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Months ago, I would’ve torn into it, desperate to see what he had to say. But now, I hesitated.
It could change everything.
It could serve as a reminder, tangible and from his own mouth, that the things I’d started dreaming of, the things I’d started wanting, the things I’d started thinking of as mine ... were in direct contradiction to what he and Amie wanted.
And the pause was ultimately my undoing.
Guilt clawed at my insides, because Ipaused. Because I didn’t immediately rip into the paper and devour the words he’d left for me.
There was something really fucking disconcerting about getting a message from someone you’d already grieved. Something heart stopping about receiving something new in their handwriting, because there wasabsolutely no guarantee that it would help or that it wouldn’t hurt and make things a million times worse.
“Not right now,” I said. With trembling hands, I tucked the envelope into my back pocket and turned away from the house.
Without the ability to see it—this new, shiny version—I could still imagine it as it had been when I came with Chris. When I saw my friend hurt, feeling like the weakest version of himself for not being able to secure this place and a future that only he could see.
In a horribly ironic full-circle moment, I thought about my dad’s advice.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to do it, Burke. Doing the hard stuff when you don’t want to is going to make you the best version of yourself.
But, suddenly, I wasn’t sure what the hardest thing was anymore. I’d done a lot of hard things in my life.
Losing my friend? I had no choice.
Carrying this dream for him when he was gone? I had a choice in that. And I made it when I decided to see it through to the end.
Only now I couldn’t see what the end looked like. And I definitely couldn’t see how any of this was making me better or stronger.
Standing there with the bags in my hand and the weight of Chris’s letter in my back pocket, I felt like ... him.
My dad had been no great teacher in any of the things that mattered. His solution to grief had been to ignore it. And I was following in his footsteps just fine.
Distracting myself with the last person I should have lost myself in. Someone good and kind and funny who deserved a man who loved more like she did.
When I walked into the carriage house, she was gesturing widely, making shapes in the air with her hand that made William laugh.
“You didn’t say that,” he said.
“I did. They wanted a scrolled iron arch, William, come on.” Her eyes were bright with laughter.
His booming laughter grated in my ears. Not just because I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but because I’d walked through one simple doorway and the entire mood was just a bit too bright, a bit too happy.
Because they couldn’t possibly know what was in my head or what was weighing down my back pocket.
“You’ve got to send me pictures when it’s finished,” he said.
“I will. I hope to drive down to see it once we’re done here.”
I kept my eyes on the floor as I walked Charlotte’s bag to her room. If she was watching me, I didn’t know.
“That’s in Kansas City, right?”
She made a noise of assent.
Slowly, I walked toward the yellow bedroom and set my suitcase at the foot of the too-small bed. I pulled the letter out of my pocket and let it rest on the bed while I sat on the edge of the mattress.
I’d never been in any condition to start a relationship with Charlotte, and I’d always known that. There was some instinct deeply hardwired in me that I hadn’t been able to fight against, and all those things roared to the surface.
He asked her about that job in Iowa, and she paused before answering. My breath caught as she did.
