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Cybil chuckles and raises her glass to me. “Well, Ihavebeen watching the skies for you.”
We clink and take a sip. It’s as delicious as it smells.
“Do you always bring the ingredients for a Peach Bellini wherever you go?” I laugh and settle back into the chair, enjoying the warmth and the familiarity far more than I thought I would. I wonder if I’d be feeling like this if I was alone, covering old ground by myself.
Cybil shrugs. “It’s rude to turn up empty-handed, and I know you loved those Peach Bellinis at that little bar we went to, the last time I was in New Orleans.” She pauses. “Have you been well? You look well. A little skinny, but there never was much to you. I always worried that a strong wind might knock you over. Are you doing okay? Does it feel like home there yet?” There’s a maternal anxiety in her voice that amuses me. Between her and Ms. T, I have two extra mothers, far greater than the one on my birth certificate. I like to think my grandma would’ve been pleased to know I had people looking out for me, picking up where she left off.
“I’m…” I trail off, my amusement dying as I realize I have no idea how to answer her.
Cybil waits, giving me time to gather my thoughts, but they won’t cooperate; they’re a haphazard pile of feelings and emotions and confusions and doubts, and I can’t make head or tail of them. New Orleans was meant to be my fresh start, but the longer I’m there, the more it feels like I’m running away and, yet, getting nowhere. The gallery was supposed to be a distraction, but it only serves as a reminder that it’s not what I want to do with my life. And though I love Georgie and my gallery girls, and Grace and Lyndsey are closer now, and my apartment is beautiful, and the coffee is incredible and the nights out—though few and far between—are legendary, I feel like I’m treading water until someone comes along and drags me out of the waves, but the ocean around me is vast and empty and still, and no one is coming. I’m just… pretending that someone is.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Cybil says gently, taking hold of my hand. It’s only then that I realize I’m crying.
“I… feel like I got turned around, and I don’t know which way is up or down,” I whisper, like I’m sharing a terrible secret. “I keep thinking that if I just keep going, I’ll find the path again, but I’m getting more and more lost. Does that make any sense at all?”
And Rowan was a huge fork in the road, but because I pressed on with the path I thought I was meant to be on, I have no clue where he would have led me. Would he have set me back on the right track, after stumbling through some weeds for a while?
Cybil nods, and there’s a shine in her eyes to match mine. “I know precisely what you mean.”
“Of course you do.” I shake my head, feeling selfish and stupid. “It’s… this place. It’s being back here. I thought I could pack it all away in my head, but…” I gesture toward the beautiful cottage, every lick of fading paint carrying the brushstrokes of life-changing memory: the good kind and the worst.
This is the house where I fell in love. This is the house where I lost it all. This is the house where I was happiest. This is the house where I cried so many tears it’s a wonder that I didn’t shrivel away to nothing. This is the house where he proposed, and the house where I became a widow.
Cybil squeezes my hand. “You can come back, you know. If not here, then… there’s plenty of space for you at the house. I, for one, would relish having you around.”
“I can’t,” I say thickly, but she already knows that. We’ve had this conversation a few times, and though I doubt she’ll ever stop asking, I’m certain I’ll never accept. I didn’t belong at the DuCate mansion when I first visited, and I don’t belong now. I’m not sure I belong anywhere.
Cybil sighs sadly. “Can I say something you might not want to hear?”
“I won’t know until you’ve said it,” I reply, with a half-smile that hurts my cheeks.
She pauses for a short while, her bright eyes following a snapped branch that’s caught in the current of the sluggish water. Then, still watching the water, she says, “You’re a good person, Summer, with a heart of solid gold, but you’ve got one major flaw.”
“Not sure Idowant to hear this,” I mumble, taking a sip of my drink. It doesn’t taste nearly as sweet as it did before.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” she continues, adding deeper lines to the wrinkles on her brow as she frowns. Her eyes crinkle, as if she’s in pain. “You’re not letting yourself heal because you don’t think you deserve to.”
I stare at her, unblinking. “Have you been talking to my therapist?” I’m half-joking, but I wouldn’t put it past Cybil to pry, thinking it’s the decent thing to do.
“Not for lack of trying,” she replies, and I think she’s half-joking, too. “I can see it and hear it, Summer. I never thought thatIwould be the one to say this, but… it has been two years, sweetheart. He’s not coming back, and pining isn’t going to change that.” Her voice isn’t unkind or unfeeling, but there’s an edge of warning to it, as though she fears what might happen if I don’t heed her.
“I’m not delusional. I know he’s not coming back, but… moving on is harder than I thought, and I thought it would be impossible, so that should give you a good indication of where I’m at.” My tone is colder than I intend it to be, but I’m as tired of being told to ‘get over it’ as I am of feeling guilty.
She nods in understanding, which somehow makes it worse. “I’ve been where you are, Summer. Do you remember what I told you, the last time we were sitting here like this, in this very spot?”
I still wasn’t in my right mind back then, when she pulled up to deliver an olive branch. “Half-alive,” Ms. T used to say, with fear in her eyes. Fear that I wouldn’t be there the next time she came around but putting enough faith in me to push through. A lot of memories from the “aftermath” are fuzzy from the prescription pills and the non-prescription liquor that coerced me through it all, but I think I know what she’s talking about.
“Your high school sweetheart died,” I say, a lump forming. “You were engaged.”
“And I thought moving on would be impossible, too,” she continues, toying with the pearls at her throat. “I lost my first love, and you lost yours. But ‘first’ doesn’t have to mean ‘last,’ even though there will never be another like them, and you will still think of them, decades later, and get that ache in your chest that you thought was long gone.” She draws in a shaky breath, like she feels that ache now. “Ben’s death was a tragedy, but to see you waste your life would make it worse than it already is. He never wasted a moment of his life, and he wouldn’t want you to, either.Idon’t want you to.”
I watch the bubbles rise through the orange-tinged liquid in my glass, each one vanishing as it hits the surface. I imagine that each one is a life. All you get is the time it takes to fizz from the bottom of the glass to the top. Not long at all, really. Where am I in my glass? Still at the bottom, halfway up, nearer to the top? No one knows that for certain; I guess.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and hold her gaze as bravely as I dare. “How do you get past the guilt, Cybil? How do you stop it from feeling like a betrayal?”
My words seem to surprise her, as her drawn-on eyebrows raise up. “Is there someone, Summer?” There’s a tender spark of hope in her voice that I don’t want to sputter out.
“It’s a hypothetical,” I mumble, my head snapping toward the reeds at the sound of a splash. Henry’s wide wings fold in, his long legs mimicking the reeds he stands amongst, his proud neck bending slightly as he scans the water for a late lunch, or an afternoon snack. The sight of him grips my fingers tighter around the stem of the glass, and I wonder, just for a second, if it’s not Henry at all, but the angel, the ghost, the lost love who promised to take care of me, watching me now through the vessel of a blue heron. Wishful thinking, I suppose.
