Chapter Seventeen
Rei’s bank account must have finally run dry. Though I did not have much money to spare, I began to send Bear a little each month. I hoped it would be enough to keep him from ruining the pleasure I had found in my work with Learning Together, my friendships with Rosalie and Emma and Ronnie, my relationship with Will. What would they say if Bear told them that he believed that Amir and I had killed Rei and stolen her money? I lived in fear of him showing up at my work. At night, I felt his grip around my calf, his fingers pressing an old wound.
The money I sent was not enough for Bear. He threatened to come to San Francisco. I hid his letters in a box at the back of my closet. I kept the stone that Amir had given to me in that box as well, and so every time I received a letter from Bear, I also thought of Amir. But I was always thinking of Amir, really. Amir lived inside of me. He lived in the stories I wrote, in the characters that had a connection to the earth, the children without parents, the men who loved and hatedwith equal passion. I saw him in each child whom I sat beside at Learning Together. I did not know where Amir was, but I knew that he was alive. I felt his presence when I went for icy swims in the ocean. I continued to feel that I was being watched, and I preferred to think that it was Amir doing the watching, or the spirit of my mother or my father or even Rei, rather than Bear circling ever closer.
WITHWILL BYmy side over the following years, I saw parts of the world that as a girl I had hardly dared to hope I might someday see. Brazil. Alaska. Japan. France. Egypt. The more we traveled, the more I understood how uncomfortable I felt when I was not near a coast. When we visited places that were inland, away from a body of water, I felt unsettled. No matter where I was, my thoughts traveled to Horseshoe Cliff. When I was a teenager, each home I had broken into had left me longing for a new life; now, each new place I visited left me longing for a home to which I could not return. This feeling did not erase when I returned to San Francisco. There was something within me that held itself apart from the city; untouched for years, it began to ache. On buses, the windows shut against the wind, the ache worsened. When I walked, I was aware, always, of the pavement below me. I missed the soft yield of dirt below my feet. The golden glow of the cliffs at sunset. The black velvet night sky strewn with an extravagance of stars. Horseshoe Cliff was mine by then—I’d inherited a third of the land on my eighteenth birthday—but I wondered if I would ever see it again.
Once each month, Will and I had dinner with his family. If it had been up to me, we would have seen them more often. I adored the Langfords, and I did not like when too much time passed between visits. Will thought my love for his family was sweet, but he preferred to maintain a bit more space from them. I continued to swim with Emma, and I snuck in lunches with Rosalie between our monthly dinners.
During these meetings, Rosalie and I spoke of my work at the tutoring center, and my writing. We talked about the latest art exhibits and plays that she had seen. We rarely spoke about Will, or my relationship with him. I did not know whether to think that was odd or normal. One day I simply asked her.
“Don’t you want to know how Will and I are doing?”
She glanced up from the leek soup she had ordered, her spoon paused midair. “Aren’t you doing well? Everything seemed fine at our last dinner.” Her expression grew concerned. “What happened? Did you have a fight?”
“No, no. But you never ask me about him, and I don’t know if that’s because you don’t want to pry... or if you...” I trailed off.
“If I don’t approve of you dating my son?” When Rosalie set down her spoon it made a surprisingly loud clatter. “Merrow Shawe. How could you even begin to think that? You are a lovely couple. You’re perfect together, really. I’ve never seen either of you as happy as you seem to be when you’re together.”
Even as I felt relieved, I wondered if her assessment was true. Was I happier than I’d ever been? In so many ways, I was. And yet there was a void inside of me that throbbed even at that very moment as I sat so calmly across from Rosalie.
Her smile wavered. She seemed to be considering saying more, and then she did. “If I’m being honest, the only thing that worries me is the possibility that the hesitation you sense isn’t mine, but your own. Will is in love with you. I believe that when he looks at you, he sees his future.”
I found that I was holding my breath as I listened to her. She noticed and reached across the table to give my hand a sympathetic pat.
“If I were your mother,” she said, “I would tell you that you should not run from joy. I would remind you that you deserve love. I would say that just because something is easy doesn’t mean it is wrong.” She pulled her hand back and rested it in her lap. “I would tell you not to live in the past when there are people right here in your present who love you so very much.”
I swallowed. It had been nearly eight years since I had last seen Amir. “It’s hard to let go.”
“Oh, Merrow. You don’t need to let go. Just free up one hand so you can hold on to someone else, too.”
SIX MONTHS LATER,Will gave me a large blue sapphire ring and asked me to marry him. When I said yes, he slipped the ring onto my finger. It was the most beautiful piece of jewelry I’d ever seen.
“Is it okay that it’s not a diamond?” he asked. “I thought you might like this better. It’s an antique. The stone reminded me of you—well, of us, really. It made me think of our time in Italy.”
I looked at him, feeling overwhelmed with love. “The Ligurian Sea.”
Will nodded. He was right; the stone looked like the Ligurian Sea, which was the very color of his eyes. I loved that ring with a ferocity that sometimes confused me. I had never had a ring before, and I felt different with one on my finger.What a strange comfort a circle is,I thought,with no beginning or end but only that smooth, eternal curve.
What I soon learned—what we both learned—was that, for me, that ring was enough. Having an actual wedding ceremony did not strike me as particularly important. When we were first engaged, Will and I spoke, vaguely, about the idea of a spring wedding, but the spring quickly came and went. Instead of planning a wedding, we spent much of our time looking at houses. The prices were astounding to me, but Will had plenty of money. My own salary barely covered my living expenses and my portion of the rent for the apartment I shared with Ronnie. I had always known that the Langfords were rich, but it was only as Will and I were house hunting, and our realtor continually flashed her big, excited smile at me and cooed over my engagement ring, that I realized I was rich now, too.
I longed for a home by the sea. Will preferred a house that was on the Bay, closer to his office. But one day the realtor showed us a house in Sea Cliff with a small balcony off the master bedroom that overlooked the ocean, and when we stepped out onto it, I could see immediately how much Will liked it. The water below was not the jewellike blue of the Ligurian Sea, and the sandy crescent of Baker Beach was not dotted with bright umbrellas, and of course the view of the Golden Gate Bridgeleft no question as to our location, but still, there was something about that balcony that was undeniably reminiscent of the balcony off our hotel room in Monterosso. There was even a small bistro table with two chairs angled in an inviting way.
Will grinned at me. He gestured toward the table. “Did you set this up?”
I laughed and shook my head in wonder. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
The realtor looked back and forth between the two of us, her expression equally baffled and delighted. She backed toward the bedroom door. “I’ll leave you two to discuss,” she said, and disappeared inside.
It seemed like fate that this house had come on the market just as Will and I were searching. I leaned against the railing and looked out. I breathed in the sea air and felt a sense of peace. I already knew how this house would feel when the fog rolled in, buffering it from the world. It would become a fortress, safe and glowing with warmth amid a silver sky. I knew how the ocean would sound at night from the bed when the door to the balcony was left open, and I knew that the cold, wet air would creep in and wash over everything, leaving a hint of salt on my lips. I knew how it would feel to walk on the beach that lay below early in the morning before anyone else was awake, and how the green sea glass that would wash up onshore would feel in my hand, something once sharp now softened by the grip of the sea.
In the distance, across the mouth of the Bay, mountains rose from the ocean. My mother had taken my father to the beach on the day they met and pointed at the same view that I waslooking at now. My father had said that the idea of living by the sea had seemed like the most wonderful sort of dream.
Even without turning around, I could feel Will watching me.
He walked to me and put his arms around me. “I love it, too.”
“But it’s so far from your office.”
