“Apparently, he left to protect me.” The words taste like ash. “There was a woman. She accused him of something he didn’t do. She admitted he didn’t do it. She was somewhat obsessed with him I guess. Can’t blame her for that part. She’s got good taste. Crazy, but you know. Her father owned the Southern Knights at the time. He threatened to destroy my career if Griffin didn’t get away from me.”
“And he believed it?” Grandma’s mouth drops open.
“He was twenty-two.” I stare at the fireflies blinking across her yard. “He was scared. He thought he was saving me.”
“Hmm, maybe he was saving you. Was he?”
“What?” I snap and turn to look at her. “Whose side are you on?”
She raises an eyebrow at me and rocks. I fold my arms across my chest. Her question hits me somewhere deep. I think about the rejection letters and missed opportunities. Would they have continued? Would they have crushed me before I had a chance to bloom? They might have.
“Maybe,” I admit finally. “Some of it. But he didn’t give me a choice and that's what pisses me off. He just decided what I could handle and then he left me a stupid Post-it note, Grandma. Three sentences.”
“And now you know different.”
“Now I don’t know anything.” I pull my knees up to my chest, feeling sixteen again instead of thirty. “He lied to me. For five years. He let me think,” I can’t finish.
Grandma Dot stops rocking. “What did he let you think?”
“That I wasn’t enough. That he didn’t want me. That everything we had was just,” I swipe at my eyes angrily. “I built walls, Grandma. I built them so high and so thick because Inever wanted to feel that way again. And now he’s telling me the walls were never necessary? That he loved me the whole time?”
“Walls keep things out,” Grandma Dot says slowly. “But they also keep things in.”
I don’t answer. I’m too busy crying, ugly, gasping sobs that I’ve been holding back since I opened that first envelope.She lets me cry. She rocks in her chair and waits for the storm to pass and I love her for it.
When I finally catch my breath, she speaks again. “Your daddy chased your mama to the ends of the earth. You know why it didn’t work?”
“Because she didn’t love him back.” I shake my head at the memories.
“No.” Grandma Dot’s eyes find mine in the fading light. “Because he was chasing what he wanted, not fighting for what she needed. There’s a difference.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That boy didn’t leave because he stopped loving you. He left because loving you was the only thing he had left to give.” She reaches over and squeezes my hand. “He was wrong to leave. Lord knows he was wrong. But he wasn’t chasing his own happiness. He was sacrificing it.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No.It doesn’t.” She pats my hand and settles back in her chair. “But it makes it different from what your daddy did. And that’s worth thinking about.”
The moment she says it, I know I’ll never stop thinking about it. Even though I don’t want to spend a single minute on it.
Stupid boomer wisdom.
I stay at Grandma Dot’s that night. And the next. And the next.
I read Griffin’s letters until I’ve memorized them. I read about the day he left. I can practically see him sitting in his truck outside our apartment for two hours, trying to talk himself into going back inside.
I read about his first Christmas without me, when he bought a gift he couldn’t send. I read about the night of his injury, when he lay on the field and thought of my face.
If I die here,he wrote,at least I’ll die loving you.
I cry until I’m empty. Then I cry some more.
On the fourth morning, I wake up before dawn and walk down to Grandma Dot’s pond. The water is as still as glass, reflecting the pink-orange sky. This is where Griffin and I used to swim. Where we played chicken in the shallow end and ended up tangled together, laughing, kissing and certain we had forever.
I thought I’d lost that girl. The one who loved without armor. But she’s still here. I can feel her, underneath all the scar tissue. She’s been waiting.
The question isn’t whether I still love Griffin. I know the answer to that, I’ve always known it. The question is whether I’m brave enough to let myself love him again.
