It has to be, right?
I sidestep a couple in front of me to avoid the Sentimental Orator’s inevitable, forthcoming question: “Do you mind my asking…what happened?” And then I’d be backed into that awful corner, where I’m required to explain that my husband, an attorney, left me for the twenty-three-year-old paralegal he’d been secretly seeing for months. And yes, I actually believed he was working late all those nights. Her name? Oh, it’s Missy, who shows off her endless legs and fake eyelashes on Instagram.
My own account is @booksbyval. When I should have been posting inspiration from the novels on my nightstand, I stalked Missy. Guilty as charged. You’re wondering: Is she…attractive? Smart? Yes, on both counts, though don’t you think it should be illegal for someone with perennially pink, pouty lips to also graduate summa cum laude?
They’re a couple now. Missy and Nicky. #MadeForEachOther, or so read one of her recent posts, where she casually hinted at the new love in her life: my husband, or rather, soon-to-be ex-husband.
I feel like a zombie as I walk to the passport control area, grateful to have parted ways with the Orator. I scan my passport into a machine, and it begins flashing red and beeping. A moment later, a customs officer appears to tell me I’ve been randomly selected for further screening.
Of course I have.
“Miss, I’ll need you to come with me,” he says, leading me to a nearby room, where I hand him my passport. “Here for a holiday?”
“Uh—” I stammer as he fumbles through my bag, my underwear right on top of my jeans, and the old ratty AC/DC sweatshirt I can’t seem to part with, even if Nick did give it to me the year we first started dating. “A holiday?” I shake my head. “No.”
“Business then?” he continues, as he searches through my carry-on bag with gloved hands.
“No,” I say, rubbing my forehead. “Not business.”
“Well, then, what is it, miss?”
I swallow hard, deflecting his intense gaze, which feels as if it’s piercing into me. “My mother died,” I finally blurt.
A tinge of humanity appears in his eyes—only a glimmer, but it’s there. Perhaps that’s the only good thing about death—that it softens the hardest edges.
“I’m very sorry,” he says, returning my passport, then pausing briefly. “You’re all clear. Welcome to England.”
I nod as he leads me out a separate entrance, then follow the signs to baggage claim, where I collect my two large suitcases on carousel 11 and make my way outside to find a cab. I wave at a waiting driver, who’s leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette.
“Where to?” he asks, loading my luggage.
“Primrose Hill,” I say.
He nods. “Coming home?”
Now that the divorce is nearly final and the Seattle house sold, Primrose Hill will be my landing place. Still, it’s foreign to me.
I shrug. “Sort of.”
As he drives off, the raindrops cling for dear life to the window glass. I close my eyes and immediately see my mother’s face beaming at me in the rearview mirror. She’s singing that old Stevie Nicks song “Sara” and shifting the car into fourth gear. I’m twelve years old. Two weeks later, she would be…gone.
I wipe the foggy window with the sleeve of my jacket, remembering how hard it was after she left. Dad had done his best, but he could never fill her shoes. No one could.
Books numbed the pain. Inside their grand adventures I could walk alongside a myriad of characters with lives as complicated as mine.
After college, I got my master’s degree in library science, with a particular interest in rare antique books. Call me a first-rate nerd, but I loved spending my days at the circulation desk of the local library, amid the heavenly scent of books, while my ambitious husband finished law school and set out to climb the corporate ladder. The only ladder I was interested in climbing, however, was the one in the vintage book section.
A library is a world unto itself—with its own rhythm section, even, the clatter of hardback books being stacked and shelved, the click of a stamp pressed to a due date, mothers shushing their children, readers tiptoeing from one bookcase to another, discovering unexpected treasures, losing track of time.
Anyway, after I found out about Nick’s affair, I took refuge in the library—my favorite little branch in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood—where I could disappear. I raced to the fiction section and sank into the threadbare chair in the far corner and wept and wept and wept. When there were no more tears, I read.
On our last night together, I made chicken parmigiana, and he told me it was the best he’d ever had. Then we watched an episode of Mad Men, and when it was over, he kissed me good night. The next morning, I opened my eyes and assumed the empty space beside me meant he’d left early for work as he did so often. But then, on my bedside table, I found a handwritten note that said nothing, and everything.
Val,
I’m so sorry. I always will be.
Nick
My heart sank, because I knew. Perhaps I’d known all along. But there it was, his handwriting in stark black ink. I’d always loved the curve of his s’s—with the little squiggles on the tail—but they looked foreign to me now, cruel even, as if they were calligraphic co-conspirators in this grave turn of events. I steadied myself as I let the words marinate in my mind until the reality of the situation finally set in: Nick was leaving me.
When the phone rang a few minutes later, I answered it cautiously.
“Yes, hello.” It was a man—with a British accent. “I’m looking for a Ms. Valentina Baker.”
“This is,” I said, rubbing my eyes as a chilly draft seeped through the bedroom window. “What is this about?”
“It’s about your mother, Eloise Baker.”
My eyes widened as I sat up in bed. I hadn’t heard anyone say her name in…so long, and it had been more than twenty years since I last saw her. “I’m sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“James Whitaker. I work for Bevins and Associates in London. We’re an estate-planning firm; your mother was one of our clients.”
“Your mother.”
My mother.
It was as if this stranger on the phone had produced a key to a vault of dusty old memories. I closed my eyes tightly, but like meddling ghosts, they demanded my attention. And there she was, my mother, on the last morning I ever saw her. She was standing at the base of the stairs, holding her arms out to me. I studied her beautiful face, with those chiseled features and arresting, crystal-blue eyes. She wore a long, flowy pale blue dress, with a ruffle at the hem.
The man on the phone cleared his throat, and the image disintegrated like a popped bubble. “I’m sorry, but I must relay some upsetting news,” he continued. “Your mother…she…passed away last Tuesday after a battle with ovarian cancer. However, I’m told that her passing was peaceful and painless.”
I swallowed hard. My arms and legs felt numb—foreign limbs connected to my despondent body. My heart beat so loudly, it was the only thing I could hear. How could she be dead? It seemed so…selfish. As if her last breath was a perfectly executed final blow—to me. While it’s true I’d long since given up on the idea of our reunion, I suppose a small part of me believed it might happen. Someday. The way it turns out in books, when the pain of the past is miraculously healed in the final pages—wrongs righted with the blot of a handkerchief, heartache mended with a needle and thread. I was supposed to have that ending. But, no, mine would be a tragic one: Nick’s letter, and now this. I once read a book about a woman who was struck by lightning three times in one year. It was as if it hunted her.