Possibly a lot. Time was inching past, and I couldn’t decide whether I wanted it to move more quickly or if whatever came afterward would only make things worse.

The very question of that seemed to break the curse. The hour was over. The handful of people who’d come were milling forward to talk to us and get books signed, and I was gritting my teeth and trying to socially tap-dance while inside, tumbleweeds were blowing through my desolate heart.

Naomi hung back from the others, leaning against a bookcase. I wondered if she’d picked up the leaning from Gus or the other way around. I was afraid to look at her too long and recognize more of him on her, when I’d spent the last hour trying desperately to find some trace of me on him, proof that he had whispered my name fiercely into my skin even that afternoon. Pete had cornered Naomi and was trying to lead her from the store, but she was arguing, and then Lauren was joining them, trying to keep a scene from breaking out.

I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I could see her curls bobbing as she nodded. The group around the table was dissolving. Maggie was ringing them up, her own clear gaze cutting between the register and the conversation by the door.

Gus looked at me finally. He seemed poised to offer an explanation but the expression on my face must’ve changed his mind. He cleared his throat. “I should see why she’s here.”

I said nothing. Did nothing. He stared back at me for no more than two seconds, then stood and crossed the store. My face was hot but the rest of my body was cold, shivering. Gus sent Pete away, and when she looked at me, I couldn’t meet her gaze. I stood and hurried through the door to the office, then through the office to the back door into a back alley that was nothing more than a couple of dumpsters.

He hadn’t invited her. I knew that. But I couldn’t guess what seeing her did to him, or why she’d come.

Tough, beautiful Naomi, whose unknowability had thrilled Gus. Naomi who didn’t need him or try to save him. Who he had never been afraid to break. Who he had wanted to spend his life with. Who he would have stayed with, despite everything, if given the chance.

I wanted to scream but all I could do was cry. I’d burned through all my anger, and fear was all that was left. Maybe that was what had been there all along, masked in thornier emotions.

Unsure what else to do, I started to walk home. It was dark out by the time I got there, and I’d forgotten to leave the porch light on, so when someone stood from the wicker couch, I nearly fell off the steps.

“I’m sorry!” came the woman’s voice. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I’d only heard it twice, but the sound had worn grooves into my brain. I would never forget it.

“I was hoping we could talk,” Sonya said. “No, more than hoping. I need to talk to you. Please. Five minutes. There’s a lot you don’t know. Things that will help, I think. I wrote it all down this time.”

25

The Letters

“I DON’T WANT TO hear it,” I told her.

“I know,” Sonya said. “But I’ll have failed your father if I don’t make sure you do.”

I laughed harshly. “See, that’s the thing. You shouldn’t have had my father to fail.”

“Shouldn’t have? If you started at the beginning of your father’s life and predicted the whole thing, and how it should have played out, based only on where it started, he might never have found your mother. You might not exist.”

My insides thrummed with anger. “Could you get off my porch, please?”

“You don’t understand.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her jeans pocket and unfolded it. “Please. Five minutes.”

I started to unlock the door, but she began reading behind me. “I met Walt Andrews when I was fifteen, in my language arts class. He was my first date, my first kiss, my first boyfriend. The first man—or boy—I said ‘I love you’ to.”

The key stuck in the lock. I’d stopped moving, stunned. I turned toward her, my breath caught in my chest. Sonya’s eyes flicked to me anxiously, then back to the page.

“We broke up several months after he went to college. I didn’t hear from him for twenty years, and then one day, I ran into him here. He’d been on a business trip an hour east and had decided to extend his stay in North Bear Shores a couple days. We decided to get dinner. We’d been talking for hours before he admitted that he was newly separated.

“When we parted ways, we both believed we’d never see each other again.” She looked up at me. “I mean that. But on his way out of town, your father’s car broke down.” She studied the note again. There were tears in her eyes. “We were both broken at the time. Some days what we had was the only good thing in my life.

“We started visiting each other every weekend. He even took a week off and came up to look for a house. Things were moving quickly. Effortlessly! I’m not saying any of this to hurt you. But I genuinely believed we had our second chance. I thought we were going to get married.” She stopped talking for just a beat and shook her head. She hurried on before I could stop her.

“He put in to transfer to the Grand Rapids office. He bought the house. This house. It was in terrible shape back then, just falling to pieces, but I was still the happiest I’d been in years. He’d talk about bringing you up, about moving the boat up here and spending all summer on it, the three of us. I thought, I’m going to live there until I die, with a man who loves me.”

“He was married,” I whispered. My throat felt like it was going to collapse. “He was still married.”

Gus is married, I thought.

The emotion was ballooning through me. I wanted to hate her. I did hate her, and I also felt her pain mixing with mine. I felt all of the excitement of a new love, a healing one, a second chance with someone you’d almost forgotten about. And the pain when their real life came to call, the agony of knowing there was history with someone else, a relationship yours couldn’t touch.

Sonya’s eyes scrunched tight. “That didn’t feel real to me until your mother’s diagnosis.”

The d-word still sent a shock wave through me. I tried to hide it. Went back to messing with the key, though now my eyes were so thick with tears I couldn’t see.

Sonya kept reading, faster now. “We stayed in touch for a few months. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen. He just knew he needed to be there for her, and there was nothing I could do about that. But the calls came less and less, and then not at all. And then one day, he sent an email, just to let me know that she was doing much better. That they were doing better.”

I’d stopped with the door again, without meaning to. I was facing her, mosquitoes and moths whizzing around me. “But that was years ago.”

She nodded. “And when the cancer came back, he called me. He was devastated, January. It wasn’t about me, and I knew that. It was about her. He was so scared, and the next time he was passing through for work, I agreed to see him again. He was looking for comfort, and I—I’d started something with a friend of Maggie’s, a good man, a widower. It wasn’t serious yet, but I knew it could be. And perhaps that frightened me a bit, or perhaps a part of me would always love your father, or maybe we were just selfish and weak. I don’t know. And I won’t pretend to.