by Kate Hewitt
“Maria!” Ruby’s voice was full of joy as she threw herself at Maria, wrapping her arms around her waist. “You’re back.”
“Yes, for now.” She stroked Ruby’s hair tenderly, and then held one arm out, beckoning to Ella who was holding back as usual. “Come here, koka. Come here.”
I watched them embrace, my chest throbbing with both the sweetness and the pain.
“Why did you go, Maria?” Ruby asked. “Why did the police take you?”
“You’re staying now, aren’t you?” Ella sounded anxious. “You’ll stay with us.”
Maria glanced back at me. “For now, yes.”
While Maria shepherded Ella and Ruby to the living room, I went in search of Alexa.
“Maria’s here?” she asked, her voice fearful, when I found her in her bedroom. I’d explained how Maria hadn’t had any part in Laura’s death, and she’d nodded in acceptance, tearful and resigned. Now she bit her lips, looking anxious. “Is she… is she angry with me?”
“No, not at all, Alexa.” I paused. “Are you angry with her?”
“No.” Alexa’s lips trembled and she pressed them together. “I thought she was guilty. I wanted her to be guilty.”
“Why, Alexa?” I asked softly. I closed the door and came to sit with her on the bed.
“Because… because then somehow it made sense. There was a reason, even if it wasn’t a good one. There was…” She gulped. “There was someone to blame.”
I understood that impulse; I’d struggled with it myself. Alexa bit her lip, tears filling her eyes.
“Alexa,” I said, and I put both my hands on her shoulders, making her look at me. “Alexa,” I said again, the words coming from deep within me, “whatever you’re feeling now… whatever you’ve been struggling with… Mom loved you, and I love you. No matter what. That will never change. I love you,” I said again, because some things, I’d discovered, could never be said too much.
A tear trembled on her lash and then slipped down her cheek. “Dad,” she said, and she started to cry, the same kind of wrenching sobs I had experienced earlier with Maria. “Dad,” she gasped out again, and then my arms were around her, and I was murmuring I knew not what, telling Alexa I loved her, that it was okay. It really was okay.
“I was mad at Mom the morning she died,” Alexa managed to gasp out between choking sobs. “I told her I hated her. That was the last thing I ever said to her. The very last thing.”
“Oh, Alexa.” My poor, heartsick, guilt-stricken daughter. Had she been feeling guilty all this time? How had she lived with that burden for all these months, let it eat her up from the inside? “If you were feeling guilty about that, Alexa, you didn’t need to. None of this was your fault. At all. And you couldn’t have done anything to change what happened. Mom knew you loved her. Of course she did, always. Always.”
“It was all over a phone,” Alexa continued, her voice breaking on the words. “All over a stupid phone.” And then she was sobbing in my arms as if her body were being wrenched out, and like Maria had said, I knew it was good. It would heal.
We all would. It would take time, tears, striving, and pain. But it would happen. I felt sure of that, as I held my daughter in my arms.
“I need to tell Maria I’m sorry,” she finally said, wiping her cheeks, and I nodded.
“I think that would be a good thing to do.”
* * *
Three days later, Maria said goodbye. The girls had begged her to stay, and with tears in her eyes Maria had hugged and kissed them all, as she shook her head and explained that she had to go. I think they understood, just as I did; after all that had happened, we all needed to move on in some way.
I’d found a nanny; the agency had done a rush job. Maria had booked her ticket. Part of me railed against it, but another part understood. We couldn’t go back—not to when Laura was alive, not to when Maria had lived with us. There was never any going back.
We took her to the airport, all four of us, the girls still tearful but accepting. Maria hugged them in turn; she’d already given me letters for each of them, of everything she remembered Laura saying about them, as keepsakes. I knew they would be treasured.
“You must write me letters,” Maria said as she squeezed their hands. “Lots of letters. Perhaps I’ll figure out email. It would be about time.”
She lifted her head to smile at me, her eyes still filled with sorrow.
“I don’t regret it, you know,” I said, needing to say it. Needing her to believe me. “You coming into our lives. No matter why or what happened… that was a good thing, Maria, for us, and I hope, for you. I don’t regret it, I promise. You’ve done so much for me. For all of us.” I put my arms around Alexa and Ella, Ruby pressing her back against my knees. “We’ll all miss you.”
“As I will you.” She smiled at each of the girls in turn. “All of you, so much.”
“I wanted to give you something.” I fumbled in my pocket for the necklace I’d found when I’d been going through Laura’s things. “It was Laura’s… I was just going to put it away in a box, but I want you to have it. I think… I think she would too.” Carefully, I lifted the necklace out of my pocket and handed it to Maria. It wasn’t anything particularly special or expensive—no diamonds or sapphires, just a single silver shape on a chain, that I’d given her years ago, for her birthday.
“A heart,” Maria murmured as she held up the pendant with its simple silver heart. “It’s beautiful.”
“Because you carry all of our hearts, just like you said before. Dilbere.”
“Oh, Nathan.” Tears sparkled in Maria’s eyes as she looked at me. “Thank you, all of you.” She fastened the pendant around her neck. “Let me teach you another word in my language,” she said. “Another word that you do not have quite the same in English. Halaliti. It means many things, all in one. It means to forgive, to make peace with, to accept, and to say goodbye. This is our halaliti.”
“But we will see you again,” Ruby said, her voice wobbling. “Won’t we?”
“Yes, koka, one day. I hope so.” She looked at me. “I hope.”
And I knew I did too—that somehow, in the midst of all this grief and sadness, we’d both found hope. I smiled at her as she turned and started to walk away, towards the departure gates. Ruby, Ella, Alexa, and I all stood there silently, watching her walk out of our lives, knowing that something was ending, and yet something else was beginning. Something new, and maybe even beautiful.
* * *
That was six months ago now. Six long, hard, painful, good months. Maria is back in Sarajevo. She has written us to let us know how she is doing; the first few weeks were strange and difficult, but she is working at a hairdresser’s now, and volunteering with a charity that supports victims of the Bosnian genocide, especially women. Women like her. She is, in her own words, no longer a ghost.
We’ve even talked, the girls and I, about taking a trip to Sarajevo someday, perhaps next summer. I would like to see Maria’s city. I would like to see Maria.
In the last six months, we’ve made many changes. I work four days a week still; the girls are now in the local public school, with Ruby at a government-funded pre-K program. The living room is sage green, the dining room a lovely rose. I’ve finished the bathroom as well, and next up is Alexa’s room.
We have a nanny, a young woman from Denmark named Sofie. She is friendly and helpful and she spends the weekends visiting her boyfriend in Boston. She is nothing like Maria, and that is okay.
Alexa isn’t angry, and Ella is eating better, but there are bad days as well as good days, days when Ruby falls apart and Ella won’t eat and Alexa slams into her room, and even that has been okay. Small steps. We are taking small steps.
And now we are here, in a grassy field outside Boston, headstones all around us. We’ve come up for the weekend, the girls and I, to see Laura’s headstone. We’ve come to Boston a few times over the last six months, and to Cape Cod over the summer, and while it hasn’t always
been easy, it’s been good. So much has been, strangely, surprisingly, sweetly, good.
As I stand in front of Laura’s headstone, Ruby slips her hand in mine. “Daddy, what does it say?”
I stare at the words graven on the slab of granite, words I’d chosen five months ago, with Paul and Elaine’s blessing, and then I tell them to Ruby. “It says ‘Laura West, beloved wife, mother, and daughter. Dilbere.’”
“Dilbere,” Ruby repeats softly, because she knows what it means.
Gently, with a little smile, Elaine takes Ruby by the hand, and she leads her and Ella and Alexa a bit away, to give me a moment with Laura, even though I know she’s not really here.
It is a beautiful September day, the sun shining, the air full of birdsong and promise. In the distance, a child’s laughter drifts on the breeze. I crouch down, close to Laura’s grave, as a thousand memories tumble through my mind: Laura throwing her arms around me when I asked her to marry me. Her feet in my lap as we sat on the sofa and watched TV. The moment Alexa was born and teasingly Laura told me not to drop her. Her laughter ringing out on Christmas morning, or while running through the park, or flipping pancakes with Ruby. Her smiling at me, an easy, uncomplicated love shining from her eyes, her face.
These memories, I know, are real. I’m not rewriting our history, or casting it into a sentimental, sepia tint. It was real, just as the harder memories were real, the ones I’ve had to accept and forgive myself for.
I’ve accepted the hard along with the good, I’ve seen how one can give birth to the other, hope rising from the ashes, purpose emerging from the pain—for me, for Laura, for the girls, and for Maria. Amidst the grief and the loss, the confusion and even the evil, there can be a reason.
As I crouch there, I ask a silent question, a question that comes from up the depths of me, that matters more than anything, and then I strain to hear its answer.
In the stillness, and then in the gentle whispering of the breeze, in the green leaves of the trees around me and in my oldest daughter’s hand slipping into mine, I hear it. I hear it and I smile as we turn for home.
Epilogue
Eighteen months earlier
* * *
It’s my first day, and I’m nervous. What am I doing here, really? It’s all a bit cliché, isn’t it, the bored Upper East Side housewife playing Lady Bountiful downtown?
But I needed to come. I couldn’t even say why, only that I felt drawn to this place, with a desire to make a difference, even if it’s just to one person. Of course, I don’t even know yet who that will be, if anyone, but I’m glad I’m here.
The foyer of Global Rescue is buzzing with people as classes empty out and fill up again; I’ve been smiling randomly at strangers for ten minutes, waiting for my own class to begin. Forty-five minutes teaching English to refugees and immigrants—it’s not much, but it’s something. And who am I to say it won’t make a difference to someone? I hope it will. I hope I’m here for a reason, because it feels like I am, even if Nathan would roll his eyes at such a notion.
Nathan. My stomach clenches as I think of him, even as my heart swells with love. He tries so hard, and yet somehow he is still missing something. I don’t know how to help him to find it, or even if I can… which is part of the reason why I’m here. Because I think I need to find something too, even if I don’t yet know what it is.
Just then, from across the room, a woman with blue-green eyes catches my attention. She stands a little bit off by herself, composed and still, seeming serene even as I sense a sorrow emanating from her that feels almost tangible, and I find myself walking towards her.
“Hi,” I say, keeping my voice cheerful. “I’m new here. What’s your name?”
She looks startled, and then she gives me a fleeting, tentative smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “My name is Maria.”
“I just started volunteering here,” I confide, stepping closer. “I’m about to teach my first class, and I’m kind of nervous.”
“Oh?” She looks at me with shy surprise. “You don’t need to be nervous.”
“Have you been helping out here for very long?”
“Almost twenty years.”
“Wow.” I am impressed. “That’s a long time.”
“What made you volunteer?” Maria asks, and I shrug, self-conscious now, because it sounds so silly, so small.
“I want to make a difference, I suppose, in some little way. And be a good example to my girls.” Even if they don’t know I’m here yet. One day they will.
“You have children?”
“Three daughters.” I hear the pride in my voice, and I picture my girls—Ruby, snuggled in my lap; Ella, her head on my shoulder as she stands next to me, Alexa rolling her eyes at me before she can’t help but dissolve into laughter. “They’re wonderful,” I say, and Maria nods.
“That is good.”
“What about you?”
She shakes her head. “There is no one.”
She speaks matter-of-factly, but I still hear such loss in her voice; I see it in her eyes, and I wish I could do something about it. I wonder what her story is, if she’ll ever trust me enough to tell me. I want to help her, which seems ridiculous, because I don’t even know how, and yet…
I’m here. Maybe I’ll find a way; maybe we’ll be friends. It’s only my first day, after all, and anything could happen.
For a moment, standing there on the cusp of this new step I’ve taken, I feel as if I am brimming with possibility, with wonderful hope. Anything could happen, and that seems like a beautiful promise.
“Sorry, I don’t think I told you my name,” I tell Maria as I hold out my hand for her to shake. She takes it cautiously, a fragile smile blooming across her face, and I realize I’m glad I sought her out. This feels like a beginning. “I’m Laura,” I say, and I smile.
A Letter from Kate
Dear Reader,
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Thank you so much for reading No Time to Say Goodbye. If you are interested in learning about my upcoming releases, you can sign up for my newsletter here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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www.bookouture.com/kate-hewitt
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The idea for No Time to Say Goodbye came to me a long time ago, while I was living in New York as a mother of young children. Back then, I hadn’t enough experience of writing or of life to attempt the story, but ten years later (and older), I felt ready to try to write about so many serious things—death and grief, war and crime. Weighty issues aside, however, at its heart this story is about finding hope amidst the pain and tragedy of life.
Someone recently asked me if there was a common theme in my books, and I answered that all my stories explore the question “what do you do when the worst happens?” The worst might be different in every book, and for every person, but as someone who has struggled through my own losses and sorrows, as everyone must do eventually, I do believe hope can be found even amidst the deepest sorrow or the wildest grief, and I try to communicate that through my writing.
While writing No Time to Say Goodbye, I researched the terrible atrocities of the Bosnian War, and how far reaching they are for the women who must continue to live in Bosnia, sometimes seeing their attackers every day, with no real way to bring justice. It’s an issue that remains largely ignored by the wider world, and I hope that my story might raise awareness of this terrible time in modern history. If you’d like to support charitable efforts to help women survivors of war crimes, Women for Women (www.womenforwomen.org.uk) is a wonderful charity that supports efforts to help women victims of war rebuild their lives and choose their own futures.
I hope you have enjoyed No Time To Say Goodbye. If you did, I would be very grateful if you could write a review. I’d love to hear what you think, and it makes such a difference helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.
I also love hearing from my readers — you can get in touch on my Facebook p
age, through Twitter, Goodreads or my website.
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Thanks again and happy reading,
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Kate
Acknowledgements
Every book I write needs a lot of help along the way, and I’m so thankful to all the people who give me their time, advice, thoughts, expertise, and listening ears!
In particular, I’d like to thank Slavko Hadzic, who shared his experiences of living through the Bosnian War with me, as well as making my daughter Charlotte laugh—a lot!
I’d also like to thank my dear family members who offered advice when I felt stuck in the middle of the story—Cliff, for listening to me go on and on about refugees and war; Ellen, for listening to me vent about not knowing how to end the story while she was practicing driving (she gave me a good idea and she passed her driving test!); Caroline, for reading my books and then actually wanting to discuss them with me; and Charlotte, Anna, and Teddy for generally being patient with a mother who is half-living in an alternate reality while she’s writing.
As ever, I must thank my fabulous editor, Isobel, who has made every story I’ve written for Bookouture a hundred percent better, and all the wonderful team at Bookouture who work so hard to bring our books into the world.
And lastly, thank you to all my wonderful readers who buy and read my books, and then so very kindly take the time to let me know how much they enjoyed them. Thank you so very much!
Published by Bookouture in 2019
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An imprint of StoryFire Ltd.
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