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My sense of gravity shifts as I align myself with Hazel. Reading her letters, I felt her pain as Evelyn slipped away bit by bit, but they were both alive at the last line. How have I not seen it before, the one true way we are the same?
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Hazel.”
“Thank you, dear. It had been such a long time since Evelyn knew my name, I thought it would hurt less when I lost her, but I was wrong. She was always the center of my world. I didn’t know who I was without her. I suppose that’s the price I paid for the lifetime we had together.”
Thinking of the years I missed out on, I whisper, “I felt so cheated when David died.”
Hazel finds a tissue in her pocket, presses it into my palm. “I’m sorry your marriage was cut short.”
I blot my eyes, wipe my nose, look down at my hands. The claddagh ring David slid onto my finger at the farmer’s market should remind me of that night we met, when he said seeing me was like recognizing someone he’d known all his life. Of our walks through the city, discovering new sights hand in hand. Of the bouquet of shamrocks I held in city hall as we exchanged wedding vows. Of his touch, his scent, the music he made, how he always called me darling. But all the moments it ought to remind me of are tarnished, still, by the memory of my leaving him on that hospital sidewalk. The effects that were never returned to me. The loss of what we were and might have been.
I was wrong, I realize, when I told my students how to write about grief. Not just about not starting with a phone call—though in most cases, that’s still good advice. I was wrong to say it was their job to show the reader what they once had and now have to live without. Because grief isn’t about the ones we’ve lost. It’s the journey taken by those who remain, the unasked-for plot twist that forces us to find new ways to write our story.
“You never had a wedding ring, did you?” I ask Hazel, worrying my band of gold.
“Evelyn didn’t have one the night she proposed.”
“And then she forgot.”
Hazel takes the damp tissue from my hand and blots her own leaking eyes. “And then she forgot.”
I twist the ring off my finger. “Would you wear mine, maybe?”
She looks at me as if I’m talking nonsense. “I couldn’t take that from you, Audrey.”
“Not forever.” I slide the two hands holding one heart past the swollen knuckle of her ring finger. “Just for a little while.”
Hazel stretches out her octogenarian hand like a newly engaged girl. The shift in perspective is as startling as switching a story from first person to third. Already, the ring has begun to shed its skin of sadness.
“Promise you’ll let me know when you’re ready to take it back.”
I don’t know yet if “ready” will mean putting it on or putting it away. My next chapter hasn’t been written. All I can do is turn the page. “I will, I promise.”
“In that case,” Hazel says, wrapping her arms around me the way a mother might, “I’ll treasure it for as long as it’s mine.”
Epilogue
August 31, 2021
Schuywich, New York
My darling Evelyn,
I wish you could have been at Red Barn Books for Lulu’s event today. I wanted you beside me beneath the bee-buzzing oak, our held hands resting on the wide arms of two Adirondack chairs pulled close. The weather was perfect: in the fifties at dawn, up to eighty by the afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. When Audrey told Sam she wanted to hold the reading outside but was worried about Lulu overheating in the sun, he borrowed a canopy tent from the agricultural extension that he set up on the lawn with the help of some campers. It gave the whole day a festival feel.
Audrey had a good crowd, what with Lulu’s family and Marcus Green’s relatives and fans of the Cozy Cozy Lady. Lulu’s editor took the train up from the city. The photographer she collaborated with was there, along with a three-person documentary crew. Winnie Ferguson filled in at the antique shop so Wren and Eric could both come. Audrey’s friend Sandra, who can’t stop herself from massaging my stiff neck, arrived with a contingent of free-spirited women. Joe and Nancy stopped by, too. Joe’s been awkward around me ever since he found out he’d been living next door to lesbians his whole life. Nancy’s polite as ever, though. She even baked an extra pie for me to take back to the nursing home tonight.
I drove up with Mai and Patience and her husband, John. It took some hard conversations, and plenty of shed tears, for me and Mai to repair the rift in our family. Now, it’s as if we picked up right where we left off—though in English this time, my schoolgirl French having flown from my memory. Back in June, Mai invited me down to Albany. She showed me the house she and Billy lived in before the car crash, then served lunch in the home she’s shared with John and Patience ever since. The three of them are in the habit, now, of picking me up at the nursing home whenever they drive up to see how Sam is getting along in Schuywich.
Sam’s brother and sister had no interest in inheriting an old saltbox in upstate New York, so there were no hard feelings when I sold him the McIntyre house for a dollar, of which Rhon kept a nickel—her worst commission ever, she joked. Some days, Mai and I sit on the front porch while John and Patience pitch in with one of Sam’s projects. He’s become obsessed with homesteading, now that he has a handful of acres to his name. He’s already reclaimed Mother’s garden and filled the chicken coop with birds. Next, he wants to convert Daddy’s shed into a shelter for kunekune pigs. Sam has plenty of plans for the house, too. Once winter lightens Audrey’s workload in the bookshop, she’s promised to help him tackle his to-do list.
Other days, they drop me off at Red Barn Books so I can spend the afternoon with Audrey. Rhon comes by to reminisce, and Wren leaves Eric in charge of their store for an hour or two so we can visit. What a reunion we had, Evelyn! Wren was tickled to learn you and I were gay, too, but not half as tickled as when I told him you were the author of the naughty books he got in trouble for reading all those years ago. He and Audrey had a good time going through my boxes of dime-store paperbacks by Rose Summers, Autumn Brown, Betsy Winters, and Spring Jackson—all pseudonyms for you, of course. I thought you were foolish to buy back the remainders from the publisher when they went out of print, but you must have been seeing into the future because lesbian pulp fiction is valuable now.
In July, when Audrey went down to Florida to reconnect with her grandparents, I stayed over in our old bedroom for a couple of nights. Aisha ran the store while Audrey was gone; I was there to feed the cat. I thought it would make me nostalgic, being back in our bed after all these years, but navigating those steep stairs, even with the help of Sam’s strong arm, made me appreciate how easy I have it in assisted living. The house on Ridgetop Road was ours for sixty years. It belongs to a new generation now.
Audrey sold out of Lulu’s book by the time the event wound down. The whole extended Green family headed off for a reunion supper at the village diner, accompanied by the photographer and the filmmakers and Lulu’s editor, too. The campers were high on marijuana by then, so Sam asked his father to help take down the tent. John’s professorial demeanor can be a bit suffocating, but I appreciate how he’s taken charge of planning the trip to Vietnam this winter. It’ll be a chance for Patience to experience her mother’s country, for Mai to show her daughter where she grew up, for John to learn the backstory of the family he married into. They invited me to come with them, to see the place where my brother became a man. Believe me, Evelyn, I was tempted! But even if I get strong enough to ditch this damn walker, it’s too late, now, for me to go traipsing off to the other side of the world. I did apply for my first ever passport, though, just in case I change my mind.
I had a wonderful time at Lulu’s book launch, but by the end of the day, I was ready to get home to my own soft bed. Audrey went to fetch a pitcher of iced tea while we waited in the barn for John and Sam to finish taking down the tent.
