In Five Years

Chapter Thirty-Seven

He pulls back first. He drops his hand. We stare at each other, breathing hard. My coat is on the floor, crumbled like a body after a car crash. I turn my eyes from him and pick it up.

“I—” he starts. I close my eyes. I don’t want him to say I’m sorry. He doesn’t. He leaves it there.

I walk to the wall. I know what I’ll find, but I want to see it. The final, culminating piece of evidence. There, hanging on the wall, is Bella’s birthday gift: I WAS YOUNG I NEEDED THE MONEY.

“I don’t know what to say,” Aaron says from somewhere behind me.

I don’t turn around. “It’s okay.” I say. “I don’t, either.”

“All of this—” he says. “It’s all so wrong. None of this should be happening.”

He’s right, of course. It shouldn’t. What could we have done differently? How could we have avoided this? This impossible, unthinkable end.

I turn around. I look at him. His golden, shining face. This thing that sits between us, now made manifest.

“You should go,” I say. “Or I should.”

“I should,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Your stuff is all unpacked. Bella hired someone to do the closet. Your things are all here.”

“The closet.”

His cell phone rings then, disrupting the air molecules, disentangling us from the moment. He answers.

“Hey,” he says gently. Too gently. “Yes. Yes. We’re here. Hang on.”

He holds the phone out to me. I take it.

“Hi,” I say.

Bella’s voice is soft and bright. “Well,” she says. “Do you like it?”

I want to tell her she’s crazy, that I can’t accept this, she cannot buy and gift me an apartment. But what would be the point? Of course she can. She has. “This is insane,” I say. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Do you like the chairs? How about the kitchen? Did Greg show you the green tile sink?!”

“It’s all perfect,” I say.

“I know the stools are a little edgy for you, but I think it’s good. I think—”

“It’s perfect.”

“You always tell me I never finish anything,” she says. “I wanted to finish this. For you.”

Tears roll down my cheeks. I didn’t even know I was crying. “Bells,” I say. “It’s incredible. It’s beautiful. I could never. I would never — It’s home.”

“I know,” she says.

I want her to be here. I want us to cook in this kitchen, making a mess of materials, running to the corner store because we don’t have vanilla extract or cracked pepper. I want us to play in that closet, to have her make fun of everything I want to wear. I want her to sleep over, tucked in that bed, in safety, ensconced here. What could happen to her under my watch? What bad thing could touch her if I never, ever looked away?

But I understand she will not be. I understand, standing here now, in this manifestation of both dream and nightmare, that I will be here, in this home she built me, alone. I am here because she will not be. Because she needed to give me something to hold on to, something to protect me. A literal roof over my head. Shelter from the storm.

“I love you,” I tell her. Fiercely. “I love you so much.”

“Dannie,” she says. I hear her through the phone. Bella. My Bella. “Forever.”

Aaron leaves. I wander through the apartment, running my fingers over every surface. The green tile of the sink, the white porcelain of the tub. A claw-foot. I go through the kitchen — the cabinets stacked with pasta, wine, a bottle of Dom chilling, waiting, in the refrigerator. I go through the medicine cabinet, with my products, the closet with my clothes. I run my hand over the dresses there. One is facing out. I already know which one it’ll be. There’s a note attached: Wear this, it says. I always liked it on you.

It’s scrawled in her handwriting. Her loopy calligraphy.

I clutch it to my chest. I go to the window, right by the bed. I look out on that view. The water, the bridge, the lights. Manhattan on the water, shimmering like a promise. I think about how much life the city holds, how much heartbreak, how much love. I think about everything I have lost there, this fading island before me.