Darling Julia,
I will meet you in Asheville on the day you tell me. It will be a much-needed breather for both of us, and please feel free to use the house for as long as you like. No one else does. You might as well. Life is short, dear one. We must make the most of it. Follow your heart. It can lead you to some outstanding places.
All my love,
Babs
But now, as I finished packing my tote bag, I had to consider that maybe it wasn’t my daughters’ outburst that made me want to leave town. Maybe it was my heart, my conflicted, troubled heart.
As I lifted my tote onto my shoulder and draped the hanging bag over my arm, I had to admit that those yoga classes I’d taken up recently were doing absolute wonders for my joints. Use it or lose it was the mantra around here. With the help of Summer Acres’ marvelous programs, I was discovering that I could regain things I thought I’d lost—flexibility, speed, mobility—even at my age.
I opened the front door and startled at the figure of Miles sitting on my front porch. Seeing him begged the question: What else could I regain? He stood up and walked over to me carefully, as if I were a horse he was trying not to spook.
I cringed thinking of the way Miles’s face had looked that night at dinner, and the way it looked now: hurt. I knew there were things for us to discuss. But I wasn’t ready to make a decision about all of this. Not yet.
“Hi,” I said as sunnily as I could manage.
He sat back down and patted the chair beside him. “Barbara,” he said, smiling.
I felt the awkwardness between us, the things we weren’t saying, the questions we weren’t asking. We had been inseparable and then, with no explanation at all, I had separated us. “I’m sorry,” I said.
He squeezed my forearm. “For what?”
“For taking a step back. I needed some time to think.” But I hadn’t come to any real conclusions. All I had done was miss Miles. He smiled now, and my heart fluttered. There is no logical explanation for the ways in which people enter our lives and we know they will always be a part of our hearts. Miles was one of those people. He had been a part of my heart for all these years. And now here he was.
“May I ask you something?”
“Anything,” I said warmly.
“Why wasn’t it me, Barbara?” he asked, his voice impassioned. “Why didn’t you choose me all those years ago? I know you wanted to. I saw the way you looked that night, when I came to you to ask you to choose me instead of Reid. Why couldn’t I change your mind?”
He didn’t have to elaborate. It was so easy for me to remember.
It was the week before graduation. The week before my wedding. The week before real life began. Miles had written me a letter, one of only a few he had written since I had told him of my engagement. He had asked to meet me at my college campus, had given me the time and place. I almost didn’t go. I knew it was wrong. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this would be the last time I ever saw him.
I remember arranging my skirt, musing at the place Miles had picked for us to meet: the marble bench beneath Davie Poplar, the university’s beloved, centuries-old tree.
As if carried in on the gentle breeze blowing through the UNC campus, there he was, strolling across the lush green toward this bench where, it was said, if you kissed, you would stay together forever. Wishful thinking, perhaps. But I was charmed nonetheless. I stood when Miles reached me, couldn’t help but hug him, the fresh starch of his shirt scratchy on my face.
“Barbara,” he said simply. That’s when I could tell he was nervous. That’s when I realized I was nervous too, my breath short.
We sat down on the bench. He tried to take my hands, but I pulled them away—gently, not harshly. He shook his head. “Barbara, I just want you to know…” He trailed off and started again, seeming uncharacteristically agitated. “Are you sure about marrying him? Are you positive? Because I can’t help but think that…”
I knew what he couldn’t help but think. “Miles, my marrying Reid has always been a part of the plan. This is just the plan coming to fruition.”
“But what about your summer with me? What about the secrets we’ve shared, the letters we’ve written?” I could feel him getting bolder. He looked me straight in the eye. “What about the way you kissed me?”
“Miles, I…” I couldn’t answer. Because I had kissed him. And it had taken my breath away. I knew then that I was breaking his heart. And, what’s worse, I also knew I was breaking my own.
When I couldn’t answer, he said, “I’m sorry. I think I must have felt things that you didn’t.”
I should have left it at that. It was the proper thing to do. But I shook my head and, looking down at my hands, said softly, “I felt them too, Miles.”
I looked up at him then.
“So marry me,” he said. “Make a life with me.”
I couldn’t tell him then because I didn’t understand what I was feeling. But Miles had big dreams that I knew would fling him far and wide. I had seen my parents chase dreams and take chances, buy things they could barely afford, go on trips on a whim, disregard responsibility. They were happy. But I felt untethered. I needed to feel secure. At that time in my life, I couldn’t bear the thought of moving away, of pursuing a different path outside my hometown. I needed my future children to know what their lives were going to look like, my mother there to help me raise them. I needed to know what my life was going to look like. I had said yes to Reid because I knew he would be a wonderful husband, a great father. He would take over his father’s business and we would live on the beach not ten minutes from where I grew up. He was settled, stable, sure. Safe. Miles, on the other hand, was not.
“I can’t stop thinking about you, Barbara. And I have to think that if you could stop thinking about me, you wouldn’t have met me today. You wouldn’t have returned my letters these past few months. You know we have something special.”
I did know. I knew exactly. It was the reason I had cried to my mother over Christmas break, when I should have been celebrating my engagement. I had seen Miles only twice since our summer at camp. And each time, I had promised myself it would be to say goodbye. Only I couldn’t. Once Reid proposed, I finally told Miles I couldn’t see him anymore. But we still wrote letters. What harm could letters do?
“How can I love two men at once?” I had sobbed to my mother.
I remember the way she’d wrapped me in her arms on the couch, smelling of Shalimar and cigarette smoke, the way her rouge had left a stain on my wet cheek. “My Barbara,” she had said. “I have been at this same place. I was terribly unsure about marrying your father. But the night he proposed, when that perfect stranger handed me a wedding veil on a train, I knew. I had been looking for a sign and that was the most obvious one I could imagine.” She had looked me straight in the eye. “What you need is a sign.”
A sign. Four months later, I couldn’t deny that I had most certainly received mine. If I had been searching for a concrete reason to marry Reid over Miles, I had found it. My sign was permanent, steadfast, and unwavering.
As I sat under Davie Poplar in front of a wounded and pleading Miles, I knew there was no backing out of my wedding even if I wanted to. My future was set, my story written. There was a small part of me that wished I could call the whole thing off, to see what a different future looked like. But I didn’t have that choice.