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What we have cuts too deep. Matters too much. Jonah and I will find our way back to each other, or we’ll drift apart forever. We won’t wind up with anything in between.
In either case, our future won’t be decided today. It will take a long time for us to weigh the truths we’ve learned, and told.
“I should leave,” Jonah says.
Don’t walk away. Don’t go. But this intensity is too much to bear for both of us. We have to leave the wreckage of our pasts and go back to the lives we’ve built. “Me too. I’m supposed to go see Shay and the baby. ”
“Tell them congratulations. ”
Does he mean it, or is it just something to say, words to fill the silence? Both, probably. “Okay. I will. ”
We walk together through the park, the only sounds our feet crunching on dry grass, the distant rumble of traffic, and the water flowing next to us. Neither of us is walking very quickly. Jonah wants to stretch this moment out as much as I do, I realize. The difference is, he’s willing for this moment to be our last.
I’m not. But how do I change that, if I even can?
Only when we reach the edge of the park does Jonah speak again. “I’ll never forget you. ”
Goddammit, now I’m going to cry. “I won’t forget you either. Like I ever could. ”
He smiles unevenly at me. “I’ll think of you every time I see your picture on the wall, of the man capturing the dove. ”
“He’s not capturing the dove. ”
“But his hands are cupped around it—”
“He’s protecting the dove. Keeping it safe. In a minute, he’s going to open up his hands to let it fly. ”
Jonah looks at me for a long moment, his gray eyes searching mine. Then he nods and walks away. Yet again, no good-bye.
This time I’m glad he didn’t say it. Because it’s not good-bye for us. When I told him about the dove flying free, I saw something in Jonah I’ve never seen before.
I saw hope.
And that’s how I know that somehow, someday, Jonah will find his way back to me.