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He laughed. “Fiancé.”
“It’s weird. It sounds weird when you say it, too.”
“In old French,fiancemeant a promise.” He paused. “From the Latinfidere.To trust.”
“Well, I didn’t know that,” I said. “But that’s not why it sounds weird.”
“Does it feel weird? That’s what’s important.”
I shrugged. “Everything feels weird at the Whispers. It always did. But that’s nothing to do with Adam. It’s the house, the memories. It’s like it’s not really my life I’m living there.”
Which was why I had to leave. If I didn’t know exactly where I was going from here, I was certain that I couldn’t stay. I had barely even seen Adam, who was finishing out his last two weeks at Willowcrest while I readied the house for the estate sale. It was exhausting, myphone going off constantly, five new tasks piling up for every one I managed to check off the list. The reverend set his mug down.
“Have you talked to Adam about this?”
“Not really. Not yet. He really wants to set a date. You know, for the wedding. Actually, he wants to get married on the way to California.”
“Vegas?” He laughed. “Well, I would have liked to do the honors myself, but if you decide to give Elvis the job, I’ll understand.”
I smiled. “You’d understand. I don’t think my mother would.”
“I’m sure your mother just wants you to be happy. If you wanted to elope—”
“Iwantto want to.” I began to gather my things. Outside the window, the first arrivals to the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting were coming through the front gate and walking toward the church. I pulled my gloves on. “I mean, I’d like to be that kind of person. I’d like to have that kind of crazy love where you know it’s right and you just go for it. Like Mimi did... except minus the part where my husband cheats on me with the maid,” I added quickly, with a weak laugh. “But I’m not like her. She would just jump into things, consequences be damned. I wish I could be brave like that. But I guess I’m not.”
When I looked up, Reverend Frank was looking at me intently, his hands pressed together like he was praying. I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, and cleared his throat, but he didn’t speak.
“What?” I said.
“I was thinking that what you call brave, some might call impulsive,” he said. “Or reckless. A decision made in the heat of the moment or the heat of emotion... recklessness gets people hurt. Or worse.”
I stared at him. “Are you still talking about me and Adam?”
“I’m talking about . . .” He trailed off, shook his head. “I’m talking about the difference between being bold and being foolish. Whatever your grandmother’s great romance might have seemed like to you, you must realize there are parts of her story you still don’t know. Things that would make you think twice about imagining her life was something to aspire to. Nobody ever knows what really goes on insomeone else’s marriage, and nobody can ever truly know the truth of another person’s life or”—he hesitated again—“or death,” he finished quietly.
I thought of Mimi out there on the ice. An accident or a suicide: there was no way to know. The truth would stay buried. And either way, she was gone.
“I think I understand,” I said. I extended a hand, and he clasped it in both of his.
“I hope you’ll visit me when you’re back in town,” he said.
“I will,” I said, and he squeezed my hand.
“Best of luck, Delphine,” he said.
The reverend was a good man.
I would never see him again.
“I still can’t believe you’re going to let your family sell this place,” Adam said as we pulled up to the Whispers for the last time. Last summer, I’d driven through the front gate and been awestruck by the sheer size of the place, the way it loomed above the bay, a relic from a different time. The time I’d spent living here had done nothing to diminish this feeling. If anything, it seemed bigger now, replete with even more memories and mysteries, and I would be relieved to lock the doors and leave it behind. I’d told my mother she could handle the sale and divide the profits between herself and her siblings—and that hopefully this would resolve any lingering resentments about how Mimi had changed her will. I did not tell her that I hoped Diana would use her share of the money to divorce her idiot husband rather than paying off his debts. It was, in the end, none of my business, and I thought of what the Reverend Frank had said during our first conversation—Let go or be dragged.Whatever it had once meant to my grandmother, I had to let go of the Whispers. The house was too huge, too heavy; trying to keep hold of it it would only pull me backward, pinning me with the weight of its history when I needed to break away.
“It’s for the best,” I said.
Adam peered at me from the passenger seat. “Are you sure? Your family has so much history here.”
“The history is why I want to let it go. Someone should make good memories here.”
“Don’t you have good memories?” He smiled and took my hand. “I know I do. Being here with you and your family, walking the pine path—”
