“Honey, I know they weren’t. Affairs are about lying and betrayal, and James and Bernice weren’tbetrayingRonald. How could they, when they were all together from the very start?”
Ahhhh, ye olde threesome!
I nudged Isaac’s foot with mine and enjoyed the answering smile that pulled on his mouth.
Doris continued. “There were three people fogging up those windows at the lookout points. Two people Ronald wrote to from the front. One bed in that honeymoon cabin. They had to be careful, but you can’t underestimate the creativity of people in love, and so James, Bernice, and Ronald did their best to carve out a little place where the three of them could be together as much as possible. If the war hadn’t happened, I have no doubt that they would have been here together at Lucky Duck Acres, holding hands and quibbling until the very end.”
Okay, now I wanted to cry again.
“Bernice and James both said that Christmas Eve was their last night with Ronald. That even though he would have been dead by that point, they still felt him there with them like he was alive.” Doris smiled a little sadly. “Bernice called it their miracle. Being together, having that last letter—that’s the miracle of love, you know. Love can make someone flare back to life like a lit match, and even after the match sputters and dies, you remember its warmth and its light.”
I had to look down now too, my nose burning. For a moment, my own matches lit, and my mind was full of things I’d nearly forgotten. Falling asleep on my dad’s round belly while he watched Food Network, his smile in the glow of the menorah that he only ever bothered to use when Grammy was in town. Long days at the beach, the fancy hampers with real plates thatmy mother always insisted on, Charlie burying Dad in sand and then Dad rising from the sand like a zombie and chasing us around the blanket until he caught us and tickled our sides until we screamed. Mom would shock us all and scoop us up in her arms, dragging us into the waves even though she always swore she wasn’t going to get her hair wet.
The pride on their faces at every little milestone, which for me was the occasional victory of a B minus. The way I could walk into Dad’s office at any time of the day or night and he’d listen to my incessant chattering, no matter how unimportant, and the way Mom and Nan always made sure I had bras and panties that fit my body as it changed, even if Mom thought the only store that sold plus-size clothes was Lane Bryant.
The fights we had about curfews. My mom complaining abouthermom. My dad’s sneezes that were so loud and horrible they could wake anyone from a dead sleep and how he always blew his nose like an elephant.
It hurt to think of them, it hurt, ithurt. For all of my bitching about Charlie earlier, maybe I understood a little bit why he wanted to put Mom and Dad in a box calledlegacyand be done with it. Maybe I’d been hiding from the memory of them too, in my own way, flitting from job to job, refusing to grow up and put down roots, because if I did things like fall in love or buy a house or, really, actually achieve a dream without them here, it meant they were unequivocally and forever dead.
It meant that I was permanently living without them.
And I suddenly understood Isaac so much better, suddenly understood the temptation to freeze time, to wallow and brood. Because the opposite—relentlessly barreling forward like Charlie had or chasing after every dopamine hit like I’d done—maybe wasn’t much better in the end either.
“Now, I’ve always said there was another miracle too.” Doris’s papery but kind voice dragged me back to the present. I liftedmy eyes to find her giving Isaac and me an appraising glance. “Bernice and James held on to life, even after they lost Ronald. And even after James died, Bernice was still open to having new adventures.” We got a bit of an eyebrow waggle there, and I had visions of Doris and Bernice on epic vape pen capers.
“We have many hearts inside us,” she went on, “and so much room to grow new ones. It didn’t mean that they loved Ronald any less because they forged ahead without him; in fact, maybe it meant they loved him more. They did what he would have wanted them to do: led long lives, full to bursting.”
Oof. It might have been perfect for the screenplay, the absolute spine of the story I was trying to tell, but it was also the last blow of truth I could handle.
“Perfect,” I said, standing too quickly. “This is just what we needed. Right, Isaac?”
He was quick to follow my lead, putting his notebook away and offering to throw Doris’s coffee out, an offer which she declined. We both thanked her profusely before running from her—and the feelings she’d brought to the surface—like we were running from a burning building.
Isaac and I stepped outside into a fucking blizzard.
“Looks like we didn’t beat it,” I shouted over the howling wind as we stood under the canopy at the entrance.
We immediately stepped back inside, and Teresa-Kate, who was pushing a cart of poinsettias across the foyer, said, “You two might be stuck. Those roads are nothing to mess around with.”
“Yeah,” I said, “not to mention we’re California sunshine babies.”
“I’d honestly just offer to let you stay here for the night, but we don’t have any open units. Everyone always seems to wait until right after Christmas to die.”
“How considerate,” Isaac said, and he really did mean it. “I think I saw a BandB just around the corner.”
Teresa-Kate nodded. “Smith Pine Bed and Breakfast is just a block and a half that way. You can leave your car here for the night, of course.”
Isaac held his arm out for me. “Let the expedition begin.”
I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head and we huddled together, pushing against the wind. A walk that should have taken two minutes turned into ten with snowdrifts already piling up and Mother Nature literally pushing us back two steps with every step forward.
My lungs burned from the cold and I could barely even talk, which was just as well because my feelings were still bubbling in my chest after our conversation with Doris.
We turned the corner onto Poppy Hill Road, and just as I’d hoped, lights from the bed-and-breakfast cast a warm glow against the bright snow. Even though it was only late afternoon, it felt like dusk.
“How is it that fucking snow is so pretty and so brutal at the same time?” Isaac asked over the wind.
“You know that’s how you like it,” I managed to say, despite the violent chatter of my teeth. “If I ever spend winter here again, I’m buying a real coat. One of those big puffy ugly ones that’s harder to penetrate than a chastity belt.”
