Page 13 of Lost and Found

I don’t know why it delights me to imagine him still caring about anything that goes on here after he’s gone. Or why I automatically equate his nosiness to caring at all, rather than just plain nosiness. I am so ready for somewhere bigger I can’t imagine missing anything about this place.

Still. “I’ll keep you up to date on any hot goss, Si,” I say.

“Yeah?” he asks brightly.

“Yeah.”

His grin sprawls outward, and I get a little caught in it.

“You know it, right?” he says, so close the words kiss my cheeks. “You know you look beautiful tonight.” He sighs, and it sounds pained. “You always do.”

I give in to the urge to trace a finger up the back of his neck and twist into one of his wavy curls, running over the clasp of his chain on the way. “You know you look good, too.” So good it’s honestly annoying. I lean my head into his chest and close my eyes, the scent of his cologne and boutonniere in my nose.

I keep my eyes shut when he tips my chin up, when I feel him studying my face. I clench them tighter and hold my breathwhen he slides his thumb over my brow, swooping along my cheekbone before it travels a path across my jaw. I sense him hesitate before he brings it to my bottom lip. I put the tiniest bit of pressure against it. Only the suggestion of a kiss. His hand comes to rest in the nook beside my throat for the remainder of the song, his palm warm against my collarbone. When the last of the music fades away, I force myself to pull back, and some of my hair catches in his rose.

“Bea?”

I turn too fast toward Merritt and stumble an extra step away from Silas. It’s a series of jumpy movements only a guilty person would do.

Her stare bounces between us. But Silas—when I glance anxiously at him, Silas is still looking at me. I turn back to Merritt in time to see her eyes fill with tears, just before she whirls around and runs off.

CHAPTER 5

Now

Bea

The morning after the wedding, I wake up fully alert and—andwell rested. It’s disconcerting for a moment, like ascending the stairs and expecting another step, a moment of suspension before I meet solid ground. I hold my breath and wait for the tight burn in my temples that follows a night of crying (or trying not to) and it doesn’t come. My eyes don’t feel hot or swollen. There’s only a faint, pleasant soreness in my thighs and shoulders from being tossed around a dance floor.

Rolling over upends the shoebox of photographs I pulled into bed with me last night, right before I lost steam and passed out. I start to pile the pictures back in but linger on one. Prom, junior year, a group of ten of us in front of Martha O’Doyle’s store, with Silas, Merritt, and me, front and center.

I remember Silas’s sister pinning the boutonniere she made for him onto his suspender strap, and how she complimented the orchids on Merritt’s dress. Even back then, Sage had an affinity for flowers, and now she runs a floral business out of her very own home garden. The principal Silas suspected was moonlighting as an author ended up becoming aNew York Timesbest-selling one with multiple film adaptations. She andthe English teacher she’d been secretly seeing now live in Bend with their three kids and a gargantuan, droopy-faced dog.

I wonder what I’ve managed to keep of myself from back then, too. Sometimes I worry all I’ve done is lose the things that felt truest to me. My lightness, my grit. My favorite person.

More of my mom’s words run through my mind, unbidden.“Too much of your life has been lived according to someone else,”she’d hurled at me in our biggest fight.“You left school when she got sick the first time. Your plans have always been tied to Merritt. You cannot make this decision based on her, when she’s not even here. You’re in no frame of mind to make this choice right now.”

And these are the thoughts that make the tears come, because this morning, with sunlight shining stripes across my bedroom and last night’s makeup trickling down my face, the sharp corners of memories poking into my limbs like they might cut me . . . I am so worried that she was right, even if it doesn’t change what I want.

I sit up in bed, other photos stuck to my arms in places. I gently peel them away and leave them in a tidy pile while I go brew some tea. On my way back, I stop by the credenza with all the pictures turned around on it, facing the wall. I had to leave my place furnished but was sure to bring my most personal effects with me here. I know there’s a blanket haphazardly shoved inside that credenza, where it’s been for at least three months. I’d lain down on the couch after a jam-packed day, ready to turn on something mindless that would put me to sleep. I’d pulled up that blanket and caught a whiff of Merritt’s perfume clinging to it, kicked it off me like it was on fire, then put it away while I held my breath. The thought of washing it felt like a betrayal, but the thought of falling apart while I huffed it felt unbearable, too.

Today, it doesn’t.

I methodically spin each picture frame around and retrieve the blanket with a confidence that feels long forgotten. Before I know it, I’ve hauled two boxes of photographs into my temporary living room and swept the blanket across my lap, and Joni Mitchell is crooning through my portable speaker.

I start sifting through the pictures, laughing wetly over each memory. The song reminds me of Christmas, of Merritt with wine-stained teeth and a light-up headband, arms gesticulating wildly at the television as she wailed,“How could Hans Gruber do that to Nanny McPhee? Bastard!”No matter that we’d seenLove Actuallyprobably fifty times, that betrayal wrecked us every year.

I go at it like this for hours. Smiling, crying, laughing to myself like a lunatic. More music, more pictures. In between it all, there’s that evergreen thought on a loop:This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, this isn’t fucking fair.But god, I still think doing this . . . in some way, I think it feelsgood.

The only things that pull me out of it are my basic human needs. After I feed myself, I decide to shower for myself, too. Which I suppose is the function of every shower, but I’m not getting ready for work or an appointment or a wedding or anything that Ihaveto get ready for, other than me.

After that, as I’m starting to put everything away again, I map out a plan to go over to the house and talk to my mom, aggregating all my talking points. I know what I want to do, and I’m going to keep moving forward. I know that I still want to have a baby and that I’m going to keep pursuing IVF. But I also know that if I want to start this journey from the best place I can, emotionally as well as financially, I can afford to take another month, if need be.

My plan to save up enough money for childcare and time off and all those other contingencies may not have won over her confidence, but maybe telling her I’m going to give myself a littlemore time will help. Maybe she’ll finally realize I’m taking this as seriously as I can. That I’ve got a clear head. At the very least, I’m hoping the added time will be an olive branch between us.

It’s well into the afternoon now, and I’ve got the windows open so the smells of Mom’s flower garden can permeate the house. I brew a fresh cup of tea to bolster me and walk out onto the front steps, just in time to see my stepdad get into his car with a shake of his head. He slams his door and backs down the driveway just as Mom rounds the corner of their porch, arms crossed and expression worn.

I meet her halfway.