The way I felt the day he came home that first time was a feeling unlike any other. Relief washed over me with a vengeance. I felt whole again, complete.
I must have stood in his arms in the airport for an hour, relishing the way he felt, the way he smelled. I knew I would never let him go again.
When I stood at the altar in the St. James’s chapel and pledged to love him forever, I knew I would. Maybe I hadn’t yet considered what that would look like. Maybe I didn’t truly understand what that would come to mean. But I would love him anyway. And it would be OK. I had pledged to be with that man for better or for worse.
And this? This was worse. This was worst—well, almost worst, which felt close enough. But despite how it had turned out, I knew one thing without a doubt: even knowing what I knew now, I would do it all again. Adam was a soldier, but, in a way, so was I. And I, like him, like his best men, would be loyal until the very end.
TEN
georgia
ansley
After the years Mr. Solomon and I spent feuding over the fence that separated our yards, I swore that if I ever had a new neighbor, I would do whatever it took to make sure we were friendly. We wouldn’t have to have cocktails on the porch together; I just didn’t want any tension.
I wished more than anything when I saw Jack walking out the front door of the house, then grabbing a box out of the moving truck, that he hadn’t seen me. But he had. And I couldn’t hide or pretend I didn’t know he was there.
Even before I crossed the short distance between my yard and the one next door, I felt the chill. Jack had always had this air about him, a manner that made him seem perpetually amused and never surprised. It was like he always knew what was coming next, even when it was unfathomably shocking to the rest of us. But now, he barely ventured a smile.
It was as though Mr. Solomon had never left. History was repeating itself. I wondered, briefly, if things weren’t what they seemed. But, while people say things are never as they seem, I would beg to differ. In my fifty-eight years, I’ve found that things are almost always as they seem.
Itseemedlike Jack was moving in beside me. My heart raced and my stomach sank all at once. I had no idea how to feel because I had broken up with him—if that’s even what you call it when you’re a grown-up. But it had felt more like taking something I had always carried inside of me—something that defined me, that was the very essence of me, that I would be irreparably different without—and removing it from my life. That’s what I had done to Jack. I had removed him.
Although, not all that well, I decided, as I smiled shyly.
I had known Jack for forty-three years, and I knew his smile. I saw it when I closed my eyes. Even during all those years we were apart, the thought of it and the warmth of it carried me through many a cold night. So I knew what he shot my way wasn’t a Jack smile. At least, it wasn’t a Jack-and-Ansley smile. It might have been a smile he gave to someone else, someone he didn’t love or feel unbreakably connected to. Did that mean he didn’t feel those things toward me anymore?
I knew I was going to cry. I wanted to turn and run, but he was walking toward me in his perfectly pressed khaki shorts and blue-and-white-checked Peter Millar button-down with the sleeves rolled up. Despite his age, his hair was still the same lush dark brown it had been when we were kids, the same color as his eyes that, just like Sloane’s and Caroline’s, had tiny flecks of yellow that made them impossible to look away from. As he walked across the yard, I noticed he was wearing a new pair of driving shoes—and he still had the same strong, muscular legs I had watched run across the sand to catch a football for countless hours as a teenager. Forty-three years later, the man could still take my breath away. I tried to quickly wipe my tears and scolded myself. This was a situation of my own making.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.
His voice lacked its usual warmth, which made me cry even harder. This had now crossed the line from bad to humiliating.
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to maintain a smidgen of my dignity. “It’s harder than I thought that Mr. Solomon is gone.”
I really was sad about him being gone. But that wasn’t what had made my emotions overflow. That was reserved for seeing Jack for the first time since we had parted ways.
He smirked and shook his head. “Just the reaction I was looking for.”
I didn’t know what to say. I felt frozen to the ground. I had never experienced this from Jack, never imagined that someone I loved so much, whom I had so much history with, could turn so cold toward me.
The last time he had acted like this, in fact, had been the summer I turned seventeen, right here, in Peachtree Bluff, on the boardwalk across the street. Jack and I had had a summer romance. No. More than a summer romance. A summer love, the kind that, once you left it, woke you in the middle of the night, yearning for something, searching for it, reaching for it, until you realized that what you really wanted, what you were really asking for, was someone who lived several states away. Too far to visit, too long distance to call. A love too impractical to try to keep, though your heart had really been his since the first time his hand brushed yours.
I hadn’t seen or talked to him in nine months that summer, and as you do when you’re young and insecure and unaware that crushes fade but true love lasts a lifetime, I had convinced myself he wasn’t interested in me. And so, when I found out the boy I had been dating for the past two months was going to be in Peachtree Bluff for the first week of summer, sure, Jack crossed my mind. But I scolded myself for thinking he would still want to be with me. So, there I was, walking down the boardwalk to a local seafood restaurant, holding the hand of Stan whose last name I can’t even remember, when I caught a glimpse of Jack. My blood ran cold, and I dropped Stan’s hand. But it was too late. Jack had seen me. I couldn’t walk away. So I smiled and said, demurely, “Hi, Jack.”
Time stopped as I looked into his eyes. Something had happened to him in the nine months since I had last seen him. He had grown into himself, transformed from an awkward teenager with limbs too long for his frame to a tall, broad, handsome man. He looked from Stan to me and back to Stan, and it wasn’t so much that I saw his jaw set; I felt it. “Hello, Ansley,” he said, without venturing a smile. He turned his cold expression to Stan, who took a step back. He wasn’t wrong to be afraid. Stan was, after all, a good five inches shorter than Jack.
Something broke inside of me as I realized the boy I had kissed good-bye through tears and promises of next summer only months earlier hated me. When he said, “Looks like your summer plans were different from mine,” and walked away, I could scarcely breathe. I realized then, knew in my head what my heart had felt all along: his summer plans had been me.
It took me a moment to catch my breath before Stan and I continued walking down the boardwalk in silence. As we reached the door of the restaurant, I looked at him and said, “I’m so sorry. You’re very nice, but I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
I slipped off my sandals and took off running down the boardwalk. I could hear Stan calling behind me, “Don’t you at least want to get some shrimp?” But I was already gone. In fact, I realized, I’d never really been with Stan to begin with.
I still remember how rough the wood felt underneath my feet that night, the warmth of the boards that had spent all spring sunning themselves. I didn’t know where Jack had gone, but I felt like if I ran fast enough, I would catch up to him. At the end of the boardwalk, my gut told me to turn right, and when I did, I could barely make out his tall frame in the setting sun. I sprinted down the sidewalk, the crowd parting like seagulls so I could get through.
Someone called, “Hey, where’s the fire?” and, if I hadn’t been so out of breath, I would have replied, though it was intolerably cheesy, “In my heart!”
When I got close enough, I managed to eke out, “Jack!”
