thought, as he shrugged and headed back into the kitchen, at least he wasn’t disturbing the neighbors, since they didn’t have any.

  Even with all that baying, Anna’s voice was still in his ears, like the echo of a song heard after the radio has been turned off. He drew his phone away from his ear and stared at it intently before switching to his messages app, looking at Anna’s photo. She was wearing a thick gray scarf and a purple beanie with a paler crocheted flower on one side. The sun was low and slanting, highlighting the out of focus frosty fields in the background, but it was the foreground Brody was interested in.

  God, she was beautiful.

  He couldn’t stop looking at her eyes. He’d been right about them. They were large and open, wistful. But he saw other things there too, things he’d known about her even without seeing this photograph: determination, courage, compassion.

  The rest of her face came into focus.

  If he’d been a stranger, if he’d just seen this as a profile picture on Facebook, he would have probably thought it was a nice enough face but wouldn’t have given it more than a passing glance. It was interesting more than traditionally pretty.

  But he wasn’t a stranger, and he couldn’t seem to maintain that kind of detachment for too long. He stared at the photo, drinking it in, God help him.

  You’re a sad case, Brody Smith. A really sad case.

  Half in love with a girl you’ve never met, never even seen, and she sends you a picture and then, well . . .

  You need to get out more, mate.

  He exhaled loudly and forced himself to put the phone to sleep. He didn’t, however, manage to make himself put it back down on the desk. Instead, he tucked it into his back pocket.

  He’d chickened out of sending her a picture in return. What had he been so afraid of?

  No, I mean, really . . . Maybe you should take a good look?

  There was a mirror in his hallway. Not because he actually used it much, but because the previous owners had left it, and mirrors seemed to belong in hallways. He marched himself off to it and stood in front of it, feet planted wide.

  This is the face of a coward, he told himself. Are you really so vain that you couldn’t have held the phone up and taken a picture, right then and there? Afraid she’d see the gray in your stubble, the hardness in your jaw?

  No, he wasn’t afraid of those things.

  Afraid she’ll be able to see why you lock yourself away like this? Afraid that if she ever found out, she’d never speak to you again?

  That was more honest. Stupid, but honest. His logical mind knew this, but he still wasn’t any closer to taking the picture than he had been twenty minutes ago.

  And, God . . . How he wanted to meet her! But it was a bad idea, on so many levels. Never going to happen, mate. Stop kidding yourself. A friend, she’d said. Nothing more. That would have to be enough.

  He’d been okay for a long time in this cottage, insulated from the world outside—comfortably numb, as a well-known song suggested—but it was no longer the sanctuary it had once been. In fact, he was starting to find it a little claustrophobic.

  Lewis was still howling outside, and as Brody listened to the sound, it seemed to reverberate inside his chest, building up to a sense of longing that was almost unbearable. He lifted his phone out of his back pocket and stared at the picture of Anna once again. The ache intensified. It was a knife in his chest, and someone was twisting it.

  You might as well go outside and cry for the moon with the dog, he told himself. It’ll do you just as much good.

  IF IT HAD been Gabi who’d been speaking to Brody, she would have Googled him the moment she was in
possession of a surname, but Anna lasted six days before she cracked and decided to type Brody’s name into the search box on Facebook. She did it early one morning when there was no chance of him ringing her. Because that would be awkward.

  Not that they’d agreed not to do this. They hadn’t even discussed it with each other. He’s probably looked you up already, she told herself flatly. Nothing to get all silly about.

  But . . .

  Stuff it. Her fingers moved quickly on her laptop keyboard, and she pressed “enter” before she could talk herself out of it.

  The results were much more plentiful than she’d anticipated. Crap. While Brody wasn’t a terribly common name, Smith was. Obviously. Well, the only thing to do was to go through the list. She knew a bit of information that would help her narrow it down: his location (Devon) and his age (older than her but not geriatric), and so she began to trail through them.

  There was a Brody Smith who was a researcher at Stanford.

  A travel writer based in New Zealand who spent six months of the year sailing around the South Pacific on his boat.

  An up-and-coming sixteen-year-old actor, who already had a legion of besotted teenage girls following his every move on social media.

  Anna looked through them all but nothing matched. Her curiosity had been fanned fully into flame at that point, so she switched to Google. It was much the same story there. So many Brody Smiths! And that didn’t even include the ones who also had middle names. There was a Brody Michael Smith, a Brody Alexander Smith, even a Brody Zephaniah Smith.

  She clicked on Brody Zephaniah Smith, just because it was an unusual name, and discovered he’d been a fire-and-brimstone preacher from the 1920s, now sadly deceased. After that, she decided to switch to a search page of images for the same name rather than text because then she could filter out the sepia and black-and-white photos that were part of people’s family history records, or Brodys who were too old or too young to match the one she was searching for.