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Lydia blinked away the tears and looked at her sister. “If this is what love feels like, it sucks.”
“It only sucks when you’re fighting it.” Autumn looked over Lydia’s shoulder at Griff, her expression softening. “But when you both admit it and let it guide you, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world.”
“But if I told Jackson I love him, nothing would change. I’d still have to leave and he’d have to stay, and we’d both be miserable.”
“Maybe,” Autumn said, nodding slowly. “But maybe if you’d admit it to each other, you’d find a way to make things work. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. You don’t have to give up traveling and stay in one place for the rest of your life to be together. You two could find a way to compromise.”
Lydia frowned. “But mom told me not to let myself be tied down. To travel and find what makes me happy.”
“What?” Autumn blinked. “When did mom tell you that? You were a baby when she died.”
“In the letter she left for me. The one I opened on my eighteenth birthday.”
Autumn stared at her, running the tip of her tongue along her bottom lip. “What exactly did the letter say?”
“I’ve got it in my overnight bag,” Lydia told her. “I carry it everywhere. I’ll go get it.”
A few minutes later, Autumn put the letter on the table after reading, and gave Lydia a soft look. “It’s a beautiful letter,” she told her. “Even more beautiful that you kept it with you all this time. Mom loved you so much. She loved both of us. But I don’t understand why this is stopping you from being with Jackson.”
“Because of this part,” Lydia said, pointing to the fifth paragraph. “Where she tells me to travel and keep searching for what makes me happy. I’ve lived my life by that. I did exactly what she told me to. I’ve traveled and found happiness.”
“I don’t think that’s what she was trying to say,” Autumn said carefully. “She wrote this almost twenty-five years ago. I think she was telling you not to get tied down to the New York way of life. To see what else is out there that makes you happy. I don’t think she meant that you have to travel forever otherwise you’ll be sad.”
Lydia stilled, staring at her sister. “She wanted me to change the world. How can I do that if I’m not traveling?”
Autumn took her hand. “Sweetie, you have changed the world. You change everybody you meet. Look at Deenie Russell, telling everybody how Instagram has improved her business. She wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t for you. And then there’s Eddie. You saved him and got him home to his owners.” Autumn squeezed Lydia’s palm. “And Jackson,” she said softly. “You changed his life, too. You don’t have to go far to make a difference. It’s you who makes things better. Not the fact you travel.”
“You think she’d want me to settle down?” Lydia asked, her voice low.
“I know she’d want you to be happy. In whatever form that takes. Doesn’t matter if it means traveling or staying in one place. This letter is all about you being open to things. Maybe you should think about being open to love, no matter how it comes into your life.”
Lydia opened her mouth and closed it again. All these years that she’d traveled, she’d thought she’d found
the one thing that made her happy. And for a long time, it did. But she hadn’t found what she was looking for then. Hadn’t found the thing that filled her soul.
It wasn’t places that made her soul sing. It was people. The people she met. The ones who became her friends and she visited over and over again. Her family, her sister, her niece, and her sister’s fiancé. Even her dad.
And now there was somebody else that made her whole body sing with delight. Who only had to smile at her to make her world feel full. Who knew how to touch her and kiss her in a way that made her toes curl with pleasure.
Happiness wasn’t about searching. It was about accepting.
“I have to go to Barcelona,” she whispered. “And then to France and Italy and South America.” She had no choice. She had clients and a reputation to keep. And there was no way she could ruin their vacations. Especially after they’d paid her so much.
“I know.” Autumn nodded. “And what happens after that?”
“After that?” Lydia repeated, pondering the words. “I choose happiness.”
28
“I’ll take her home with me,” Ryan said at six a.m. the next morning. The two of them had slept fitfully in the hospital room. The nursing shift was changing, and they’d taken the opportunity to walk to the hospital cafeteria to grab a caffeine fix. “I don’t want her on her own. Not the first few days. She can have my guest room. It’s not like anybody else needs it.”
That guest room used to be Jackson’s bedroom, a hundred years ago before he moved out. Like everything else in Ryan’s house – or his life for that matter – it was practically unchanged since Jackson was a kid. Sure it was clean, something he’d never managed to achieve in his eighteen years of living there, and the posters of surfers and bands had been taken off the wall. But the blue paint and the grey rug were the same, not to mention the single bed with a crochet bedspread.
“She’s not your problem,” Jackson told him, as they waited for the elevator. His back was aching from hunching over the bed, holding his mom’s hand as she drifted off.
“Of course she is,” Ryan said softly. “She’s the mother of my child.”
This conversation was so predictable. Jackson could probably say his father’s lines for him. How many times had they talked about this? And yet he still answered, the same way he always did.
