He looked over my shoulder, taking in the view. “It’s perfect. It’s ruined any other house for me.”
The thing about Will was that, as much as he did love that house’s balcony—and he did, I could see that—he was saying the house was perfect because he knew that I thought it was perfect. His kindness moved me. I rested my head on his chest and tried to breathe in his particular no-smell smell, but I smelled only the sea.
IT WAS ONthat balcony a few months later that we first discussed the idea of eloping. There was a larger patio on the first floor of the house, but we found ourselves gravitating to that little balcony nearly every weekend. I wrote and Will read. There was so much that I loved about Will, but his devotion to reading was near the top of the list. He read as quickly as I did, and we had already made plans to install floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the living room downstairs as well as in our bedroom to house our ever-growing collection.
It was funny, though, how differently we treated our books.I see your books like to swim as much as you do,Will had said, smiling, as he helped me unpack the boxes that I’d brought from the apartment I’d shared with Ronnie. The novels in hishands were bloated with salt air from trips to the beach, their pages dog-eared and marked by my pen. Will’s books, I realized, were pristine. He treated them with a reverence that I supposed I understood but did not quite share. I thought that perhaps Will thought of books as possessions while I thought of them as sustenance. His relationship with books lacked the messiness and the hunger and the desperate sort of joy that mine held.
While Will read on the balcony that day, I worked on a story inspired by a coyote that I had seen recently while walking down our street toward the beach for my swim. After Pal’s death, I hated coyotes. But for some reason my bitterness did not flare at the sight of this one in the city; on the contrary, wonder spilled over me like water. The coyote had seemed both ephemeral and eternal, like a reminder of a not-so-distant other world, or another point in time that might be in the future as easily as in the past.
“You always look peaceful when you’re writing,” Will said.
I looked up blearily. “Do I?” I laughed. “No, that can’t be true.” I could feel my forehead smoothing as I spoke; it was always furrowed when I wrote, I was sure of it, and I spent as much time chewing on the end of my pencil as I did writing.
“Well,” Will admitted, “maybepeacefulis the wrong word. Transported? Wherever you go when you’re writing, you like it there.” He closed the book he was reading. “You know, if you ever want more time to write... I hope you know you can have it.”
“Are you telling me you have the power to make the dayslonger?” I teased. “Why have you never shared this with me before?”
He smiled. “I just mean that if you ever decide that you want to leave your job—or take a break from it—so that you have more time to write, I’d support you.”
I knew he was only trying to be sweet, but I was surprised that he thought that leaving Learning Together would be something I wanted. “I like spending time with those kids. I like helping them.”
A crease formed between his eyebrows. “I know you do. And youarehelping them. I just know how much your stories are going to help kids, too—bringing them happiness, inspiring them. I’m thinking of your future readers. It’s funny, but when we first saw this house, I immediately pictured you sitting at this table, just as you are now, looking so gorgeous and full of thought, gazing out at the water and writing.”
It was a lovely image. So why did my throat tighten as he spoke? Did a part of Will think of me as he thought of his books, as something curious and beautiful and fragile, deserving of admiration and careful handling? I did not want to be a well-kept possession.
Perhaps I was being too hard on him. It was simply easier for Will to understand my relationship with writing than my relationship with children who had nowhere to go when school let out. But I could not think of writing without thinking of Horseshoe Cliff—and children who needed stories, yes, but so much else, too.
When I thought of Horseshoe Cliff, I felt very distant fromWill. It wasn’t a feeling that I liked. There was nothing for me at my childhood home—only Bear, scratching out letters to me that were full of threats. This was my home now, the one I’d made with the man I loved.
“We should get married,” I said.
He laughed, surprised. “I thought we’d already reached that conclusion.”
“But soon, I mean. Let’s go to city hall. And then let’s take a honeymoon somewhere far away, somewhere even you have never been.”
Will thought about it. “Butsomesort of celebration would be nice, wouldn’t it? To mark the beginning of a new chapter in our lives? My parents would appreciate it. We could do it here, at home.”
“A wedding party?”
“Or an engagement party. We never had one. It really doesn’t matter what we call it. I just think it would be nice to celebrate with our family and friends.”
While I was satisfied to have just Will, his family, and Ronnie in my life, Will’s network of friends continued to grow. Being surrounded by people made him happy, and it felt selfish to deny him this pleasure.
And so I agreed, swallowing the knot that formed in my throat as I did so.
