by Cara McKenna
So that’s what his writing looks like. So he’d touched this envelope, addressed it, sealed it, carried it to a mailbox and watched the slot swallow it, feeling . . . what?
She set the envelope on the coffee table, putting all her groceries away, changing into lounging clothes, starting a load of laundry in the basement. She puttered and made dinner, watched bad TV, and didn’t find the balls to open the thing until her third glass of wine, a few minutes shy of nine o’clock.
Good job, genius. Way to get drunk in order to face reading news from your cripplingly alcoholic ex-lover. Slow clap for you. She pushed the glass to the far end of the table.
Curling up under a blanket, she wedged herself into one corner of the couch. She ripped the envelope gingerly, worried that too aggressive an exposure might somehow scare Rob’s words off the page, send them fluttering to the floor in an unreadable mess, lost forever in the carpet pile. It all felt very delicate.
Gently, she unfolded two sheets of lined paper covered in small, neat lettering in blue ink.
Neat. Did that mean sober?
Before she read a single word, she tried to picture him, penning this. At his kitchen table, surely, having procured this long-unused pad of paper from some shelf, maybe gone to his car to even find a pen.
Or maybe not. Maybe he was a list-maker, like her. The things she didn’t know about this man . . .
“Okay,” she said through a long, reedy sigh. And she read.
Dear Merry,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I needed to write first and foremost to apologise. I’m sorry I acted like such a colossal arse when we parted. I know you were only trying to help me that night, but I was frightened. That’s no excuse, but it’s a reason, I suppose. I’m sorry.
What we had together was special, to me—so special I have no adequate words to describe it. I hope perhaps the better moments stand out as clearly in your memory as they do in mine, and that my behaviour the night we said good-bye—or rather didn’t—hasn’t ruined them.
Merry pictured her camera, wrapped in Rob’s yellow tee shirt and stashed in a shopping bag on her closet’s top shelf. Not ruined, no. But frozen. Frozen like his face in that photograph, the one she’d been too scared to even glimpse. She looked back to his words.
I haven’t had a drink—
A homely noise rattled from Merry’s chest, the sound of dread escaping to make room for deeper breaths. For relief.
Not that night or any night since. I’ve been staying in Inverness for a while now, getting myself sorted. I think I’m doing fairly well . . . I’ve technically been sober for close to three years now, though in truth my recovery never really started until last autumn, and now in earnest, since the late winter when I moved.
I know hiding away in the middle of nowhere wasn’t really fixing anything that’s wrong with me, merely procrastinating the job, so I’ve begun trying to make a proper go of sobriety. It’s not been easy, but I do think it gets less difficult, week by week. I don’t feel in danger of relapsing lately, not the way I did most nights, when I first made the move. Sometimes if I feel especially unsettled, I’ll go out to the cottage for a few days. This probably makes the other regulars from my AA group nervous—here he’d added a smiley face—but it does me good to get out of the city and clear my head, and tend to the property and so forth.
She paused to smile at that, her heart yanked back across the ocean to the cold, majestic Highlands for a blink, her body still curled on this soft couch, in this warm little apartment.
I won’t bore you much more with my life—recovery is nothing if not dull—but I wanted to say I’m sorry. However much you need to read those two words to believe them, pretend I’ve written them here twice as many times. You treated me with more kindness and affection than anyone ever has in my life, and I was a bastard to push you away. I hope it didn’t sour your entire trip . . . but perhaps I’m giving myself too much credit.
I miss you every day. Hearing your voice, seeing your beautiful face and your smile. Holding you, smelling you. I hope these don’t sound like some stalker’s words—just those of a man who misses a woman as he hadn’t realised he could.
Merry paused to pinch the bridge of her nose, too unsure of what she was even feeling to let herself cry.
I told you in Inverness that awful night, you hadn’t met the real me, off in the hills. But I know now you did. That man was me, at my chemical best. Calm and content, if cowardly. Here in the city I’m not always so charming. I get anxious and sad, but I suppose that’s most any human being’s lot. I’m learning to simply be that way, to sit with those feelings, as some of the people in AA say, without trying to drown them in a glass. It doesn’t feel good, but then, that’s life. Being drunk never really felt all that good, either, so I tell myself I’m not missing much.
I’m dawdling now. I could have said all this in three lines, on one of the postcards you gave me.
I fucked up and I’m sorry.
I’m sober.
I miss you.
I considered making a grand gesture of a trip, flying across the world to find you, say these things in person . . . But to be honest, I was afraid to risk my trajectory with the sobriety, should things not go well, leaving me stranded in a strange city. And also because it felt intrusive. I haven’t the faintest clue how you feel about me—if you feel anything at all. This seemed the safest way of saying all this. Spineless? Perhaps. That’s been my MO before. But I promise I was aiming for respectful.
I’ll close with an invitation, one with absolutely no expectation attached, no pressure.
If you feel for me—enough to forgive me or even just enough to come and slap me in person—please come back to Inverness, someday—here he named an intersection, and Merry scoured the map in her memory, trying to place it. Any Tuesday, between noon and one. Next week or a year from now, whenever you’re ready. My address may be changing shortly and I haven’t got a phone—I’m still trying to keep my life as simple as possible—but my box at the post office is on the envelope, and my best guess at the airfare is enclosed—
“What the fuck?”
She grabbed the envelope and felt inside, sliding out a money order for two thousand dollars. She blinked at it. What in the hell kind of hermit was this man? Too overwhelmed to contemplate it, she slid it back in the envelope and set it aside, picking up the letter.
Write to arrange a date if you like, or to tell me to fuck off. But unless I hear from you, I’ll be waiting every Tuesday, hoping maybe I’ll see you walking toward me down the pavement. I’d give anything for a chance to say all these things to you in person. If you ever find you’re willing to hear them.
Wishing you all the best, whatever you decide. You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever had the good fortune of knowing, and you deserve all the happiness in the world.
With much regret and hope, and love,
Rob
***
She didn’t do a thing for weeks. Didn’t write Rob back. Didn’t touch the money. She didn’t book any flights, certainly, but neither did she throw away the contents of the envelope.
She read the letter a hundred times. In the morning, late at night, while wearing Rob’s old shirt. She’d brought herself to look at his photo, and once the floodgate was open, she soon viewed it so often her camera battery died. She charged it and sent the photo to her phone. She zoomed. Those blue eyes, held in her hand . . . but in actuality, so far across the land and sea.
And so on a Sunday in early July, aided by an overcast, three-hour walk and absolutely no alcohol, Merry returned home, opened her laptop, and booked herself another trip to Scotland. San Fran to London, and a sleeper train to Inverness. A flight north cost about as much, but she could use all those hours to think, meditating as the fields slid by, then the lakes, then the mountai
ns.
She packed light, enough clothes for a five-day, four-night trip. She’d arrive in Inverness on the last Tuesday in July at eight thirty in the morning, and if she was lucky and scored an early check-in, that left enough time to shower before getting to Rob’s appointed corner. And if he didn’t show, that would still give him three days to find a note she could leave in his post office box, with an appointed time of her own.
And if he still didn’t show, what then?
Well, then she really did need to get busy forgetting him.
She made a list of the things she’d meant to do on that original trip to Inverness. She’d make the most of it either way.
She didn’t write to tell him her plans. They’d first met with her unannounced, startling arrival. They might as well reunite in the same fashion.
She deposited his money order, but only so she might give him one in return. She wasn’t wealthy by any means, but her promotion had left her comfortable enough to fund her own vacations—surely more comfortable than a man who presumably hadn’t worked in three years.
She had no idea what to expect, if he showed.
A tearful, somber reunion, laced with apology and regrets?
Or would she stare into those eyes for all of ten seconds and forgive him utterly, then spend the rest of the time in some lovey-lusty knot of I’m so sorry and I forgive you, and then perhaps darker sentiments? Show me how sorry you are, Rob, some twisted inner temptress would sometimes murmur, in her imagination. Turn this mess into a game, into a dynamic they already knew how process together.
But probably not.
He’d broken her heart, and far deeper than he probably knew. Slipping back into that old role-playing wouldn’t come quickly, she bet. They needed to start again. To accept that they’d parted nearly as strangers, with such a dark and significant part of Rob kept secret . . . even as such tender ones had been laid bare before her, by the light of an oil lamp.
She sighed, fingering the corners of her boarding pass, breathing deeply, waiting for her heart to unknot itself. Sometimes she glanced up at the odd male voice, at an English accent, but the man she was so anxious to see was waiting on the other side of the world.
If he’s still waiting.
She didn’t know him well enough to guess how long he might keep that promise. How many Tuesdays he might stand on some street corner, scanning the crowd for her face. Through the heat of summer, through the autumn wind and the sting of snow?
A different crowd was moving now, gathering, brushing past the pack propped between her knees. Boarding had been announced. She watched spacily as people got positioned.
Then her zone was called, and she was up, hugging her bag to her chest, feet carrying her toward the gate.
Her pass was scanned, smiles exchanged, and she was following her fellow passengers down a carpeted tunnel. Around a corner and into a plane.
And all at once, it was too late to turn back.
Chapter Nineteen
Eleven hours on the plane. Twelve on the sleeper train—a misnomer in Merry’s opinion. She hadn’t managed a minute’s shut-eye, just watched England and Scotland sliding by as terrestrial constellations, the dawn arriving with the Highlands, painting the mountains in lavender and slate across a canvas of watery blue.
Somewhere at the heart of this trip, she wanted a do-over, so she’d booked a room at the same hotel from the previous fall. She got lucky and was allowed to check in early, with nearly three hours to shower and change and find some breakfast before Rob’s appointed meet-up window opened at noon.
She did all those things. Dressed in her favorite jeans and a flattering, casual button-up. Fussed over her hair and makeup, wondering if he’d even show to behold the effort. Hoping he would. Fearing he would. Hope, fear, hope, fear.
The corner he’d named was only a few blocks away, and she headed out right at twelve, heart whacking her ribs the second the door clicked shut behind her.
Down the hall and two flights to the ground floor, through the lobby. Through the revolving door, hang a right. The sun was high, warming her hair and shoulders. The sky was blue, and as clear as her mind was cloudy.
After no more than five minutes’ walk, she stopped dead.
Oh fuck.
There he was. With a leash in his hand and the nameless dog sitting at his feet.
Standing on this very street where he’d left her behind.
It had been cold that night, and dark. Now it was impossibly sunny, warm and sweet-smelling. But one thing was exactly the same—the naked pain in her heart, the pain that seemed to split her with tiny rips and tears, beat after beat after beat.
Part of her wanted to run to him. Part wanted to turn on her heel and flee. Instead she simply kept moving, kept walking, every step carrying her closer, closer.
He hadn’t seen her. He was looking down the road, the other way. Checking his watch.
He owns a watch. Who was this stranger who could look so fucking familiar?
She saw his nostrils flare and wondered how many Tuesdays he’d been doing this for. She’d gotten his letter over two months ago. And he’d come here every week since then, pacing, checking the time, hoping, waiting . . . going home disappointed? And home to where?
You’re a very strange man, she thought, a half block away now. And she felt the first shadow of a smile tug at her lips.
He looked . . . different. His hair was neater, his stubble nowhere near approaching beardhood, though she could make out his silver patch even in profile, and those bold streaks at his temples.
And then he turned.
All at once she was walking on the ocean floor, molasses-slow and dreamlike, a couple dozen paces that felt longer than the flight from California.
He squinted, brows pinching together, then rising with realization. Those same eyes, blue and melancholy. He wore newish-looking jeans and a tee the heathered color of granite. Well-worn sneakers she’d never seen before, and those sneakers were moving now, carrying this twenty-first-century man toward her. The dog preceded him, straining, tail wagging madly with recognition.
Rob didn’t smile, but his lips were tight with unmistakable hope.
Oh, she knew those lips. She’d studied them ten thousand times in that single photo, remembered how they’d felt and tasted on lonely, idle evenings when her heart had felt forgiving. The things they’d whispered by the glow of an oil lamp—confessions and pleas and sweet nothings—and all the pleasure they’d given her.
She took a deep, bracing breath, mustering clarity.
He looks healthy, she thought, and most important of all, sober. Lucid. Calm as could be expected of a man put through all this anticipation.
They came to a stop a few feet from each other. Rob looked perplexed. And hesitant. Excited paws bounced off Merry’s thigh, and she wanted so many things . . . To run away. To embrace this man. To kiss him. Just to touch him—his face and hair, the spot on his chest where she’d lain her head and memorized his heartbeat.
Instead she stooped to greet the dog, and managed a smile for its owner. “Hi, stranger.”
Her voice threw him, woke him from some trance.
“Merry.” He said nothing else for long seconds, mouth open, eyes narrowed against the sunshine, regarding her with awe or disbelief as pedestrians brushed past them. “I wondered if you would ever come.”
She straightened and held her purse strap, needing an anchor. “I did, too. But here I am.”
His stare was intense now, burning with so many emotions, too many to pinpoint and label. Her gaze fled to the surrounding buildings.
“I remember this place,” she said sadly, wandering a couple paces to the nearest storefront and tracing one of its diamond-shaped panes. “It was a candy shop last fall . . . I guess it really did go out of business. Makes me
wish I’d bought something from it.”
Rob waited until she faced him again, then said quietly, “You look well.”
She met his eyes. “You, too. Really healthy.”
“And clean,” he said, the corner of his lips hitching a fraction.
She mistook him at first, thinking he meant sober—but no, merely showered. “That, too. I could say the same for myself.”
“You look pretty. With makeup,” he clarified, gesturing at his own face.
“Thanks.” This was all so awkward. Like they’d never kissed, let alone done all those other things together.
Another tight smile. “Though you look even prettier without it.”
Her heart broke a little then, the tiniest, sweetest pain. It made her want to open up and close herself tight all at once. To let him in, and to keep him out. Some of the wall between them crumbled, creating an opening, but obscuring things, too, dust rising.
“Thanks,” she said again.
“I’m not quite sure what to say . . . though I’ve rehearsed this a thousand times in my head.”
“You said plenty in your letter.” Merry felt her knotted back muscles soften. Soften like those two pages had, handled again and again and again, these past couple months.
“I hope it found you well.”
She nodded, then sat her butt on the former candy shop’s front window ledge. “I’ve been fine. A bit restless, but everything’s good.” Boring and stale, like a closed-off room. So much stimulation, so many people; yet she felt so alone back home. Listless. Isolated in a way she’d never felt while hiking all those miles by her herself, or sequestered with only a single man for company. The world felt full out here, in its starkness. Her mother had made this land sound hard and cold as a gravestone, yet Merry had never felt so alive.
“I’ve missed you.” Rob’s gaze dropped to her feet—or to the dog—then hopped back up. “So much.”
She swallowed, emotion like gristle lodged in her aching throat. The words hurt as she coaxed them out. “I missed you, too. But I . . . I didn’t know how to even let myself feel about it. The way we said good-bye, and the way we were, even before that . . . It feels like a dream, sometimes. But other parts are crystal clear.” She shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t have any idea how I feel, to be honest.”