When I finally open the door, I brace myself against the frame, as if the house itself might tip under the weight of whatever happens next. I don’t know what to say, so I stare. Her hair is shorter than it was the last time I saw her, lopped at her shoulders, and the ends are uneven like she did it herself after a bottle of wine. Her smile, though. That part hasn’t changed. It splits her face in two, reckless and honest.
“I know you told me not to come, but you know me, I’ve never been good at following instructions.”
I want to respond, but my throat won’t cooperate. I grip the doorframe with my clean hand, bracing for aftershocks. Up close, she smells like hotel soap and cheap shampoo. Her eyes search the room behind me, skimming the paintings on the walls.
“Can I come in, or are we doing this out here?”
I step back and let her pass. The gallery is cool and quiet, with windows thrown wide to the sea.
“Nice,” she says with a nod at the first painting. She walks the length of the gallery, taking in the display of coastal landscapes. “I never thought you’d really do it, open up a place of your own. I thought you’d spend a few months out here, get it out of your system, and then head back to the city.”
My hands start to shake again so I jam them into the pockets of my jeans. I can feel the sticky print of paint on my fingertips. “What are you doing here, Mel?”
She leans against the wall, crossing her arms. “I came to see you.”
I almost laugh. “I said not to.”
She shrugs, but it’s a gesture thick with old ache. “You say a lot of things, Nathan.”
I don’t answer. There are too many things in my mouth at once, too many years of practiced silence.
Melissa’s eyes drop to the floor. She tows her shoe along the hardwood, then looks up at me like she’s about to confess to a murder.
“I think about you every day,” she says. “The city is empty without you. So is the apartment. I quit the job. I—” She stutters, searching for the next place to land. “I know what I did. I know how I hurt you. I thought time would fix it, but…it didn’t.”
There’s a punchline in there somewhere, but I can’t bring myself to make it. “What do you want from me?”
She takes a step forward. “I want to start over. Even if it’s just for a night. I want to remember what it felt like to love you without all the noise.”
I take a step back, and she holds up her hands, empty. “I just want to talk.”
“Like I told you on the phone, there’s nothing left to talk about.”
She nods, but the edge of her smile softens, and she looks lost, the way we all are when the map runs out. “I just… I thought maybe there was something left, something that hasn’t been painted over.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I say, thinking of Diane. “When I told you not to come, I meant it.”
She holds my gaze for a second that feels longer than any winter, then nods. “Fine. I’ll go.” She moves toward the door and I watch her go, every step a slow-motion break. She hesitates at the threshold, then turns.
“I’m staying at the Ocean Side Inn for a couple of days,” she says, almost smiling. “In case you change your mind…”
38
Diane
The trick, I have learned, is to begin before I am ready. Before the day is fully awake. Before my doubts have time to gather and conspire. So, I wake to Sara’s old house clock, crawl from the folds of the guest bed, and walk down the corridor, past the sun-shocked photographs of her ancestors, all peering out, as if to judge my work ethic. I make coffee with a little stovetop pot that spits and hisses, the smell so bitter it seems to tattoo the air.
The window is open, salt in every breath, and below, the reeds lean and flatten under a fickle wind. The morning, a brilliant blue, features seagulls wheeling above the shore, their cries sharp as broken crockery. I open the laptop and watch the cursor blink at the top of a blank document. Already I can feel the pressure at my temples, the knowing that what I write will never match the thing inside my chest.
But the trick is to begin, so I do.
It’s been weeks since I have managed to write anything that wasn’t a to-do list or a desperate, unsent email to my agent about how I am not cut out for this. How I am squatting in the crumbling glory of Sara’s house, burning through her beans and her goodwill, walking the beaches at dusk like a stray. But Sarawouldn't mind. She always said the sea was good for me. She said all writers should be exiled to lonely coastlines with nothing but their ghosts and bad habits for company.
This morning, for the first time in months, I believe her. The story unravels faster than I can catch it.
I type until my wrists ache. I write dialogue between two people who want each other so badly that their words scrape. I write a kitchen table scene so real I can smell the burnt toast and the echo of laughter. When I pause to sip my coffee, it is already cold and thick at the bottom of the mug. I drink it anyway.
My novel is about a widow who moves to a small town and opens a secondhand bookstore. The townspeople are wary of her. They think she is running from something (they are right), but none of them can guess what. In this morning’s chapter, she finds an unsigned letter in the pages of a used mystery novel, a letter that makes her shake. The handwriting is familiar; it’s her own. She must have written it to herself in some forgotten, desperate moment.