Then, in my head I hear—first words, then sentences.
I don’t know that happiness is the goal, really. Not always. It’s a woman’s voice. The reply is in a man’s. If we’re not doing this to be happier, then why, Evelyn?
To find out who we are again, Evelyn says.
I laugh to myself. It’s dialogue. I’m writing dialogue.
The realization is so funny to me that my laughter shakes my whole body. My tears turn sweet.
The calm dissipates. What replaces it is surer, stronger. It’s something innermost finding its way forward, uninvited. Even with nothing left, I’m writing. Writing remains. Maybe it’s my own answer. Maybe it’s simply me. I’m doing it not because it promises an unfraught future, because it’s free of pain or peril—I’m doing it because it demands to be done.
For the first time, I contemplate the possibility of reconciling myself with those consequences. Instead of imagining paths of retreat, I try to put my writer’s mind to work imagining paths forward.
I understand, genuinely, that I can’t avoid crashing after feeling joy. It’s just the way I’m made, I know. Depression and anxiety will be there. I can’t simply choose to live without them—like I can’t simply choose to live without writing.
What I can do is . . .
I push myself to force this possible future into focus. What I can do is protect myself while I pursue what I love. I have to face the fact the fear is coming. I’ve felt it in recent weeks like I did before Only Once—tremors before tidal waves. What I need to do is use what I have to stay upright. I have knowledge of myself. I have courage. I have my therapist, with whom, I decide, I’ll schedule weekly calls surrounding the release.
I’ll need them, because I’m finishing this book. Because it’s coming out, and it’s going to be good.
I stand, swiping the sand from my legs. I don’t let my eyes linger on the horizon, now decked in the final embers of daylight. If I write, if I finish this book, it’s because I want to. Which I do. I have my direction. There’s nothing left to hide behind.
I walk back to my car, back to Nathan. Back to my life.
60
Nathan
I run.
I follow every street in our small neighborhood, hoping I get lost somehow. I pound the pavement in ways I never have before, the effort cutting my windpipe raw. The curbs of each corner fly past me, indistinct, while I push myself ever harder.
When Katrina left without a word, I did the only other thing I could instead of writing. I grabbed my running shoes and headed out, directionless. I couldn’t sit in the house with her gone, wondering if she was even coming back.
Finally, on the verge of collapse, I have to return home. When I do, her car is in the driveway. Despite myself, relief rushes into my pounding heart, fear following close behind. I speed up my steps. If Katrina’s here, it means something. I just don’t know what. I’m simultaneously unable to process and hyperconscious of the details of the night, the solitary hum of some insect, the crescent moon overhead. On the porch steps, I tell myself how this will go. I won’t let history repeat. I’m different now, and I think—I hope—Katrina is, too.
I walk in the front door, listening. The house is silent. There’s no sign of her on the first floor. The lights are off. The room is still. I climb the stairs, every creak of the wood conspicuous in the quiet. Reaching the upper level, I find her door half open.
I pause outside. I didn’t hold back with her on the porch, and although I want to hide the emotions in me that feel too big to contain—want to write them down, pull them out of myself onto the page, where they’re easier to comprehend, where I can hold them at a distance—I won’t. Which means I can’t hide from her now. From whatever she has to say to me.
I knock gently on her door. It swings open, revealing her sitting at her desk, typing quickly on her computer. She’s barefoot, sand speckling her ankles. She went to the beach.
I don’t think she notices when I step into her room. She’s focused, fixated on whatever she’s writing. I wonder for a second if it’s some warped parallel of what I wrote to her four years ago. Some damning scene rejecting me and what we might have. I’m done having this conversation in fiction, though. When I speak, my voice is fragile. “Can we talk?”
She stops typing and spins to face me, her eyes shining brighter than I’ve seen in days. In years, maybe.
“Of course,” she says. I hear the same change in her voice. She sounds full of confidence, renewed in some ineffable way. “I want to talk. I want—” She cuts herself off and stands up. “I’ve realized exactly how much I want.”