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She couldn’t help but huff a chuckled breath. “No, Finn. Really, I mean it.”
“I know you do. You need me to leave, and I just need you.”
No. No. She was not going to let that word infiltrate her heart. She couldn’t. Need. She hated that word.
“Do you want it or need it?” her mother used to challenge when she would ask for something precious, something that was hard to get. Needing meant you had to have it, couldn’t do without it. And what was the point in needing something you couldn’t possibly have? She had spent years trying to kill the need. At first, by being angry at him. It had been easy to do from afar, but the first time she had seen him after his marriage, she had realized that they were both in this, that he was the only one who could understand, and that it was even harder on him.
She moved her gaze left and right, ensuring no one else heard him. “It’s not the time or the place.”
“It never is. I’ve been divorced three years now, and I wanted to come to you from day one.”
“Well, you shouldn’t.” Kill the need.
“You’re telling me everything I already know, Jane.”
“It’s Anne. If you know it, then why are you here?”
“Because, Jane.”
“Your in-laws were just here.” Kill the need.
“Former in-laws. I saw them coming out.”
“Why didn’t you stop to say hi to them?” Obliterate the need.
“All these years, Jane. You know that you were always on my mind.”
She knew. The cards.
“We’re not an Elvis song.” Kill the need.
He expelled a half-laugh at her reply. “You want to tell me that you haven’t thought—”
“It was hard not to with those cards you left me every year.” Lie. She would have thought about him with or without the cards. If only for the weekly phone calls with her mother that always included updates about Avery, and naturally about Finn and Max, too. But, mostly, because she loved him so much that he left no room in her heart for anything else, not even long-lasting anger. And yes, the cards.
The cards that she had tried at first to resent because they kept her tethered to him had become a link to the only person in the world who knew what she felt and who felt the same. It was a source of consolation and renewed pain. She didn’t want him to suffer, she didn’t want him to hurt. She wanted him to be happy. So, every year, on November eleventh, her birthday and his wedding anniversary, she dreaded and eagerly awaited those unsigned cards that her mother picked up from her mailbox and sent to her. She dreaded them because she so eagerly awaited them, as if she wanted him to be happy and forget her, but she also didn’t.
Like the song that he said was theirs, it was a fucking incoherent mess.
Her mother thought they were from old school friends, but she knew only one person would choose cards with a Monet painting, a trumpet, a sunflower, a funny Abba cartoonish misquote, or Jane Austen one such as, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that today is your birthday.” She had never replied, returned, or made contact. He was a married man. And even when he wasn’t …
No cards had been left in the two years since she had returned to Riviera View. She knew why and thanked him for that—some things were easier and safer from afar.
“Is this yours?” he suddenly asked, pointing at her watercolor that hung by the painting that she had been perusing before he’d entered.
She didn’t reply. She knew what he was doing—forcing her to admit she had thought of him, as if it wasn’t clear enough.
“That swimmer over there; it’s yours?” he repeated.
“The theme of this exhibition is the human body’s resilience,” she replied as laconically as she could. That painting wasn’t him, but it also was.
He looked at her with an expression that she thought was almost pity at her inability to lie. He then pointed at the painting closer to them, which she, too, couldn’t decipher what was painted on it. “You mean that this is also supposed to be about the human body’s resilience? I’d take a sip right now, if I had a glass,” he said, his smirk a clear reference to that night a gazillion years ago.
“That one actually sold.” She pointed at the sticker next to it. “Anyway, it was a pleasure, Finn, but I have other guests; buyers, maybe.” Since he stood in front of her, and there was a wall behind her, she swooshed past him to the side, her long, loose, forest green wrap-dress rippling behind her.
He caught her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. “Jane.”
She closed her eyes for a moment then turned to him. Was the human heart resilient? Probably not because, otherwise, he wouldn’t be here and she wouldn’t be feeling as she did.
