Hannah

“I hate this,” Lysanne said sadly from where she sat on her bed, watching me pack the few things I’d unpacked the day before.

“So do I,” I answered simply, honestly. “I think we can both agree that this isn’t the career path I was meant to take. It’s time I go home and put all of this behind me.”

Lysanne shook her head. “But what will you do at home?”

“For a while, maybe nothing. I need to sort through what happened. And then maybe I can figure out what I want, what I want to do, who I want to be. Being here was supposed to help, but it’s only made things harder, and now … now I’m more lost than ever.” Tears burned the corners of my eyes and the tip of my nose. “This has been too hard, too much, and I don’t want it anymore. I never should have come here.”

She slipped off the bed and to my side, taking one of my hands in both of hers. “Don’t say that,” she said gently.

“But it’s true. Nothing good has come of this, only pain.”

“Charlie wasn’t all pain, was he?”

“No, but that’s why losing him is so much worse. It would have been easier if he’d been like Quinton. It would be easier if I could hate him. But I don’t hate him at all.” I tried to take a breath, but it hung and skipped in my chest. “Even after he hurt me, I can’t hate him. I think because … because …” I looked down at my hands.

“Because you love him.”

I nodded, the tears I’d wanted to keep away filling my eyes. “And he’s not wrong. I should have told him just as much as he should have told me about Mary. I asked him for honesty I couldn’t give to him and demanded trust I couldn’t return.”

She frowned. “You not telling him about Quinton isn’t the same as him keeping Mary from you.”

“But it is, in its way. This is why he doesn’t trust people. She hurt him that badly, betrayed his trust in the most unforgiving way. And as far as he believes, I did something too close for his comfort.”

“You’re making excuses for him.”

“No, I’m not,” I insisted. “I haven’t forgiven him for what he said and did. I only mean that I understand him. But there’s nothing left to say. I’m ready to go home—I was ready before I met Charlie. I don’t belong here, Lysanne. All I have left for me here is you, because I’ve lost Charlie. What am I supposed to do? We hurt each other too badly to go back.” I shook my head. “I’m through fighting. It’s time to be done with it.”

“But what if he was sorry? What if he tried to make it all right again? What if he told you he didn’t mean what he said?”

“How could I believe him? He told me the truth. He didn’t know if he could trust me. He lied to me about Mary, kept his meetings with her from me. He accused me of seducing him and Quinton, took Quinton’s word over my own. That’s what hurts the worst, and, now … now, I’m just tired. We’re a dead end, Charlie and me.”

“I just … I wish things were different.”

“So do I. But Charlie looked into his heart and couldn’t see the truth. I know he’s been hurt, but I never did anything but give him everything he’d asked for. And all I asked for was this one simple thing—trust that I’d proven to him I was worthy of—and he couldn’t give it to me.” Hot tears spilled down my cheeks, and I swiped at them, hating them, hating the gaping hole in my chest and my aching heart that sat inside.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said with tears of her own in her eyes.

“I know. But it’s time. You’re all that’s left for me here, but unless we get married, I’m afraid I can’t stay in America.”

She laughed at the joke, though her face was still weighted, her eyes shining. “Well, I suppose the good news is that you’ll be home in time for Sinterklaas. There could be worse times to go home. You’ll be busy enough to avoid thinking about the whole mess.”

“Yes, and I’ll be glad for the distraction.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

I pulled her into a hug. “I’ll miss you too. I’ll send you some things, yeah?”

She sniffled. “Make me some stroopwafels. Real ones. And chocolate letters. And little people cookies.”

“Is that all?”

“How about I send you a list?”

I laughed and pulled away. “All right.”

“I love you, Hannah. And I’m so sorry.”

“I love you too,” I said and pressed my forehead to hers.

An hour later, we said goodbye on the stoop, our tears fueled by the truth that we didn’t know when we would see each other again, spurred by our sadness and guilt and sense of failure. Nothing had gone as planned, and as I watched rain streak the window of the taxi, I wondered how things had gone so far off track.

The truth was that I didn’t want to leave at all. I wanted to tell the taxi driver to turn around and take me to Charlie. I wanted to tell him everything—how I felt, the truth about Quinton—and beg him to take me back. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t force him to trust me, and I shouldn’t have to.

So I would go home and pretend that none of this had ever happened, however impossible that would be. Because I had changed, and he was the reason. He was the reason for everything.

But he’d never been mine, not really. We’d only been playing house, just like Mary had said.

I’d just realized it a little too late.

* * *

Charlie

Music played quietly in the kitchen late that afternoon as I ate Thanksgiving with my children. We were otherwise alone.

Completely alone.

Hannah was gone, leaving a silent void where she’d been, and I was so aware of that fact, like a phantom limb. My brain couldn’t find a way to connect with the truth—she wasn’t there, and she wasn’t coming back.

I’d spent the evening before with my children, but once they had fallen asleep, I’d dragged my numb body down the stairs, the house quiet as a tomb.

A glass of scotch hadn’t been enough. Three had had me feeling like maybe I would be all right. Four had found me sitting at the foot of her bed in front of her dark fireplace, staring at the soot and ashes, wondering how I’d lost her, how I’d lost my faith and hope, losing my happiness along with it.

I’d woken the next morning in her bed, reaching for her. But her side of the bed had been cold, and I was alone.

I’d thought loneliness was bad after Mary. But until Hannah, I hadn’t felt truly loved. And the difference made my isolation infinitely harder to endure.

As I sat with my children over Thanksgiving, I found I had so many more regrets than things to be thankful for.

Sammy had a thousand questions I couldn’t answer. Maven even asked a few, which were almost harder. She said so little, and the sadness in her eyes was almost too much to bear. I knew that feeling.

Their hearts had been broken, too.

Katie had left instructions and prepped food in the fridge, so I’d busied myself that afternoon managing it, hoping maybe it would cheer us all up to have such a familiar, comforting meal. But it hadn’t. I saw Hannah everywhere—in the apple pie with a braided lattice, in the cookies she’d made, in the empty chair where she would have been sitting, in the bouquet of pink roses that had already begun to wilt, their petals opening up and curling at the ends. And she wouldn’t be there to replace them.

I was alone, and I’d lost the one thing besides my children that meant anything.

And I’d never forgive either of us for it.

That night, I ended up in her room again, though this time, I built a fire, sat in her bed that smelled of her, of home.

I’d been hurt before in what felt like another life, and those old wounds hadn’t healed. I’d thought they had. I’d thought Hannah had healed me. But at the first sign of trouble, they’d split open again, raw and angry and unforgiving.

And I couldn’t find a way to stitch them up again.