“Us two?”
“Hello, Mr.Mandela.”Ella is suddenly a figure at the door, clearly caught off guard, just like me.“Can I come in?”
“Of course, darling,” Mr.Mandela says.“Let’s begin.”
Ella walks into the room and sits in the spare chair next to me.“Hi, Miles.”She looks at me and gives me a shy smile.I can’t help but smile back.
“Well.”Mr.Mandela clears his throat.“I contacted you both and asked you to meet me here because Miss Amara left specific instructions regarding a few personal items she wished to pass on to you.”
Ella and I exchange a look, uncertain of what’s to come, touched by this gesture of hers.
Mr.Mandela turns to Ella.“She wanted you to have her piano.She wrote that there was no one else she’d rather hear playing its keys or laughing on its bench.”He slides a small key across the desk.“It’s still at her house.You’re welcome to arrange a time to collect it whenever you’re ready.”
I look at Ella in her stillness.She’s emotional, holding back tears.I think about telling her it’s okay if she lets them out, but before I can, Mr.Mandela shifts his attention to me.
“Miles,” he says, taking a small wooden box out of one of his desk drawers.He opens it carefully, revealing a delicate engagement ring.“This is for you.”
I stare at it, and Mr.Mandela explains, “She hoped you would remember a conversation you had about it.And she wanted you to have it.”
My mind reaches back through the years, searching for that conversation, until finally landing on the one she meant.I’m sure of it.A long time ago, at the CIC, the first time ever she told me about her husband.
Ella observes the whole scene quietly.Little does she know, she is implicitly part of that memory too.I raise my eyes from the ring.Ella and I look at each other for a full minute.Or maybe it’s only five seconds.However long it lasts, it’s heartbreaking.Shattering.Gut-wrenching.
Chapter 53
Ella
April 6th, 2009
Monday
“You could stay just a few more days,” I suggest while Bill packs his dress shoes into his suitcase.
He drove to Evermere two days ago so he could be with me yesterday, and I find myself strangely, constantly torn between wishing he would stay longer and feeling relieved that he’s leaving, letting me be by myself.
Is that an awful thing to think?I can’t tell him that.
“I could,” he answers me while grabbing his work backpack.“But I won’t.There’s a networking event I can’t skip.And I have that wine tasting in two days.Why don’t you just come back home with me?”He kisses my forehead.“And then you can come back here next weekend or something.”
No answer comes out of me.Next weekend or something.That kind of thinking is what kept me away from setting foot in this town far longer than I ever wanted to.
I look at Bill.I’m not sure what I would prefer him to do, but I know that I want to spend this mournful moment close to my family and the community that Miss Amara and I shared.I want to have the courage to walk inside her house and sit at her piano, letting the memories float through me.I want to feel the sadness, nostalgia, longing, tenderness, gratitude, and the quiet ache of loss, as part of my goodbye to her.
I watch Bill fold his shirts.I can’t do as he’s suggesting, or I’ll end up resenting him later for a choice that was mine, influenced by his words.
Something inside tells me I have to allow myself to live through all of it.
“I’m going to stay.I’m sorry.A few days in the countryside will do me good.”I leave it at that, not explaining much.Maybe because I’m not sure how much he would understand.
“Alright,” he says, then pauses for a second on his way to the bathroom door and turns back to me.“Is it because of Miss Amara?I’m not underestimating it.I was just thinking: she wasn’t related to you, andI— your fiancé — didn’t really know her.We hadn’t spent much time with her lately.”
There’s no energy in me to lay it all out for him right now.So I offer him a rueful smile, thinly disguised as a tired one, and shrug one shoulder.It’s fair that he doesn’t fully understand.I have talked to him about Evermere, the CIC, and Miss Amara, but he never spent much time here.And then, eventually, neither did I.
I was supposed to aim for the stars.Live in a big city.Cut the “umbilical cord”.“That’s because you’re an adult,” Bill would say to my numbness.
Last time I saw Miss Amara, Bill didn’t come with me.He had already met her, but he’s right, we hadn’t spent much time with her lately.Not us, not even me.
“I wish I had,” I say quietly to myself, while Bill is already removing the plug from his toothbrush to pack it away.
