The Look of Love: A Novel

by Sarah Jio

  But she loved him. Oh, did she love him. And she still does. She knows it with every beat of her heart. It’s the fact that clings to her now as the cab speeds down I-5. It’s the whisper in her ear as twilight sets in. The city is in sight. Her Seattle. The skyline is like a hug, a reminder that she will be OK. But will she?

  Cam’s somewhere out there, she thinks. Yes, January 19. He was supposed to get home from his trip today. Maybe they even passed at the airport unknowingly. But what does it matter? Jane shakes her head. It’s over.

  The cab turns onto First Avenue, then proceeds down the hill. She feels the familiar bumps and grooves of the cobblestones beneath the tires of the cab. Home. Her beloved Pike Place Market, welcoming her back. A few moments later, her building is in sight.

  “Thank you,” she says to the cabdriver, handing him two twenties.

  The driver thanks her, then fiddles with the radio. A second later, Dusty Springfield’s smoky voice fills the cab: “The look of love is in your eyes. The look your heart can’t disguise.” She remembers the dance she and Cam shared at Katie and Josh’s wedding. She remembers the way he held her. What did he say that night? “I want you to think of me, and this moment, whenever you hear this song. I want you to feel me.”

  And she feels him now, deeply. She wheels her bag onto the sidewalk and stands in front of her building. A young couple strolls past, hand in hand.

  It’s nearly seven, and Bernard walks out of the building. “Jane,” he says when he sees her. “Just getting back from vacation?”

  She nods.

  “Just in time for the storm.”

  “Storm?”

  He points to the sky. “Those are snow clouds up there.”

  “I know,” she says, remembering her first lesson in clouds, given by Bernard more than a year ago. She feels a snowflake hit her cheek.

  “But you never told me what you saw in the clouds that day.” He smiles. “Do you remember?”

  “I do,” she says. “The image still jars me, in fact.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was a heart,” she says softly.

  Bernard nods knowingly. “I expected as much,” he says approvingly. He tips his hat. “Good night, Jane.”

  She turns to face the street, and in the far corner of the night sky, there’s a moon. Snow clouds are moving in, but they haven’t obscured it entirely yet, and when a wispy cloud passes, Jane can see its full round form. Her heart begins to race. She remembers what Colette told her about second chances, how love can be restored on a snowy night, with a full moon presiding overhead.

  For a moment, the world is nearly frozen into stillness. A seagull flies above, but its wings barely move. The couple on the sidewalk pause in an infinite embrace. Even the snowflakes themselves seem suspended in midair, enraptured in this moment. Jane is too. And when the cab begins to pull away and she opens her mouth to hail it back, her lips don’t seem to work. Her voice is muted. But the driver sees her somehow, and stops the car. She gets in and scrolls through the e-mails on her phone until she finds the one Cam sent her in Hawaii about how he had rented a house in Wallingford after his lease downtown expired. She didn’t respond to it, of course, but now she wishes she had. “I have to see someone,” she says, breathless. “Can you take me to Wallingford? 4634 Densmore. Please, hurry.”

  Across town, Cam is stepping out of a cab in front of the house he’s just rented, one of those old Craftsmans, quintessentially Seattle. Jane would like it; he’s sure of it. Of course that old Dusty Springfield song would play on the radio on his drive home from the airport. Jane haunts him still. And maybe she always will.

  Cam sighs as he pays his fare and slides the strap of his bag over his shoulder. He thought about Jane every minute of his time in New York. He feels a snowflake on his cheek, and looks up at the streetlight. Or is there?

  The wind is picking up now, swirling a pile of shriveled autumn leaves this way and that. It’s weeks into winter, but a single leaf clings to a high branch on the old maple tree in the parking strip. It’s seen sleet and snow and wind, but it stubbornly hangs on. Could their love survive this? Could it hold on, just a moment longer?

  Cam feels the bitter air brush his cheek. A cold north wind. A dog barks in the distance, and he hears a child laughing from a nearby front porch. A college-aged guy pedals past on a bike, leaves crunching beneath his tires. And then Cam sees the moon, big and bright and full, carving a hole through the clouds, hovering over him.

  He knows he has to see her. Those green eyes. One last moment.

  “Wait,” he calls out to the cab, which has already started off down the street. “Stop,” he says, dropping his bag, waving his arms. But the driver doesn’t see him. He motors away, oblivious to the part he might have played in this developing love story in which each moment is precious.

  Cam looks down at his feet. The snow is falling harder now. He picks up his bag and walks back to his house, where he slumps over on the front stoop, staring ahead for several minutes as the snow falls. And then, headlights strobe through the snowy night like two giant sunbeams.

  Jane’s cab pulls onto Densmore, and she wipes the foggy window with the sleeve of her coat. Her heart is in her throat now. Every year, every day, every second of her life has led her to this moment. The cab stops, and she reaches for the door handle. Her heart is so full she feels it may burst. It is January 19, and Jane knows it is the first day of the rest of her life. Cam is in the distance, sitting on his stoop. And for the first time, she can see clearly.

  Epilogue

  Pike Place Market

  Christmas Eve 2042

  Cam stands beside me in our bedroom. He looks sharp in his tux, even for a man of sixty-two. But I always knew he’d age well. He presses his nose in the place between my neck and my shoulder, which still sends a tingly feeling down my back, even after all these years. “You’d better get dressed,” he says. “The ceremony starts in an hour. The kids are all there.”

  I tighten the right strap of my white silk slip and stare at my reflection in our bedroom mirror. I turned fifty-seven last year. There are wrinkles around my eyes now, and my hair has lost its luster. But I feel beautiful, because to Cam, I am.

  “Shoo,” I say to my husband. “It’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her dress before the wedding.”

  He takes my hand lovingly in his. “To think that I was never going to get married, and not only did you get me to marry you; you’re getting me to walk down the aisle again. You’re either really good or I must really love you.”

  I grin. “Both.”

  He kisses the top of my head, then rests his chin on me and we stare into the mirror that we face together. “Honey, I’d renew my vows every day of the week if I could. But get dressed! Everyone’s waiting.”

  I smile. “I will. You go on ahead to the church. I’ll meet you there in a half hour, promise. There’s something I need to do first.”

  “All right,” he says. “Don’t leave me at the altar, now.”

  “Promise,” I add with a wink.

  After he’s closed the door behind him, I slip into my white silk floor-length dress and give myself a once-over in the mirror before letting my eyes rest on the framed photo of my family on the table beside the mirror. Cam and our two sons. Darby is a physical therapist; Landon, an attorney. I’m proud of them, exceedingly so.

  I smile as I reach for the ancient book in the drawer to my right. I run my hand along the spine and study the lettering on the leather cover just as I did the day I first took it into my own hands. I think about the woman I was then—a little jaded, lost, unsure. But this book set me on the journey of discovery, a journey that taught me about love. I nod to myself as I reach for the birthday card I purchased last week. It nestles in its pale pink envelope. I reach for my pen and write:

  Dear Grace,

  Happy
birthday. I am an old friend of your mother. I knew you as a child, before your parents moved to California. You see, twenty-nine years ago, I was there when you came into the world. I know that you are, like I was, lost when it comes to love. The year before my thirtieth birthday, a stranger wrote me a birthday card, and in the card, she told me something about myself that changed my life forever. And that is what I must do for you. Grace, you have a gift, a very special gift. And a beautiful one. I’ve enclosed my card. Please call me when you receive this. There are many things I must tell you, things that will alter your life forever, for the better, if you trust your heart as I did. You get to choose. But, if I may say, love is always the best choice. And I challenge you to be brave. I will be here when you’re ready to talk. Oh, and do we have much to discuss.

  Sincerely,

  Jane Williams

  I tuck the card in the envelope and address it to her at the university in Italy where she is studying abroad, in her adopted father’s homeland. I find postage, enough for the letter to travel a good long way, then affix the stamps. It’s half past one. The ceremony will begin in a half hour, just enough time to walk the three blocks to the church.

  I reach for my sweater and step outside to the street. Pike Place looks just as glorious as it ever has, and as I navigate the old cobblestone streets, I think about my journey, and the people along the way. Pigeons congregate on the corner where the old newsstand once was, and I smile when I think of Mel and his beloved Vivian, rest their souls. Elaine’s daughter, Ellie, runs Meriwether now, and I still stop in for chocolate croissants on occasion, but not often enough. Flynn and his cat, Cezanne III, share an apartment a block away. He’ll be at the ceremony, as will Katie and Josh, who just welcomed their first grandchild.

  I stop at the Flower Lady and poke my head in the door. My assistant, Alise, shakes her head in surprise. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a wedding to go to? As in yours?”

  I grin. “It can’t start without the bride. Besides, I forgot to pick up my bouquet.” I poke my head into the refrigerator behind the counter and retrieve it. “Gorgeous job, by the way, Alise.”

  “Thanks,” she says. “I’ve learned from the best.” She sets down a vase of white daffodils and then turns to me with big eyes. “You’ll never believe who just came into the shop.”

  “Who, Brad Pitt?”

  “Eww, he’s so old,” she says with a grin. “No. Lo Hemsworth. The mega-best-selling author.” She shakes her head. “I still can’t believe she used to work here with you.”

  I smile to myself. Lo, who’ll be at the ceremony later, went on to write four critically acclaimed books on love and dating. The first received a generous (and life-changing) endorsement from Oprah Winfrey.

  “She bought herself a bouquet of roses,” Alise says.

  “Ah,” I say with a knowing smile. “Yes.” Lo’s life changed when she finally realized she didn’t need a man to buy her flowers. She could do that for herself.

  “All right, dear, I’m off to my wedding.”

  Annie grins. “I’ll sneak into the back pew just as soon as I can close things down.”

  “Hurry,” I say. “I want you to be there.” I hold my bouquet in one hand and the pink envelope in the other. On the next block, I stop and take a deep breath as I let the birthday card fall from my hand into the dark abyss of the mailbox on First Avenue.

  I smile to myself as a seagull squawks overhead. And so begins another woman’s journey. Love is waiting for her, in all its forms, ready to be discovered, reveled in, felt, and seen from every angle: the raw and the beautiful, the joyful and the sad, the temporary and the eternal, and every shade in between. And love can be hers if she’s brave enough to look for it, and ultimately, to see it.

  The end