There wouldn’t be maple-bacon donuts for two, not with Julie. But in another life, one where Sadie didn’t exist, those donutscouldhave been in her future, if Anne had wanted them to be.
It wasn’t about Julie. Just the remarkable realization that Anne was starting to build a life with options—new opportunities to do something worthwhile, new alliances and possibilities—that was what caught her breath.Family: a too-tight word she’d never been able to wear without feeling constricted. Maybe now it might be big enough, comfortable enough, to let her slip inside.
Chapter 20
It was Saturday evening, less than twenty-four hours before Sadie would return, and for the first time in years, Anne was beginning to inhabit a sense of purpose.
Oh, sure, she’d had Conserve Malibu for a long time, since well before the divorce. They’d done some impactful work, too, from animal protection to landslide mitigation. But she’d chosen to volunteer for them because it seemed like a good cause, not because she had any passion for conservation work. Something she did to do something. She’d never really been able tofeelwhat she’d done there.
Anne could already feel the floral arrangements for the center spreading beneath her fingers.
She grinned, a happy little glow heating her chest, and rested her elbows on her office desk, chin in hand. Creating flower arrangements for a small, underfunded LGBTQ community center wasn’t exactly the kind of action that transformed lives. But it was a first step, and itdidmatter. Anne could bring a bit of beauty into a space that needed it. A sense of luxury, of plenty.
She could make a tiny corner of the world a little brighter for people who were like her.
And then she would do more.
Her laptop pinged with the sound of a new email. Anne clicked back to her inbox, expecting some corporate promotion or a reply from the woman who was organizing next month’s sweep at Escondido Beach.
It was from Sadie.
Instantly, Anne’s heart rate doubled. Why would Sadie need to email her if she was coming back tomorrow?
Some thoughts, the subject line read, and before Anne could let herself spiral into worry about what the email might hold, she clicked the subject line.
My Anne,
Tonight, I’m collecting every bit of my scattershot attention and packaging it up very carefully. Here’s the best Sadie I know how to offer. She’s yours, assuming you still want her, and I won’t ever stop giving her to you.
Maybe I should wait to tell you this in person tomorrow. I nearly did. But what I want to say deserves the best packaging, and for me that’s writing—where I can arrange my words as carefully as possible. I’ve already written and deleted a first draft of this email. But then, that’s how it always is with me. The first draft is never the final one; I have to make my mistakes first, stumble along, get it wrong. It’s not until the second draft that I can start to find a way toward what’s right and true.
Barnard called me yesterday. The job’s mine, if I want it. So I’ve been thinking about that, too, at the same time I’ve been thinking about everything else. Do I really want to move to New York? Do I want to make a life somewhere else? And the thing is, I can’t answer that. Not by myself.
Not without you.
You see, at some point in the last four years, you worked your way into me, put your feet up inside my ribs, took over my heart’s tenancy. And so it would be dishonest to pretend I could do anything alone. It’s not just that I want you to go with me, beloved. It’s thatyou go with me. Whether that’s to New York or to my fantasies or to dinner or to my front porch—anywhere. Everywhere.
When I realized last year what I felt for you, I was convinced you’d never reciprocate, and—be honest, Sadie!—I preferred it that way. If I stayed silent and impenetrable, I could still have wonderful, remarkable you. And I wouldn’t have the terrible risk that always comes with more.
I wanted to make sure I’d never break again. It turns out that’s the surest way to live half a life.
To love someone without guardrails means you broaden the capacity of what you feel. You say to your beloved: In opening myself to you I’m giving you the chance to hurt me horribly. You say: I’m choosing a life where, by death or dissolution, what we have together will end. You say: I know that to be yours means I share your grief, too, and your pain, and your suffering.
But you say, too: the joy you give me is worth any devastation.
I love you, Anne, and I choose you over my fear.
I love you. You must know that by now, don’t you? And not only in the way I’ve told you I love you before. I love you like perfume loves skin, like towels love water, like an itch loves the scratch. I love you with capslock. When I wake up, there’s a smile on my face because I know you’re next door. When I write a poem, you’re the feeling that presses down my pen. I love the foggy mornings best because I’m surrounded by the color of your eyes. Did you know any of that? I’ll tell you again. I’ll tell you so much more.
I didn’t know another person could have room for me the way you do.
I’m still scared that I’m too much for you. For anyone. But Iamstrong enough to do this scared. And when pain comes, and it will, I’ll find more strength to barrel through. Right now, though, I can pick happiness and love it—love you—with everything I am.
And what I am, forever and always, is yours.
Sadie
PS: If, by any chance, you’d be open to a phone call before our reunion tomorrow, I’m craving your voice. That low, golden voice of yours. Let bells crack and chimes rust—it’s the loveliest sound in the world. If you lead, sweetheart, I’ll follow.