“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since yesterday,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. “But what—”
“Say you’ll spend the afternoon with me,” he interrupted.
I turned toward the water again. As the wave receded it seemed as if the ocean were pulling away from me. Why on earth would I say no? “All right,” I said. “Of course.”
“Can we walk?” he asked.
He was gazing at my bare feet; he seemed to have a hard time meeting my eyes. Yesterday he’d been so cool and charming, but today he seemed skittish. Nervous.
We walked along the beach in silence for a little while. Then, because someone had to say something, I asked, “How was your meeting yesterday?”
Julian sighed. “Well, that particular client wants to leave his body to science and his money to his pet llama, if you can believe it,” he said. “When I suggested that there were more deserving beneficiaries—for the money, anyway; science can have the old codger if it wants him—he smirked at me. I loathe smirking and anyone who does it. I can’t even stand the word itself.” He shook his head. “Wait, why am I going on like this?
“I asked,” I said, following him as he veered off the beach and onto a narrow path that wound between high, grassy dunes.
“I think he’s just pulling my leg, honestly, and he’s got so much money that it doesn’t matter if he’s paying me three hundred an hour to do it.”
“Maybe he’s lonely,” I suggested.
“Then he could play golf, or join the Elks. I have better ways to spend my time.” Julian swiped at a clump of beach grass, and then he smiled to himself. “Like taking a walk with Anne McWilliams, formerly of Andover, Massachusetts.”
“Thank you, I’m flattered,” I said, laughing. “Even if a grouchy old weirdo doesn’t offer much in the way of competition.”
We turned a corner, and the path narrowed even more before stopping at the far end of the dunes. But we weren’t at the parking lot now, which I’d expected. Instead, we were standing at the edge of a manicured green lawn, dotted with clusters of Adirondack chairs. A hundred yards away stood a small, quaint seaside inn.
Our conversation, which had barely begun, stopped immediately. I suddenly understood why Julian had come to find me.
He finally looked me in the eyes, and I looked back at him. I knew what he’d hoped would happen next.
And almost imperceptibly, I nodded.
Chapter 28
WE WALKED into the lobby, where Julian paid for a room. We didn’t say anything until we were standing in the middle of a suite with yellow wallpaper and French doors that opened onto a tiny patio. My cheeks felt hot—whether from sun or self-consciousness, I wasn’t sure.
“The obligatory bottle of Napa Chardonnay,” Julian said, lifting a bottle from its bucket of ice. “A glass?”
I took it with slightly trembling hands and set it down without taking a sip. I noticed he did the same.
Then we smiled at each other, not quite certain how to begin.
“May I kiss you?” Julian asked softly.
It was so romantic—so silly—that he asked. That was why we were here. But he’d always been a gentleman, even at seventeen.
I nodded and moved toward him. Taking a deep breath, I slid my hands around his waist and tilted my face up toward his. He hesitated for a single instant, and then he leaned down. His kiss was so tender that I thought I might cry again.
It had been such a long time.
Our mouths quickly grew hungry. I took his bottom lip between my teeth because he used to like it when I did that. He slipped off my shirt and then my bra. His hands, his devouring kisses, were everywhere. I felt like every nerve was singing.
“Let me look at you,” he whispered.
I lay down on the bed and let him take me in. I knew that I’d changed, that I wasn’t the radiant, blossoming thing I’d been the last time we saw each other, but I didn’t care; right here, right now, I loved my body more than I ever did when I was young. Julian wasn’t the skinny poet boy he’d been, either; his chest was broad and tanned and no longer hairless. I reached out and pulled him to me, skin to skin.
“This is a little crazy,” he whispered into my neck. “I don’t know what this means.”
“I don’t know either,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter.”
Then I kissed him again, harder, more insistent. We didn’t have to know what we wanted from each other, because our bodies knew. They remembered everything.
Afterward, lying next to me, Julian said, “I think you should stick around for a while.”
“Like until your wife gets back to town?” I asked. I was trying to be lighthearted, but it came out wrong.
He sucked in his breath.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
He ran his hands through his tousled hair. “It’s not unfair, Anne. I’m not divorced; I haven’t filed any papers. I’ve just been waiting. But not for Sarah to come back to me. It’s more like I’ve been waiting for some kind of sign, some reason to act. And maybe that’s you.”
I pulled the sheet up to my chin. “I don’t want to be the reason for anyone’s divorce.”
“Not the reason,” Julian said. “The… encouragement.”
I took a deep breath. “You know, there’s something I never told you,” I said. “After my mom died, I went to Cambridge. With Karen. We skipped school one day and drove there.”
“To see me?” Julian asked.
I nodded. I hadn’t thought of this trip in years, but now the memory had come rushing back. “I couldn’t call you back then. I couldn’t write you. But I wanted to see you. So the two of us wandered around Harvard Yard for hours. It was spring, and the lilacs were blooming, and everything was lush and beautiful. We were so excited at first! Then we got bored because you didn’t appear, and then, another hour or two later, we decided that we were completely crazy. Harvard has thousands of students—why in the world did we ever think we’d see you?”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming,” Julian said.
“But the crazy thing was, we did see you. We were getting ready to leave and suddenly there you were, in front of the library, with your backpack over your arm and your ratty Bob Dylan T-shirt under your Ralph Lauren button-down. You looked so at home, and so happy, in a place I could never get into—or pay for if I did. I think that’s when I realized that you and I weren’t meant to be. That we didn’t belong together.”
Julian frowned ever so slightly. “I don’t understand,” he said.
I tried to explain. “Take me and Karen,” I said. “We were so unlike each other that I used to think we were basically two different species,” I said. “But animals of two different species can be friends. Like a gazelle and a tortoise, for example—no problem. There are entire books about cross-species buddies. But animals of two different species can’t mate.”
Julian reached for my hand. “Anne, I hate to say it, but you’re still not making sense.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s confusing to me, too, and probably the animal metaphors aren’t helping. But I think the point is that for a little while, our two different worlds overlapped. And when they did, we had something wonderful. And this, right now, is wonderful. But it isn’t real, Julian. This is memory. This is us paying a visit to our old selves before we figure out who our new ones are.”
“I don’t know that I agree with you,” he said quietly.
I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s okay. You don’t have to,” I said.
He took a long, slow breath. “So what are we going to do now?” he asked.
“Let’s take that nap we didn’t take yesterday,” I said. I turned toward him and put my arm across his warm stomach. “I could use the sleep. I have a really long drive ahead of me.”
Chapter 29
FUELED BY coffee, doughnuts, and a giant bag of chocolate-cove
red espresso beans, I made the twenty-six-hour drive to Bonner Springs in two days. It had been hard to say good-bye to Julian, but I knew it was the right thing to do. He belonged to my past, and my future—whatever it was—lay somewhere else.
I could certainly wait to start worrying about it until after Bob Kline’s funeral.
Pauline and I drove to the church together. She sat stony-faced in the passenger seat. “I did all my crying last night,” she said. But I could see tears glittering in the corner of her eye.
The small church was nearly overflowing with people. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows, and fragrant lilies spilled out of tall vases in the sanctuary. Everything looked so beautiful, it almost seemed like a celebration—except for the fact that there, front and center, was the coffin I’d watched Bob make, white rose petals scattered across the lid.
When it came time for the eulogy, Kit Adams couldn’t speak; she shook her head mutely, tears streaming down her face, until a man rose and carefully helped her down from the pulpit. Then he took her place and stood there silently for a moment, looking out at all of us, a faint, sad smile on his lips.
He was tall, with dark hair that had obviously been cut for the occasion. He wore a dark suit but no tie. He was tan, like someone who worked outside, and he gripped the sides of the pulpit with strong, calloused hands. I felt a flicker of recognition when his eyes met mine, because I saw again Bob’s intense, dark-eyed gaze.
The man took a deep breath and cleared his throat. “My father was a lucky man,” he began. “Although it didn’t start out that way. His childhood wasn’t easy: He was the kid with the too-big shoes, newspaper stuffed in the toes, and the pants that were more patches than pants. The kid who ate government cheese and who didn’t have a dad. The kid whose mom worked so hard, trying to provide for him, that she was hardly ever home. But she loved him and encouraged him, and he worked as hard as she did. He went to school and he studied like crazy and—” The man stopped and shook his head. “Oh, boy, this sounds pretty boilerplate, doesn’t it? Another story of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The cliché of the American Dream. Well, I’m sorry, but it’s true. My dad believed in luck, without a doubt, but only if you worked hard enough to deserve it—which he did. One day when he was twenty-two, he had the luck of walking into the Kansas City Star about five minutes after the old crime beat reporter had quit in a huff. That’s how he became a journalist.” He looked up and almost smiled. “Although my dad would have me remind you that he was also a very good carpenter, especially once he retired.
“Anyway, not long after he became a reporter, he had the luck to get his Friday night plans mixed up, and he met my mother on a date she was supposed to be on with someone else. After they married, he went to Vegas for a conference, where he played craps for the first time ever. He walked away with enough money to buy a BMW—a used one, but still. When I was six, I wanted to play baseball, so he got a glove and started playing in the backyard, and pretty soon he joined a club team for kicks. He got so good that a scout from the Royals farm team came out to take a look at him.” He paused, and this time he smiled for real. “They didn’t want him, because he was too old, but that’s beside the point.” Laughter now mixed with the sound of sniffles.
“And he was beyond lucky to know and love all of you,” the man went on. “Even having a bad heart was lucky. My father didn’t want to die, any more than you or I do, but when death came for him, it was quick and merciful. I believe in luck and magic because he did. I am a lucky man because Robert James Kline was my father.”
Bob Kline’s son stopped, turned toward the coffin, and held his hands over his heart. And then he stepped down from the pulpit and sank into a pew.
I cried hard then—for Bob and his family most, but also for everyone in that church. Because we’d all lost a lot over the course of our lives, and we would lose still more. Not even luck would save us from that.
But the tears were cleansing, and I welcomed them.
Chapter 30
WHEN THE service was over, everyone moved to the church courtyard, where a buffet lunch had been set up under a large white tent. I wasn’t hungry, but I could appreciate the spread of fried chicken, ribs, baked beans, and potato salad—the kind of old-fashioned, stick-to-your-ribs dishes I hadn’t had in years.
Pauline walked over to me, followed by Bob’s son, who, unlike the rest of us, had made it through his eulogy without crying. But he looked paler now. Exhausted.
“This is Anne,” she said to him curtly, as if neither he nor I needed any other explanation for the introduction. And then she walked away, wiping her eyes and sniffling. A moment later, she turned back around and called, “You know what to do.”
I looked at Bob’s handsome son and thought, I hope she’s talking to him, because I sure don’t.
The son offered me a slightly discomfited smile. He was probably a year or two younger than me, and at least eight inches taller.
“Hello, Anne,” he said as we shook hands. “I’m Jason. Jason Kline. Though I guess that last part’s obvious.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said. I knew he’d heard it a thousand times today, but what else could I offer?
“Thank you,” he said. He sounded genuinely grateful. Then he added, “My dad told me about you.”
“He did?” I asked. I shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “Did he say, ‘So there was this crazy lady who walked up and asked me about the coffin’?”
“It’s technically a casket, actually. A casket has four sides, but a coffin has six, plus the top and the bottom. Think of what Dracula slept in—that’s a coffin.” Then he stopped. “Sorry, does that seem condescending? Or maybe just morbid, even for a funeral?”
“I don’t know. I’m feeling confused in general,” I admitted. “Like why I’m so sad, and why I’m even here. I mean, your father was a wonderful man, that was obvious to me. But I met him for all of an hour. And here I am, thousands of miles from where I live, mourning him in a dress that isn’t even black because I’ve been traveling and I don’t have one.”
Jason’s smile grew warmer. “He told me you were ‘a good one.’ He said I ought to tell you that if I ever met you. I know he’d be glad you were here.”
“That’s so kind, though I barely understand why.”
“He just liked you right off,” Jason said. “He fancied himself an excellent judge of character.”
“As well as an excellent carpenter,” I said.
“Exactly,” Jason said. “I also think you gave him a chance to appreciate his life. Not that he hadn’t before, of course. But looking back on it with you—a perfect stranger—he saw it all over again for the wonderful thing it was.”
“So maybe the moral of the story is ‘be kind to strangers,’” I said. “I feel like that’s something I’ve been learning lately.”
“Be grateful for what you have, and be nice to people,” Jason agreed. “I think most people are pretty decent at heart, don’t you?”
I nodded in agreement. Everyone I’d met on this trip had been damn near great.
Jason looked down at the ground for a moment before looking up and meeting my eye again. “My dad said something else. But it’s going to sound crazy.”
I said, “I don’t mind crazy.”
“He said that I was supposed to ask you out for dinner.”
“Really?” I asked, taken aback.
“Really. He said, Son, take my advice for once.”
I had to laugh then. “You have trouble with that, too?”
“Very much,” he said.
“So in that case you’re not asking…,” I began.
“Yes I am,” he said. “I’m asking you out to dinner. At my dad’s funeral. I know it’s nuts. I know you live a thousand miles away. And I know I’m going to start crying halfway through the first course. But I’m doing what he told me to do, because I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again. And I know I won’t see him ever again. So,
will you go? There’s a nice little Italian place…”
I paused. I thought about all I’d done and seen on my journey so far, and how every single day, I’d had to be open to chance.
To sorrow, too.
And to luck.
“Yes,” I said. “I’d love to go to dinner with you.”
Jason reached out and slipped the camera strap off my shoulder.
“Smile,” he said.
“But—”
“For my dad?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I hate having my—”
“What did King Tut say when he fell down and hurt himself?” Jason interrupted. “I want my mummy!”
And I laughed—because it was so stupid and because from now on I’d never hear anything about Tutankhamen without remembering Bob Kline. While I was laughing, Jason snapped the picture.
“Perfect,” he said. “Now you can have your story in the book, too.” Seeing my look of surprise, he explained. “Pauline told me all about it when I was here last weekend. Your project sounds amazing.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the camera back from him. “I can’t tell my best story, though.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “I guess because I’m still in the middle of writing it,” I said.
Jason smiled. “Death notwithstanding, I hope this is a good chapter,” he said.
I smiled back at him. “I like the direction it’s going in,” I said.
Chapter 31
A YEAR ago, I never could have imagined the turns my life would take. It was possible that having foresight—like taking advice—was one of my weak points.
But it was a flaw I could live with.
“Anne!” A small, red-haired woman in towering black stilettos interrupted my thoughts. “I’d like you to meet Sasha Delaney. She’s an art critic for LA Weekly.”
I smiled at Amy, my new gallerist, and then I shook the hand of a statuesque young woman. “Thank you so much for coming,” I said.