“Checked every single box on the list. Followed the plan perfectly.”
“I just never managed to figure out how to fill it with anything that actually mattered.”
There was a long, weighted silence between us.
“I waited,” she said softly. Her voice barely above a whisper.
“Not forever. I didn’t put my entire life on hold or anything like that.”
“But longer than I probably should have. Long enough that it surprised me.”
“Every single time someone asked me why I never moved away from Millbrook, why I stayed in this small town when I had opportunities elsewhere, I thought about that note.”
“About whether you’d ever read it.”
Guilt settled in my chest like a stone. Heavy and cold.
“I’m so incredibly sorry I didn’t come back sooner.”
“I’m not,” she said, which surprised me. “If you had come back after a year, or even five years, you wouldn’t be who you are now.”
“And I wouldn’t be who I am.”
“We both needed those years to grow up. To become complete people on our own instead of just halves of a couple who never got the chance to figure out who they were separately.”
I studied her carefully. “Are you married?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I loved people. Had relationships.”
“Some of them were good, even. But I never stopped loving you, Chris.”
“And that made it impossible to love anyone else completely. There was always this reservation.”
“This part of me that wasn’t fully available.”
Something broke open in my chest. Relief and guilt and grief and hope all tangled together.
In a way I couldn’t begin to untangle.
Finding Our Way Back
We talked for hours. About everything we’d missed in each other’s lives.
About the people we’d become. About our careers and our families.
Our disappointments and our successes. About the quiet, constant grief of letting go of someone without ever getting any kind of closure.
The house grew dark around us. Neither of us bothered to turn on more lights.
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