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“You are?” he asked, surprised.
I nodded. “I trust you. I trust us. And that’s good enough for me. We don’t need any messages from the future or whatever the heck it is telling us we can’t make it. We deserve a chance to be together without that black cloud hanging over our heads.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just do me a favor and take a couple of days to make sure this is what you really want. I don’t want you to regret anything. Decide too late that there’s some exorcist you want to get to look it over or something.”
“Agreed.”
Nineteen
I woke up the next morning in the middle of the bed. Alone. Dammit. But Lars wouldn’t be far away. The sun rimmed the curtain edges in bright white light. Summer would be ending soon. The nights were getting cooler as proven by the extra blankets on our bed. It had been a heck of a year. It was my first summer as caretaker of this house, and I’d even managed not to kill many of Aunt Susan’s plants.
Halloween needed to hurry up so I could get out her decorations. Talk about all-time favorite holiday. She had a plastic life-size skeleton nicknamed Stanley who hung from the front porch, along with a veritable army of ghosts that fluttered alongside him in the wind. Pumpkins and gourds would line the front steps. A tombstone sat in the bed of lavender by the sidewalk. One of my earliest memories was of Aunt Susan making a witch costume for me while I waited not so patiently. I’d worn the black dress and pointed hat for years until I burst the seams.
I’d be the person standing at the front door handing candy out to trick or treaters as she’d done every year...that would be bittersweet. But it was nice to be able to look forward to things. The grief seemed to shift a little more every day and her absence no longer made me feel quite so hollow inside. Memories didn’t hurt in the way that they had. Instead there was an awareness of what a blessing it had been to have her in my life all of those years.
As for the mess of feelings that used to roil inside me at the thought of Aaron, those were long gone. Never to be seen again. And good riddance.
I rolled over and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. The world was quiet on this Sunday morning. Peaceful. Right up until a lawnmower roared to life nearby, and a bird started screeching in protest. Which might have been the universe telling me to get my butt out of bed and go find my boyfriend. Though boyfriend sounded middle school and lover was...no. Partner was fine. Or was it? Another thing to ponder.
Lars’s request to wait a while before destroying the divorce certificate surprised me. Although, I guess he had a point. Once it was gone, it was gone for good. I got up and retrieved it from my underwear drawer and stared at the worn creases in the paper. At how the text had faded with age. The scent of dust and dirt from the wall lingered on it.
The same old feelings flooded back to me: Frustration over not knowing what caused the failure of our marriage. Wonder that I would agree to get wed in the first place...though I was beginning to see how that might have happened. My feelings for the man were big. Huge. And a mix of sadness and anger that our union might fall apart. That we wouldn’t last.
Fuck that noise.
I was done with listening to it.
My fingers tightened on the piece of paper. The desire to scrunch it up and throw it into the trash was tempting as all hell. To light the fucker on fire.
But a strong case could be made that Lars and I were only together because it existed. Only after its discovery did we take the time to really get to know one another. To grow close. Turns out sharing a secret, trying to unravel a mystery, is great for bringing people together. It might have happened anyway with him working on the house. But knowing me, I would have wanted to keep my distance from the Ex’s best friend. That would have trumped everything—and to think of what I would have missed out on.
Maybe I should be grateful to it, after all.
Out in the back garden, Lars was hard at work sanding one of the old Adirondack chairs. Kat sat nearby keeping an eye on him, as she was wont to do. Her new rainbow collar was very cool. An empty coffee cup and the latest book from Tessa Bailey sat nearby. He hadn’t been only working.
As always, the sun loved Lars. Both his hair and the faint sheen of sweat on his skin. I could happily stare at him for hours. I sat on the back steps in the shade with a cup of coffee in my hands, wearing only an old tee and panties. As nice as it was to dress up, you needed to be comfortable hanging out in your own home. To be comfortable in your own skin. Which included not caring whether the love of my life saw my cellulite and messy hair.
