Today was the day Michael was supposed to meet Violet at the Filmont Inn, and as he made a sharp turn from Main Street, he was right on time. He jogged through the front entrance and addressed the young, freckled girl who was stationed at the front desk.
“A reservation for Violet Cromwell, please…or maybe…” Michael scratched his chin, “…it might be under my name, Michael Sinclair.” The girl barely glanced up from her iPhone, but she did hand him a key card. Room 206, how could he forget?
Michael took his time getting to the room, opting to take the stairs. He let out a deep breath, slid the card through the key reader, and stepped into the familiar room.
He was surprised to see that the beds were still made in a fashion one can only attribute to a seasoned maid service staff. Violet wasn’t there, and initially, he thought perchance she had yet to arrive, but then he noticed a cream-colored sheet of paper on the bed. He sat down to read her letter.
Dear Michael,
I have loved you since I was a little girl, but I am no longer a girl. When we are young, we live by the seat of our pants, and that makes life exciting, but as adults we must be resolute in our decisions, and I am resolute in mine. Our ship has sailed, Michael. There are two other beautiful women who love you, and I hope you make the right choice. You know how you rescued me that day when I was eleven? Well, my dear Michael, you rescued me again from a marriage that I did not belong in, from a life that was not mine. And for that, I will be forever grateful. I leave you with a brilliant quote from Robert James Waller:
“The old dreams were good dreams; they didn’t work out, but I’m glad I had them.”
Love always, Violet
There is something so uncanny about returning home after a long vacation. For a split second, everything inside your house seems unfamiliar and strange, and you may notice little things that you take for granted or fail to notice on a day-to-day basis. Time apart can do that; it makes you readjust your outlook from a different angle.
Michael experienced this exact feeling when he opened the front door of his and Penelope’s new home in Glenn Heights. Although he originally despised the cookie cutter design, he had to admit that it was genuinely stunning, and he admired Penelope’s ability to make the space look clean and sterile, but also homey and inviting. As he looked around at the pictures and decorations she had added, he noted her superb attention to detail. The house smelled so good; it was a familiar scent that he hadn’t noticed before—at least not consciously. God he missed her, and he missed this place they called their home.
The kids were in school and Penelope was not home, so he walked slowly around the empty space, enjoying the memories and avoiding the letter on the table. Her engagement ring was beside it, and he didn’t need to read it to know what it said, but he felt compelled to read her words.
Dear Michael,
I loved you. I still love you.
But I love myself more.
I deserve to be with someone who KNOWS that they want to be with me, and you deserve to be happy. Penelope
Michael’s eyes were so blurry with tears that he nearly missed her where she stood beside his Jeep—not Penelope but Lexi. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“Penelope told me when your flight was landing, and I know she went to work, so I was hoping to catch you here, in person,” Lexi said, and she reached up to wipe a tear from his face. “I want you to know that I’m sorry for leaving you and Elijah, and I know it will never be enough…” Michael began to speak, but she shushed him. “Please, Michael, I need to say this…sometimes I don’t think I was cut out for motherhood. I learned right away that taking care of a child requires a type of selflessness that I never saw in my own parents and never quite mastered myself. I didn’t think I could do it, so I ran like a coward. I used men and drugs to mask the pain: the pain of my childhood, the pain of my life in general. I can never take back what I did, but coming back here made me realize something…Elijah turned out just fine without me, just as I did, in spite of my own crappy upbringing. We are fighters, he and I. He’s a wonderful young man, and that’s to your credit, Michael. You made up for what I was lacking, and you did what I couldn’t, and I will love you forever because of that. I can’t change what has happened, but I can make changes right now, at this moment. Instead of focusing on trying to fix what we had, or create a love life for myself, I am going to do one thing, and one thing only, and that is focus on the most important man that ever walked into my life, and that is Elijah.”
Michael squeezed her tightly, and then watched her climb behind the wheel of the old, run-down Malibu. No longer did she resemble that helpless, homeless girl at the bus station in Reno. She was older now, and the weight of the world and her burdensome life were etched in the creases on her forehead and showed in her gait. Despite the fact that she looked older, there was an elegance in her step, and she had never seemed more exquisite to him. He would miss her, but he had grown accustomed to missing Lexi.