The One Who Got Away: A Novel

by Bethany Bloom

  “Sorry to objectify you there. Carter is kind of…like that.” Henry turned the box of wine around so it faced the crowd, pushed the plastic cups toward the spigot and opened the cooler to reveal sodas, water bottles and beer cans. “So now that I’ve met you, I can quit my little farce.” He leapt over the counter, balancing on one arm and swinging his legs over in one smooth motion, and then he offered her the crook of his elbow. “Would you like to take a walk?”

  She felt a leaping in the base of her stomach. She placed her hand in the crook of his arm, and he placed his hand on hers. “My, but you are smooth. I must remember to be very careful with you,” she said, laughing, and she felt a giddiness ripple through her, a looseness in her limbs and in her belly.

  It felt good to flirt, to be free, to feel his bicep beneath the thin cotton of his shirt. It was a time in her life, Olivine reflected as she scrubbed lint from her baseboards, when she was as confident as she would ever be. Just returning from school. The feeling that she could do anything. She would go and travel and be an essayist. A novelist. And she could go to weddings and parties and flirt with strange men just because they made her feel good, important, special.

  Henry had led her on a cobblestone path through the park. He asked her what she loved beyond all else, and she said she loved to write and that she would like to set off across the country and write about the people and the details she saw along the way. Off the interstate. Those out of the way places where people live and breathe and eat Frito pie on Wednesday nights for supper.

  Henry listened until she finished speaking, and then he said he had always wanted to be a professional adventurer but that he hadn’t figured out who would pay him to be one of those. But, he had said, if she could write, well, then, she had that part figured out and then he said that he wanted to travel and to explore and to never be tied down to someone else’s expectations and that the key to life was living it your own way. And then he stopped under a towering Englemann spruce at the far corner of the park, and he pulled her over to him and his hands reached around to the back of her neck and lingered there and he barely touched her as he leaned in, and he rubbed his closed mouth against hers and then sucked gently on her lower lip. He tasted like mint leaves, freshly crushed. The feel of his soft, full lips made her belly lurch upwards and fill with a fullness, velvety and smooth. And she felt as though she had known him forever; as though she were coming home.

  After a single lingering kiss, he pulled her around the tree on the other side of the cobblestone path, where the tennis courts bordered the park, and he held her hand. His grip was gentle but firm and the skin on his palms and his fingertips was rough, almost rasping.

  “How did your hands get so…coarse?” she asked, her voice low.

  “I’m a framer.”

  “You frame pictures? Like art or photographs?”

  “No,” he said, laughing softly and shaking his head. “I frame houses.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m a carpenter. Someday I suppose I’ll build the entire house. As a general contractor. A designer. A builder. That’s what my dad does.” He looked down just then. Then raised his eyes again to meet hers. “But you’ve got to learn how to build a house with your hands first. Or so they say. And so I came out here to see how the big, luxury stuff is done. I’m working on a framing crew for peanuts right now. And I rent a room in Carter’s house. Only because I answered an ad in the paper.” As he spoke, he floated his hand in the small of her back, sending tingles up her spine. “Do you remember him at all?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, he sure remembers you. And I get it now. You are lovely.”

  “You need to stop with the lines before I disappear into the darkness,” she warned, but she was smiling.

  “I’m being sincere, Olivine. I feel, I don’t know, charged up or buzzed or, I don’t know. Just right,” he said, and Olivine remembered thinking that his words didn’t match the look in his eyes, a veiled, sad expression, which lasted just a moment and then was gone. He kissed her again, on the path, and then they circled the park until the sun disappeared from the sky and a figure in the distance began to dismantle the decorations. “Did we miss the bride and groom leaving?” he asked.

  “Looks that way. I think the wedding is over.”

  He nodded and asked if he could see her the next day, and she said he could.

  They had spent the next week together. And then the next. And she began to crave his company: The buzz that burst through her when he cradled the back of her neck in his hands, when he grazed her lips with his. And then she introduced Henry to her grandfather.

  Olivine had adored her grandfather since she was a little girl. He would jump off the high cliffs at the lake, turning flips all the way down. He would lasso objects in the front yard. He would tell her what it was like to ride a horse standing up and how it felt to jump out of airplanes in World War II. He had been an adventurer his whole life. He had also been a carpenter, so he and Henry had a lot to talk about.

  The moment Henry was ushered into her grandparents’ home, he had them smiling and nodding and laughing. She remembered how Grandma leaned in close to him as he spoke. Henry asked questions and listened to their answers in that silent way of his, like the person speaking was the only person alive.

  Grandpa talked about the homes he had built across Wyoming, Montana and now Colorado and how he had been forced to slow down once he turned seventy and needed that hip replacement, and then Grandpa brought out photographs, which Olivine had never before seen, and they looked at images of homes and cabinets and doors Grandpa had built. As he spoke to Henry, Grandpa had become like a young man again, running his fingers through his hair and shuffling through photographs and talking fast. And when Grandpa had finished, when he had exhausted himself, and it was time to go, Henry asked Grandpa a question.

  “Do you have any nails from your tool bags? The ones you used when you were framing?”

  “Well now, I suppose I do.”

  “Could I have some?” he asked, low.

  “Well, I suppose so, but I don’t know why you would. They’re just like any other old framing nails,” Grandpa said.

  Henry looked down. “I hope you don’t find this too sentimental, but, in every house, I drive a nail from my father’s bags. And I drive a nail from my grandfather’s bags. It’s a tradition my father started, actually. And I’d like to drive one of your nails as well. I don’t know why I do it. I usually don’t talk about it….”

  “You know,” Grandpa’s raspy, rough voice became very quiet, “I would be honored.” And he stood and went to the garage, re-emerging with a leather pouch filled with a variety of dark silver nails.

  And as Henry left her grandparent’s house and they approached his Volkswagen, Henry swept to the passenger side to open Olivine’s door and as she turned to hop in, he gazed at her, and his breath caught and he said, “Olivine, I love your family.” And then there was that look again. A wistfulness, just a flash and then it was gone.

  In that moment she knew that she would never be the same. It was true she didn’t need anyone. But this man. This man made everyday light dazzle. He made an obligatory visit with her grandparents into one of the deepest, kindest experiences she had ever known.

  With Henry, she felt herself become the version of herself that she had always wanted to be. She was herself, but more playful and fun. Herself, but more kind and interested. Herself, but more comfortable, witty, accepted.

  Suddenly everything she said or did somehow related back to him. She saw tofu tacos on the menu at a restaurant and she thought about whether Henry had ever tried tofu tacos. She saw a gnarled bristlecone pine high on a hiking trail and she thought about how very much Henry would like this particular tree. It was as though she were living her life looking out from two perspectives. His and hers.

  She had told Yarrow about it one night on the phone, twirling the spiral phone cord around her finger.

  “Oh, you’v
e got it bad,” Yarrow said.

  “I know.” Olivine giggled.

  “I’m thrilled for you, honey. I mean…love!” Yarrow cried. “How can you wish anything more for someone in their lives than they would fall in love. Like this.”

  “Ugh. You’re so romantic, Yarrow,” she said, laughing.

  “Well, yes. But I know you aren’t used to these…emotions. You’ve never needed a man in your life.”

  “You’re right about this.”

  “I mean, I thought you were immune to the tides of love and the feelings that sweep lesser people like me completely away.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is, though. When men come through your life, it’s like they are these little parenthetical annotations in your day. They look at you with these giant puppy dog eyes and you see them as just something you might visit on occasion, or talk to once a week. Something you might butter your toast with and discard, with never a thought.”

  “What?”

  “No, it’s true.”

  “Butter my toast with them?”

  “You know what I mean, Olivine. Someone whom you don’t need. Someone who is serving a particular role for you but whom you could just as soon do without.”

  “I like butter,” Olivine said, laughing.

  “But Henry has become the whole slice of bread. And the butter, all slathered together.”

  “Yeah, I see your point.”

  “So you’re crazy about him. What do you make of it? Whatever are you going to do?”

  “I really don’t know.”

  “Does he love you with the same….wildness?”

  “Well he’s sort of passionate, I guess, but also strange and awkward and kind of funny. Like, before our hike the other day, he stopped at the deli to get me a sandwich and I went to the bakery next door to get some cookies to share at the summit, and somehow he knew or remembered exactly what I like on my sandwich… I mean, down to the brand of mustard, and he unwrapped the sandwich, and while he was still in the deli, he wrote something sweet on the butcher paper and then he wrapped the whole thing back up. And then he gave me the sandwich and he didn’t say a word. I almost threw the wrapper away before I noticed it, and he wouldn’t have even told me but I happened to see it and I read it and then I looked over and he just grinned.”

  “Oh Ollie, he sounds like he’s a little too smooth.”

  “Well that’s just it. He’s not smooth. He’s pretty goofy. You get the sense that he’s kind of embarrassed by it all. I think what I like most is his total lack of smoothness. He has no pretentions of any kind. He just is who he is. I mean, his VW is filthy, and it kind of stinks and he doesn’t care.”

  “Yeah, you’ve got it bad if you love that about him.”

  “What I love about him most is the way I am when I am with him.”

  “He’s the one, then.”

  “I’m me, only better. I’m fun, Yarrow. I’m having fun.”

  “I can see that.”

  “It’s weird. And I love it. When I’m with Henry, I don’t feel like I need to plan everything out. I don’t have to make sense of everything. I feel like, and this is probably going to sound incredibly stupid and cheesy, but I feel like no matter what happens in my life, it will be okay because I’m with him. And so I can lighten up and go from one experience to another. I can just…enjoy myself.”

  “You are incredibly lucky, Olivine.”

  “I know.”

  “No, I mean, incredibly, incredibly lucky. From what I’ve seen, of our friends, of our family, very few people in the world find a love like that.”

  “Huh.”

  “It’s true. You’ve just put into words exactly the way I feel when I’m with Jon. I love him, but I also love the woman I am when I’m with him. I love living my life with him.”

  “So what should I do?” Olivine had asked.

  “Well, one thing you must never do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You must never, ever let him get away.”

  And so, for the first time in her life, Olivine held on tight. She and Henry spent part of each day together that summer. He continued working on a framing crew for luxury custom homes, nestled high against the ski mountain, and she began her freelance writing business, and when Friday night came along, Henry would hand Olivine a dart, which she would throw against his wall-sized map of western Colorado, and wherever the dart landed became their destination. They would climb inside his Volkswagen Vanagon, where their sleeping bags were always packed. And they went to this new and unfamiliar place and they hiked it and photographed it and made love against the backdrop of its mountains and meadows and streams.

  The van became their second home that summer. He had removed the carpeting and installed wood, gleaned from the scrap piles at his jobsites, and they lay on the wooden floorboards and spoke about how they would live the remainder of their days. Olivine could only just remember, far in the distance, the person she had once been…the person who weighed each decision, who agonized over the plans for what to do in a weekend. Who only did things that made sense and that wouldn’t hurt her in the long run.

  And now, as she sat, scrubbing the baseboard in the home she shared with Paul, Olivine remembered the bright white t-shirts that Henry always wore and his deep brown eyes and the way he always smelled freshly laundered. No cologne. Just clean. Natural.

  And then he disappeared. Just like that. Gone. Leaving her to get back in touch with the person she had been before he had ever come along. The person who examined things to make sure they made sense. The person who checked for hidden objects before she dove in, head first. But how she missed the girl who lay dreamily in a van, in some unfamiliar meadow, so long ago.

  *****

  After Henry left, Yarrow had told Olivine that she had hadn’t tried hard enough. She had played it too cool. She hadn’t even chased after him. “Everyone wants to be wanted,” she had told Olivine. “Go find him. Put some of that passion, that energy of yours, to good use. Don’t just let him slip off into the world as though he means nothing to you.”

  And maybe Olivine should have gone and tracked him down and professed that he was the most amazing thing she had ever seen and that she couldn’t live without him and on and on. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. If he wanted her the way she wanted him, he could never have left her, so he must not have felt the same way. And that, she decided, was that.

  “You are too proud.” Yarrow had told her.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  And Yarrow said, that, in the end, Henry would find someone who would try harder. Who would wrap his sandwiches in love notes. “Relationships take work,” Yarrow had said, “If you don’t do that work, you’ll have to go through your life knowing that someone else is married to your husband.”

  “Oh, Yarrow.”

  “No, seriously, Olivine.”

  Now, Henry was found again. But she felt lost.

  Chapter Five

  At five o’clock the following evening, Olivine arrived at Yarrow’s house with two bottles of her sister’s favorite dessert wine, and a new concoction she knew Jon would love: it looked like melted chocolate in a bottle. It was something from Denmark that the sommelier had suggested when she had made her other selections. She set them on the counter, where her mother was tossing a salad with pears, gorgonzola cheese and sugared pralines.

  Olivine fished out one of the nuts and popped it into her mouth. “You make the most gorgeous salads. I can’t wait,” she said.

  The truth was, she had hoped to arrive before her mother, so she could talk to Yarrow. So they could finish their conversation from the day before. “Where’s Yarrow, Mom?”

  Christine pointed upstairs. “Up there, busy doing something. I don’t know. Laundry?”

  The other morning, at her breakfast table, Yarrow had shared all the information she knew about Henry’s return. Henry would be doing some work on the family cabin. Apparently, Yarrow had spoken with Grandpa
, who had somehow discovered that Henry was making custom doors now, sourcing the material from all over the world… traveling to Spain, Mexico, Argentina, wherever he could to find reclaimed doors and stiles, old iron work, carvings, antique gates, and shutters. Any old world, historical pieces, Yarrow had explained, many from centuries-old churches or manors or castles.

  Knowing this, Grandpa had commissioned Henry to build a new door for their family cabin. The work would be done on site. The exact dates would depend on Henry’s schedule, which was apparently quite full. So full, in fact, that it could be months before he arrived.

  Olivine had smiled with the idea of it. Henry had discovered a way to weave his love of travel and adventure with his love for carpentry. And he would create for them a door that would be in their family for generations. This was the home that Grandpa had built himself, that Grandma and Grandpa had spent their lives in before their health demanded that they move to a lower elevation. This home would be willed to them all—her entire family, as a family gathering place, as a place to go to stay connected, as a respite from the rigors of the world. Even now, it was a place she and Paul and Yarrow and Jon, together with Christine and Artie, would gather to spend time, deep in the trees, whether together or alone. The cabin’s new front door, Yarrow had explained, would meld a variety of woods and materials from Grandpa’s life and the lives of his children and grandchildren. And it would be something solid and enduring. Something as important and long-standing and symbolic as the cabin itself.

  When Olivine had arrived home from Yarrow’s that morning, after she scrubbed the baseboards, she searched for Henry on the internet, something she had never before allowed herself to do. Before, it would have been the work of a heartbroken woman, pining after a flame that had long been snuffed out. Now, it was the family business. It was her responsibility, as future part-owner of the estate, to oversee the craftsmanship of the new entry portal.

  A quick search located his business within moments. And when she clicked the link and saw his name on the screen: “Henry Cooper Originals,” her shoulders hunched a little and her cheeks burned. He had been twenty or so keystrokes away. All this time. There was his name alongside a series of slow-loading photographs of his work: custom doors, inlays, cabinetry, and arches, all with scrolling accents and an old-world luster. She was struck by the way looking at his work was like looking at a photograph of him. These were things only he could create.