Her mother had quietly disappeared at some point. Giving us privacy.
Bella led me to the kitchen. We sat at the same table where we used to do homework together in high school.
Our knees almost touching underneath it.
She made coffee automatically, out of habit. Though neither of us ended up drinking it.
We just needed something to do with our hands.
“I stayed,” she said after a long silence. “I went to SUNY Albany for a teaching degree.”
“Taught middle school art for about five years. Then I opened a small art studio and gallery downtown about three years ago.”
I smiled despite the overwhelming emotions churning in my chest. “You always said you’d do that.”
“I remember you sketching floor plans for your dream studio. In the margins of your notebooks during history class.”
She looked at me then, really looked. “And you became a doctor. You actually did it.”
“I did,” I said. “I built exactly the life I told everyone I would.”
“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.
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