Good at Being Alive(87)

I weigh out my reticence against my desire to stop running and then lead him down a gravel path behind the church. “I’ve never brought anyone here.”

He slides his fingers through mine. “You don’t have to bring me either, if it bothers you.”

I give the tiniest shake of my head. “It doesn’t. This thing…it’s different with you. I don’t normally do, like, relationships.”

I wait for him to tell me it’s different for him too or to give me a tiny hint how he feels, but he does not. I guess I should simply be grateful he didn’t balk at me calling it a relationship. I count four up and twenty over until we stand at her grave.

Nadia Daniels

Beloved wife and mother

He reads the snippet at the bottom aloud: “?‘Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, / Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath.’?” He glances at me. “What’s that from?”

I rub at my chest, at something simultaneously sweet and painful just beneath my skin.

“It’s from ‘Bright Star,’ this love poem Keats wrote for Fanny Brawne. My dad said that poem always made him think of my mother, even before she died. That she was a little mysterious and removed and splendid, and even if he couldn’t understand her, it was enough just to be in her orbit.”

I have only the vaguest memories of her. A walk through the park. Being read to at bedtime. I’ve seen the home videos taken before she died, of course, but they’re unsettling. Maybe because she looks so much like me, and gives the impression of being a doting mom, but she was doing really shitty things to my father at the same time. I’m sure I missed her deeply when it happened, but you adapt to things as a kid. I bet I wasn’t still looking for her to walk in the door six months after she died, the way I’m still picking up my phone to text Bronwyn.

I shrug. “I think it was his way of coming to terms with loving her still after discovering all the lies she’d been telling him. She’d been hiding money and cheating on him too and it looked like she was planning to leave my dad for this other guy, and their mutual friends knew. Like it’s not bad enough to find out your wife did horrible things, but to also discover everyone was in on it?”

Theo is suddenly stiff and silent when I’d expected banal reassurance from him. And there’s something wary in his face that wasn’t there a moment ago.

As if in telling him this secret about my mother, I’ve accidentally trod on a secret of his own.





Bex


Six days later, I land in Madeira, a couple hundred miles off Morocco’s coast and surrounded by the Atlantic on all sides.

I take a deep breath the moment I step onto the tarmac. The air is balmy and sweet, refreshingly pleasant after a series of ninety-degree days at home.

A car delivers me to the oceanfront home Theo and I will share, just outside Funchal. Lars appears to be making amends after sticking us in that RV on the last trip: the interior is magnificent, with two bedrooms and a sliding glass wall that leads to the infinity pool.

Unfortunately, it appears that—despite having larger houses down the road—the crew has made our home their own as well. When I arrive, Katrina is making popcorn in the microwave and Jon is asleep on the couch.

“Sorry, Bex,” says LJ, bouncing a tennis ball as he walks in, “you’ll be seeing a lot of us this week. You’ve got a much better view than we do.”

I smile, sliding the glass door open to let in the breeze. “I like having people around,” I tell him. And it’s true. It’s so good to have swapped out that stale old house in New Jersey for this modern, spotless one that I don’t mind who’s in here with me.

Though I might feel otherwise once Theo gets here tomorrow. And I know he’ll feel otherwise.

I pass through the wide, spare living room and move on to the larger of the two bedrooms. It has a massive platform bed and floor-to-ceiling glass on two sides: one overlooking the ocean, the other overlooking a putting green.

Theo’s at his desk when I video call, his frown easing into a smile when he sees me. I love that I make him smile now. So few things do…it’s a little miraculous that I’m among them.

“Do you have a minute?” I ask.

“For you, yes. How’s the house?”

“It’s amazing. I’d give you a tour of the living area, but the crew is in there, so I’ll just show you the primary bedroom for now.”

He sits forward. “Why is the crew in our house? I’m not going through Norway all over again.”

“We’ve got a better view and more space, apparently, but they’re sleeping elsewhere. Anyway, this is the bedroom, which has its own putting green.” I turn the camera to show him.

“All I’m seeing is a whole lot of glass that bloody well better have floor-to-ceiling blinds.”

I grin as I hit a button to lower the blinds. “It does. Though obviously this room is mine since my life is more tragic.”

He rocks back in his chair, propping his legs on his desk, hands linked behind his neck. “Ah. Then you’re not planning to share with me?”

“You’ll need to earn it,” I reply, walking into the bathroom. “Maybe we can have a competition on the putting green.”

“We’re not using that fucking putting green once,” he growls. “Come up with another way I can earn it.”