Chapter 57

57

We have a lot of catching up to do.

She walked out of my life when she was the only thing I had left to lose. Once she was gone, my conclusion was inevitable.

“You were my sanity,” I remind her.

The day would turn out to be an enjoyable one; a brief morning shower would ensure that the overall heat of the afternoon would be more than manageable.

“It was just so hot last week,” Jamie says offhandedly as we take the short set of sidewalks that lead us to her front door. “The rain these past few days has been long overdue.”

Yes, I think to myself. Just like this reunion.

She married two years after our relationship ended, “Not out of love,” she is careful to point out, “But out of necessity.”

“My heart died with you that day,” she says as if recalling the instant, her eyes focused on a distant memory located somewhere behind the clouds. “When I heard what happened to you I dropped off the path of reason. I needed something to fill the void you had left inside of me.”

That something was named Mike, and he had traded in his pen for a rifle and had just returned from his two-year tour of duty. She hadn’t spoken to him since the day she moved in with me, but, as she explained, she had nowhere else to go.

“I remember it vividly, a reoccurring nightmare of remorse and drunken miscalculation. I was living in hotels until I heard the news. I knew, with you gone, there was nothing left to go back to. No hope of reconciliation.”

I had severed all ties to friends and family so unfortunately the poor girl read about my death in a magazine a good two weeks after my passing. The day was vaguely familiar to the night she showed up on my doorstep so many years ago. The wind was briskly blowing in from the mountains carrying along with it a basket of cloud cover that made the air seem much colder than it was.

“Drunk on vodka, I rang his doorbell and collapsed into his arms. He tried to put me to bed on a foldout couch upstairs but I begged him t hold me through the night. We spoke no words as he gently tucked me into his bed.”

She felt hurt and betrayed that I had given up so easily, that I wanted an eternity of nothing more than I wanted her. I can’t remember if she was right or not. Had I really thrown so much away?

“And so I took him inside of me that night to cover up your scar. You destroyed my life that day, Richard. The little girl he and I conceived was supposed to be yours.”

We find ourselves standing like two punctuation marks on Jamie’s front porch. We pause like commas before she fumbles for her keys.

“You know,” she says, “Even though you’re not her father, she never fails to remind me of you. She’s a free spirit who wants to be a writer someday. One of her favorite novels is a first edition I stole from you the day I left.”

I smile. “What’s her name?”

“Victoria,” Jamie responds, “But for some reason or another she likes to go by something different.”

“And what would that be,” I ask.

“Jamie,” she says. “But it’s beyond me as to why.”

And suddenly everything connects like a non-stop bus ride to Philadelphia. Nothing in this life is a coincidence once you really begin to read the signs.