“What did she say then?”
“Not a word. She got up, rummaged around behind a curtain, and when she came back, she gave me a handful of lemon drops. She told me her real name was Rena, that she was originally from Romania, and that everything she did for the carnival was a ruse. Reading people’s fortunes was simply about reading people, she explained to me, about guessing their deep desires, their hidden longings. But the lemon drops were true magic, she assured me, the knowledge of them a secret passed down through the women in her family. The lemon drops, she said, had the power to show me a different future. And she warned me to use them well. Then she refused to take my money and dismissed me from the tent. I left with the lemon drops and a chance at a better future tucked safely in my pocket.”
“Wow.” I was impressed. “Was she right? Did they show you a better future?”
Aunt Gert paused and looked off into the middle distance, across the backyard to the tired gray paint and white shutters of our modest house. “To quote the Little Flower, dear Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, ‘Only God can see what is in the bottom of our hearts; we are half-blind.’ Did I make the right choice? I hope so. Some could look at my choice as selfish, an act of cowardice, of self-preservation. Others might see it as the ultimate bravery. I don’t know anymore. I am content with the path of my life. My only sorrow is that it is almost over.”
“What do you mean it’s over? You’ve got more vim and vigor than people half your age,” I protested.
She smiled enigmatically. “You’re young, Lolly. All of life is before you. I’m old now. I’ve had my time. The world has very little use for an eccentric old woman.” She sounded a little wistful. “It has been amarvelous journey, though. I just wish I had more time. There is still so much I want to do. I always planned to see the penguins in Antarctica...”
“It’s not too late,” I argued. “What about following your bliss? There’s no expiration date on that, right?”
She glanced at me and sank her trowel deep into the soil. “Tell you what. Let’s strike a bargain. You try hard to follow your bliss, and I’ll strongly consider whether there’s anything left for me to follow. I’m an old woman with most of my days behind me, but you, Lolly, have so many days ahead of you.”
I stood, brushing at the muddy knees of my pajamas. “You sound like the fortune-teller,” I said lightly.
Aunt Gert shrugged. “There’s a kernel of truth in some of the most unlikely places.” She picked up her trowel and gripped a large clump of dried daylily leaves firmly. “And to answer your question about whether you can go back more than once, let me say this: don’t try to go back again, not yet. First use your last lemon drop. Use it wisely and well. Choose something you have not chosen before, some regret that lingers like a thorn in your heart, and when you have done that, come see me again.”
24
After my early-morningconversation with Aunt Gert, the day dragged slowly. I was feeling restless and unsettled. I missed my mom. I missed Rory. Everything felt wrong. I glanced at the clock. Four p.m. Time enough to head out before the dinner hour started. Last I’d checked, the dining room was almost empty. Aunt Gert was sitting in a back booth reading Saint Thérèse of Lisieux’sStory of a Souland keeping an eye on the lone customer finishing his second slice of pie at a nearby table. No one would miss me for an hour.
“Dad, I’ll be back before the dinner rush.” I grabbed my rain jacket from my office and walked through the kitchen. Dad and Julio were done with dinner prep and were huddled together watching YouTube videos of the Seahawks’ last season highlights. I was glad to see Dad sitting down. He’d been looking a little run-down lately, and I was concerned about him. He’d repeatedly brushed away my questions with gruff assertions that he was right as rain but I wasn’t convinced.
I drove to Discovery Park and pulled into a spot in the small, almost deserted parking lot at South Beach. No one monitored theparking lot in the off-season. I got out, wishing I’d worn tennis shoes instead of my cute little canvas shoes, and headed down the path toward the beach. I hadn’t been down here in years, not since the day I’d broken up with Rory. As I walked, I replayed Aunt Gert’s words.Choose some regret that lingers like a thorn in your heart, she’d instructed. What lingered like a thorn in my heart? One thing for sure. Rory Shaw.
The afternoon was waning toward dusk already. The late-winter days were startlingly short this far north. Just visible to the south, Mount Rainier was wreathed in clouds that were blushing in the beginnings of a spectacular sunset. Across the sound lay Bainbridge Island, and behind it soared the snowcapped majestic Olympic Mountains. Seagulls wheeled above me, and a pair of black scoters bobbed in the choppy gray water just offshore. A kayaker rounded the point by the lighthouse, his paddle dipping rhythmically. The beach was rocky and littered with seaweed, a chill breeze sweeping across the long, empty stretch of sand and black rock.
My feet took the familiar path toward the wilder, remoter north side of the beach, toward our special place. I found the driftwood log easily enough. Some kids had made a teepee of driftwood at the root end of it. There was no one on the beach other than a woman way down at the other end, throwing a stick into the surf for her Labrador. I sank down in the soft white sand, right where Rory and I always sat. So much had happened in this spot. I leaned my head back, fitting the rear of my skull to the smooth bleached-white curve of the giant driftwood log, thinking of all the things that had transpired in this little patch of sand. This was where Rory had first kissed me. It’s where he first broke my heart. And it’s where I broke his at the very end.
I usually tried my best to forget our past. I avoided this place because it brought everything up again. But today, raw and edgy and full of hope and regret, I closed my eyes and let myself remember—Oxford,England, that fateful night at the pub, a padlock in the shape of a heart, and how, for one brief shining moment, I held in my hands everything I ever wanted.
TWELVE YEARS AGO
NOVEMBER
Don’t call me. Don’t text me. I don’t want to hear from you ever again.That’s what I’d told Rory after our disastrous night at the beach together, after our first passionate kiss followed by his rejection of me. I was hurt and humiliated and in that moment I meant everything I said.
He took me at my word. It was more than three years before Rory and I spoke again. I graduated high school and then finished my freshman and sophomore years at Portland State University. The fall of my junior year I signed up for a study abroad semester in London. It was the first stamp in my passport, the first time I’d set foot in another country.
I fell in love with the UK from the start. I was enthralled by London, with its crisp accents and famous landmarks—Trafalgar Square, Portobello Road, Big Ben, and the Tower of London. On weekends Eve and I and some of our fellow exchange students would take the train to other cities—Bath and Oxford and even once up to Edinburgh on a long weekend. But it was Brighton I loved best, with its salty air and jaunty holiday vibe, its windy cobblestone streets and pebble beach. I’d buy a takeaway fish and chips and eat it by the water, watching the gulls as they wheeled and cried over the ornate Victorian splendor of the Brighton pier. I dreamed big in England—of opening my own restaurant in Brighton, of making a life in this country that captivated me. My vision for Toast was refined as I browsed the gastronomic delightsof London’s iconic Borough Market. England ignited my imagination for my future.
After the debacle of that final night on the beach, I’d placed Rory firmly in the back of my head, labeling him an embarrassing first crush. The sting of his rejection was minimized if I told myself that I didn’t still care for him or think of him. I tried to make it true. I unfriended him on social media and blocked his number on my phone. Then I posted gorgeous photos on my social media, me carefree with friends, eating and drinking and taking the railway around the country. Even though I’d unfriended him, a part of me hoped Rory saw each one. Occasionally I wondered what he was doing, if he thought of me, but I told myself I didn’t care. I tried to live in a Rory-free world, but my defenses had one fatal flaw. My mother. She was still convinced we belonged together, and so she gave me regular updates on Rory, bits of information passed on to her from Nancy Shaw. I asked her to stop more than once but she blithely ignored the request.
“Rory broke up with that girl Jessica. Nancy is so relieved. She never did care for her,” Mom told me only a week or two after Rory’s and my disastrous night at the beach. I was surprised, and my heart leaped with a traitorous hope. Now that he was not with Jessica, would he contact me? Was he going to reconsider his words? But the days and weeks passed with no word from him, and I felt the sting of rejection all over again. I did not reach out to him, too humiliated and hurt to put my heart out there again. His silence spoke volumes.
Over the next few years I heard snippets of news about him from Mom.
“Rory is studying for the MCAT. Nancy says his professors think he’ll do very well.”
“Rory’s planning to apply to med schools on the East Coast, all the best ones. Nancy thinks he might even get into one of the top schools in the country.”
And then, a month into my semester abroad in England, “Nancy told me Rory’s not coming home for Thanksgiving. He’s going to backpack around Europe. You could meet up, you know, show him around London.”
I ignored this last comment. I’d just started seeing someone, a young man I’d met the month before. Stephen was a student at Balliol College at Oxford and a member of the rowing club there. He had a deliciously plummy accent, some sort of minor title, and was studying economics. He was polite to a fault, keenly intelligent, and had a dry, understated sense of humor. I was intrigued by him, most notably how unlike Rory he was. Tall and blond and academic and self-effacing, he was enjoyable company. We’d spent every weekend together since we’d met. He’d take the train down to London, or I’d go up to Oxford, or we’d meet somewhere else and explore.
When I got the email from Rory, I was already planning to take the train up to Oxford to meet Stephen that weekend.
