I stopped walking. Just for a moment. The thought had snuck up on me, the way it did sometimes, on nights like this.
Jack Cavanaugh. Decades ago, I’d been twenty-three, and sitting across from him at Rosetti’s on Valentine’s Day, telling him I needed space when what I really needed was to stop being so terrified of wanting something this much.
He’d looked at me like I’d hit him. That was the part I never forgot, the hurt in his eyes, the way he hadn’t fought me because he was tired of fighting for someone who kept running away.
I’d walked out of that restaurant and told myself it was the right decision. Married Kirk five years later because Kirk was easy, calm, and he never made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff deciding whether to jump.
I’d never regretted not jumping. Mostly. Okay, sometimes I wondered. Late at night after too much wine, or on random Tuesday afternoons when a song from 1987 played in a coffee shop and I felt a strange pang for a life I’d never lived. I’d looked him up once, years ago. He’d moved to New York. Married someone. Built a life that didn’t include me.
Good for him. Genuinely. I hoped he was happy. I hoped the woman he’d married appreciated what she had, because Jack had been something special, even if I’d been too young and scared at the time to hold onto it.
But I wasn’t sad about it. Not anymore. I’d built a good life. A full life. The promotion I’d earned. The condo I loved. Sarah and Emma and the handful of friends who’d survived decades of knowing me. The career that had given me purpose and satisfaction and enough money to never worry again.
This was the life I’d chosen. And it was a damn good life.
My apartment was warm when I got home, the radiator clicking. I kicked off my heels in the entryway and padded to the kitchen in stockinged feet, pouring myself a glass of the good wine, the Pinot Noir I’d been saving for no particular occasion, though a promotion and a goddaughter’s Harvard acceptance seemed like occasion enough.
I wandered to the bookshelf where I kept the irreplaceable things. Not the books, those were everywhere, stacked on every surface, spilling off shelves and piling on chairs. This shelf held the other things. My father’s pocket watch, stopped at 3:47, themoment his heart gave out. A first edition Gatsby. A photo of my mother before she left us, back when she still smiled like she meant it.
And tucked beside my worn copy of Charlotte’s Web—the same edition I’d read to Emma in that hospital room—a Polaroid.
I picked it up, smiling. Last summer at Fenway. Sarah with her head thrown back laughing at something I’d said. Emma making a face at the camera, caught mid-eyeroll the way only teenagers could manage. Me grinning like an idiot, mustard on my chin that I hadn’t noticed until I saw the picture.
Emma had insisted on bringing the camera.Polaroids are back, Aunt Mags. It’s a whole thing.I’d teased her about it, told her that when I was her age, Polaroids weren’t a vintage aesthetic choice; they were just how pictures worked. Now here we were, watching instant photos develop in our hands like magic all over again.
She’d written on the white strip at the bottom, in her messy teenager scrawl:Summer 2013. Best day ever.
I carried the photo to the couch, wine in one hand, Polaroid in the other. The promotion. Emma’s Harvard news. A life I’d built piece by piece, exactly the way I wanted it.
Fifty years old. Single by choice. Happy.
And yet.
I looked at the Polaroid, at Emma’s bright grin, Sarah’s familiar laugh, and felt something shift beneath the satisfaction. Not quite regret. More like... curiosity. The kind of wondering that only surfaced on nights like this, when the edges of the day went soft and the memories had room to breathe.
What would it have been like? If I’d stayed. If I’d told Jack the truth that night at Rosetti’s, that I loved him, but I was terrified, that I didn’t know how to stop running but I wantedto learn. Would everything have been different? Would I have become someone else entirely?
Or would I still be here, in this apartment, having built the same career and the same independence, just with different memories underneath?
I’d never know. That was the thing about choices. You picked a door and walked through it, and all the other doors disappeared.
The wine was making me maudlin. That was the real problem with Valentine’s Day, not that I was alone, but that the whole holiday seemed designed to make you examine your life through a distorted lens, measuring contentment against some Hallmark ideal of romance.
I didn’t want Hallmark romance. I wanted what I had. Most of the time.
Almost all of the time.
I let my head fall back against the cushions, eyes growing heavy. The Polaroid rested against my chest, Emma’s smile pressed over my heart like a talisman.
What would it have been like?
The thought followed me down into sleep, soft and wondering, more curious than aching.
What if?
The voice camefrom everywhere and nowhere.
I was floating. Or falling. I couldn’t tell which, and somehow it didn’t matter. The darkness around me wasn’t the darkness ofsleep, it was deeper than that. Older. Like the space between one heartbeat and the next, stretched out into eternity.
