I love you.
I miss you. I always will.
Minutes or even an hour later, as sweat pools along her hairline, Diana feels the last ties to Tom’s burden slip away.
She rubs her toes against the feathery green grass and watches a blue jay fly overhead. The sun makes her skin tender and hot to the touch.
She feels completely alive.
And remarkably, unexpectedly calm.
She lifts her phone out of her purse and shifts her attention to the present. She begins by sending a text to Andrea:How about you, Evan & Noah come over tonight for dinner?
The second, to her parents, will likely arrive as they pack up from the fishing trip:What’s your ETA? I’ll make dinner. xo
The third goes to Lakshmi:Free for a BBQ?
These messages are signs of the Diana she wants to be, a woman who throws spontaneous parties and looks for answers to hard questions; a woman who understands that, while her grief and pain may always be silent and persistent companions, they need not define her life. If she’s learned anything from meeting Jessica and Grace and uncovering Tom’s secrets, it’s that she has a choice in who she becomes. She can, like that snake at the science museum, become a new, changed version of herself. She can heal and maybe, someday, forgive.
Responses arrive within seconds: a thumbs-up emoji from Lakshmi, followed by a short note (What happened with Jessica?!?!); a formal missive from her mother, replete with proper punctuation and grammar (Your father and I would be delighted to join you. We’ll be home closer to 5 p.m.); and when Andrea’s text comes, the swoosh tugs at Diana’s heart (Yes to dinner. Can’t wait. Love you.).
As her lips spread in a grateful smile, Diana zips her feet back into her boots and starts toward home.
The barbecue is precisely what Diana hoped it would be: The kids run around the yard, screeching and shooting one another with water guns; her father and Ramesh take over grilling duties; Evan mixes gin and tonics; Lakshmi entertains her mother with stories about her painting students; and Diana and Andrea reconcile.
It’s simple: Andrea walks through the front door, salsa and chips in her hands, and bursts into tears. Diana wraps her arms around her sister, and they each whisper apologies. In the middle of their reunion, Evan takes the snacks from Andrea’s grip and sends them outside with the kids, while the other adults disappear into the kitchen to give the sisters privacy. When Diana and Andrea reappear into the bustle of their loved ones, Diana notices how relieved their parents look.
Lakshmi asks to talk to Diana next, and they find a quiet space in front of the French doors, the children munching on chips on the other side, leaving crumbs for the waiting birds. Lakshmi hands Diana a small package wrapped in a paisley scarf. “For you.”
“A painting?” Diana rubs the grooves of a wooden frame through the silk. She unties the knot in the corner, and the scarf falls away, landing at her feet in a radiant pile. The painting is of Tom, dressed in a white shirt, standing against a sapphire-colored sky. An invisible wind blows wisps of hair around his head, giving him the illusion of flight, of lightness, of otherworldliness. “Oh, Lax.”
“Do you like it? Is it too much?”
“It’s perfect. I didn’t know you were painting him.”
“Remember that piece I was working on of Ramesh?”
Diana summons that night, two days after she found Tom’s letter, when she sought out Lakshmi for help. She tastes Lakshmi’s sweet and spicy chai as she recalls the canvas in progress on her friend’s easel. Was it only three months ago?
“Something about it wasn’t working. One day, Ram looked at it and noticed it looked nothing like him, but so much like Tom. It all fell together after that.”
“The sky—”
“The Cape, the last vacation you took.”
“I love it. He would have loved it, too. Though he would have made a crack about how young you made him. No gray hair or wrinkles.”
“This is how I remember him.”
How I remember him,Diana thinks.That’s it. How I choose to remember him is up to me.Wordlessly, she embraces Lakshmi, the painting tight in her hand.
Chapter Thirty-Five
After dinner, everyone settles in for the evening, as if leaving Diana’s house will break a magical spell. The kids pile on the sofa to watch a superhero movie, while her father plays poker with Lakshmi, Ramesh, and Evan at the dining room table. Her mother remains in the kitchen, scrubbing it to spotless perfection and listening as Francis loses hand after hand. Andrea and Diana go upstairs to clean out Tom’s closet.
“Three piles.” Diana gestures to the bed. “Keep, donate, and trash.”
“What do you want to keep?” Andrea snaps open a black trash bag and kneels in front of the shoes.
