I shrug, even though Evan can’t see it. “Maybe?”
“I’m going to ask you again, Melody. Are you in love with Beckett Nash? Is that the real reason why you don’t want to go through with the interview?”
“He’s about to get married, Evan.”
He takes a gulp of his coffee. “Okay, say no more.”
“But you’re mad.”
“No, I’m not. I’ll call off the interview for you.”
“Thank you, Evan,” I say.
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No need to be. I understand where you’re coming from. You’re not just my author, Melody. You’re my friend first. I’ll never force you to do something that makes you uncomfortable. Even if itcouldsave your career.”
“I don’t know that there’s much left worth saving.”
“Oh, Mel,” he sighs. “You’re right about a lot of things, but this is one area where you’re wrong. I know that losing your mom was horrible, but there’s so much of her in you still. You’re an artist, whether you want to be or not. It’s in your bones.”
“I had the hardest time coming up with my last few books though, Ev. The universe really hasn’t given me much material to work with lately.”
“Give life a chance to surprise you. You never know what’s waiting just around the corner.”
I smile. “Are we okay?”
“Always,” he assures me.
“I love you.”
“Love you more,” he replies.
Chapter 36
I spend the next few days figuring out a plan.
Absolved of the interview, I have one measly event remaining later in the summer to promoteHoliday Island. I’m tempted to cancel it, but I don’t, at least not yet. I need to figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of the next two months. It seems like an impossibly long time.
I’ve been in my own kind of time loop since Aruba, I realize. Completely stuck. I go to work, come home, grade papers. I don’t see friends. Don’t go to the gym or practice self-care. Outside of my weekly therapy sessions, I have very little to look forward to. I haven’t gone back on any dating apps because the last time ended so badly. I’m an author. Authors tend to be reclusive. But that’s only really good during the times when we’re actively working on a project—which, for me, is not the case at the present moment.
I think deep in my heart I know what the issue is.
I don’t have closure.
I live in the apartment I grew up in, only I haven’t opened the door to my mother’s bedroom in more than two years. She doesn’t live here anymore. A normal person would clean out the space. Donate her clothes to the Salvation Army. Maybe renovate. Maybe move. But I just keep living around it. As if by ignoring it, it won’t exist.
It would be wise, I decide, to use these next two months to find some closure.
Mom’s ashes live in the urn on the old credenza in our living room. She got that piece of furniture from the building’s laundry room. Sometimes, people would leave things there, paintings or light furnishings, but this heavy mahogany credenza with intricate carvings and curved legs was left behind by an elderly couple after they moved into assisted living when I was about seven years old. My mom thought it was the most opulent piece of furniture she’d ever seen. She batted her eyelashes at Charlie, the building’s maintenance man, and got him to deliver it to the apartment via a hand truck. She set it in the center of the long wall of the living room, and, pleased with herself for scoring such a find, she said, “Check it out, Pretty Girl. We’re fancy now.”
So, naturally, it only made sense that I would keep her urn there.
The whole time she was sick, we never discussed her dying.
She never indicated what she would want: if she’d rather be buried or cremated, what kind of service, none of it. I went in blind. But in many cultures, ashes are meant to be scattered, and I think when I chose that route, the idea that I would scatter hers one day was somewhere in the back of my heavily medicated, despondent mind.
