I frowned. “Areyou firing me? Gonna check yourself into a home?”
She chuckled and patted my leg. “No. But one day I won’t be here anymore, and you’ll be out of a job then.”
Jesus, I hated when she got all macabre like this. “That’s not happening any time soon.”
“And I don’t want it to,” she said. “But it’s an inevitability. I’m old now. I’m going to have bad days. I’m going to get hurt.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said quietly, but she carried on as if I hadn’t spoken.
“And one day I’ll be gone. And if you blame yourself for the natural circle of life, or you double down on trying to stop it, you’ll have nothing left at the end. If you want me to be happy, if you want me to be at peace, then have a life. Give me some sort of reassurance that you’ll be okay when I’m gone. Because right now I’m not convinced.”
My mouth pinched together at the thought of Ethel being gone. Without Amy to pin all my hopes and dreams on, I genuinely couldn’t imagine my life without Ethel; when I tried, there was nothing there. Maybe I needed to revisit Our Lore and remind myself what I’d once been able to picture for myself. But that was all tied up in being with Amy; with a future I’d made impossible.
“I won’t be okay when you’re gone, no matter what.”
“You’re sweet,” she said. “But you’re wrong. I’ve seen how happy Amy makes you, and I refuse to be the reason you don’t get to have that.”
“It’s not you,” I insisted. “I screwed that up all on my own. I don’t deserve her. Or, at least, she deserves more than me. More than this.”
I didn’t specify what “this” was; I didn’t want to make Ethel feel she was the reason I couldn’t be with Amy.
Just then, my phone buzzed with a text.
AMY
Got the dress. It’s incredible. Thank you. But I’m a little confused.
I started typing back straightaway, a smile on my face as I thought about her seeing it for the first time. Maybe it was arrogant to think so highly of my own work, but I knew it was an amazing dress. I’d poured everything I had into it, after all.
PHIL
Don’t be. It’s just a gesture. An olive branch, if you will. Enjoy the ball.
The message showed as read straightaway, and I stared at the phone, willing her to say more. To give me even a tiny glimpse of how she was. What she was feeling, besides confused. I hated that I’d made her feel anything but loved. Anything but wanted.
A painstakingly long moment later, she wrote back.
AMY
Thanks, Phil. Wish you were here.
I smiled down at my phone, hoping she was doing the same. More than anything, I wished I were there with her. Not so I could change things between us– maybe we were too far gone– but just to see her. To know she’d be okay despite me, since she’d rejected my attempts to make sure she’d be okay without me.
“Do you love her?” Ethel asked, snapping me back into the moment.
“Yeah, of course I do,” I admitted. It was surprisingly easy, actually, admitting that to Ethel.
“If you love her, then you deserve her,” Ethel said, as if it were that easy. “And she couldn’t do any better than a man who knows her and loves her well.”
“I disagree,” I said to my hands. “I was pretty horrible to her.”
“Well then,” Ethel said, slapping her hands on her legs, “you know what you have to do.”
I laughed. “Yeah? What’s that?”
“Grand gesture,” she said, doing what passed for a shrug, given that she didn’t quite have the shoulder mobility for a proper one anymore.
I hated how quickly my heart leapt at the idea that there was a way to get Amy back. That we could just ride off into the sunset together despite everything that had happened between us. That it was as easy as telling her that I loved her, and that I was sorry, and that I wanted to be with her.
