Brynn

 

When we get to her place, Hope opens a bottle of good Merlot and barbecues steaks for us, telling me climbing stories about her and Jem while the steaks sizzle and the stars come out. She tells me about how Jem saved the life of a little girl who’d gotten separated from her family during a camping trip. None of the rangers could find her, but Jem, who knew every nook and cranny of Katahdin, managed to find her near one of the waterfalls on the Hunt Trail.

“He was only fifteen, but that’s when I knew that climbing mountains wasn’t just a hobby for him,” says Hope, sipping her wine while fireflies light up her backyard like a chain of blinking Christmas lights. “It was the look on his face when he walked into the parking lot where they’d set up a triage center. He was covered in trail dust. She looked even worse. But he . . . well, I knew we’d never get him out of the woods after that.”

“He never told me that story.” I take a sip of my wine. “God, I miss him.”

She sighs from where she stands beside the grill, putting a hand on her hip. “Promise you won’t get mad if I say something?”

My eyes widen. “Are you going to say something mean?”

“Not mean, really . . . just frank.”

I gulp. “Okay.”

“I didn’t really get you two.”

“Get us?”

“Don’t get me wrong: you made him happy, and I’m a hundred percent certain that he loved you.”

I take another sip of my wine, looking up at her from where I sit on a picnic bench near the grill, waiting for her to continue.

“But . . . I think I always thought he’d end up with someone who loved the outdoors—you know, hiking, climbing, camping, all of it—as much as he did.”

“I . . . liked it,” I mumble.

“No,” says Hope, and though I’ve never seen her teach, I have a sudden taste of her in professor mode. “You tolerated it. Because it was part of his job, and because you loved him. And maybe even . . .” She pauses for a moment, nailing me with her eyes. “. . . because you thought you could change him.”

“You’re assuming a lot.”

“Am I?” Her voice trails off, and I suspect we are getting to the part that has the potential to get me mad. “I worried about it lasting. You and Jem. I worried that you’d eventually make him choose.”

Her words suck the air from my lungs, and my vision blurs.

“Oh.”

“Brynn,” she starts gently, shutting the lid of the grill and coming to sit next to me. “I don’t mean to hurt you. I swear I don’t. But I just wonder if, over time . . . if maybe you would have gone to the woods less. You didn’t grow up hiking and climbing. You couldn’t tell me, here and now, with any conviction, that you loved it. But he did. It wasn’t even selfishness—it was instinct. It was need. It was in his blood, and there was no way you were ever going to get him out of the woods.”

“I wasn’t trying to get him out of the woods. I loved him just the way he was.”

“I know you did,” she says, wincing as she tilts her head to the side. “But would you have wanted to hike and camp for every vacation? Would you have wanted to raise your kids in the woods every weekend?” She pauses, shaking her head. “You lived in the city. In the middle of San Francisco, Brynn. Going hiking was an excursion for you. A day trip. For Jem it was a way of life. His job was to write about hiking and climbing, and I suspect that’s the part of him you tolerated and tried to accept by joining him from time to time. But you must know, even when he was with you, he was subjugating part of his nature by living in the city. He longed to be in the wild constantly. All the time. Every weekend. Every moment.”

“He told you that? That he was selling himself out?”

“I knew him better than anyone,” she says quietly. “I was watching it. I was worried for him. And for you. For both of you.”

Hope’s eyes are sad as she looks back at me with a level gaze, and it pinches my heart. Part of the reason her words hurt so much is because they address a truth I ignored, that I never fully admitted to myself: that, over time, I may have gone to the woods with Jem less and less because I didn’t love it. And Jem wouldn’t have been able to stay away because he did. And maybe I would have resented his precious woods for stealing him away. I might have even started to resent him too.

“You shared your worries with Jem?” I ask, rephrasing my previous question. I want to know if they discussed this behind my back.

She lifts her chin and nods. “He was my twin.”

“What did he say?” I ask, my voice a rasp.

“That he could love you both. That you’d figure it out together.”

“We would have,” I say, looking into her eyes, feeling confused, angry.

She stands up, crosses the patio, and lifts the lid of the grill to flip the steaks.

My righteous indignation mounts as I finish my wine. How dare she question the strength of our love? How dare she doubt a relationship that never even had a chance?

“Why did you tell me this?” I ask. “What’s the point?”

She turns around, her expression sympathetic but not sorry. “Because you’ve been grieving for two years.”

“So what?” I ask with a bite.

“So it’s easy to idealize someone who’s dead, to make your life a shrine to them.”

“Do you think it was easy to lose my fiancé?” I ask, leaping to my feet. “To lose the love of my life?”

“No,” she answers softly. “I think it was excruciating.”

“Then . . .?”

“Jem wasn’t a god,” she whispers, tears brightening her own eyes. “He was beautiful and pure . . . but he was as flawed as anyone else. He offered his heart to you, but his soul already belonged to the woods, Brynn. Always.”

My soul belongs to Katahdin . . . Well, it did anyway, before I gave it to you.

I remember the words now, hear them in my head—the way the first half of the sentence was said with reverence, while the second half was said lightly and sweetly, as he chucked me under the chin.

“He loved me,” I whimper.

“Yes, he did.”

“We would have made it.”

She stares at me, her eyes sad, her silence speaking volumes.

“We would have figured it out, like he said!” I insist.

“Okay,” she says softly, but something unspoken has already passed between us, and it is a tacit and terrible understanding:

We might have figured it out. But then again, we might not have.

***

We eat mostly in silence, and it occurs to me at some point that Hope is saying things I’d only say to someone I was never going to see again. And that’s when I realize it: tonight is our swan song. We haven’t been friends, really—only connected by our mutual love of someone now gone. When she leaves for Boston tomorrow, she will move on with her life, and I believe she expects me to move on with mine. After tonight, we probably won’t see each other again.

“Is there anything you want to know?” I ask. “About Jem?”

She looks up, her eyes softening, her lips tilting up in a sad smile, and I know I am right about our farewell. But she shakes her head. “There’s nothing I didn’t know about him.”

“I’m a painful reminder of him,” I say without bitterness. “It must have been hard to let me come here.”

“Brynn,” she says, wiping her mouth before continuing, “I loved Jem. But beyond that, he was my twin. He was part of me—more than any other human being on the face of the earth. On the night he died, did you know that I passed out at the same moment his heart stopped beating? One minute I was standing in front of my microwave, popping popcorn for a movie. Two hours later, I woke up on my kitchen floor because my phone was ringing. It was you, telling me that he was dead.” She reaches for the bottle of Merlot and refills our glasses. “You were good for him. I mean that. He was really happy with you. He had high hopes. And I will always be grateful that he experienced true romantic love before he died.” She takes a swallow, looking at me over the rim of her glass. “Believe it or not, everything I’m saying to you tonight, I’m saying for him.” She pauses, letting her words sink in. “Do you understand me? I’m saying the things he would want me to say, to help you move on.”

I clench my teeth, staring at her, bracing myself.

She continues gently. “He’s gone, but you’re still here. You have to let him go or you’ll never find out what—or who—comes next.”

What—or who—comes next.

Here is something I feel guilty admitting since I lost Jem: I long for someone. In my loneliest moments, I long for someone so fiercely, it aches. I want someone to hold me, to whisper in my ear, to braid their fingers through mine and breathe against my skin. I want to know love again. In fact, I actively yearn for it, though I can’t actually imagine accepting it.

Why?

Not just because loving again would be terrifying, but because loving someone else would mean betraying Jem.

Reading my thoughts, Hope shakes her head. “Saying goodbye doesn’t mean forgetting. Moving on doesn’t mean you never loved him. I’m telling you to let go. I’m telling you that you’re allowed to be happy.”

A sob trapped in my throat escapes, and my hands tremble in my lap, though the evening is warm.

Hopes takes my hands in hers, warming them as she repeats softly, “Brynn, let him go. You’re allowed to be happy again.”

A helix of sorrow and relief shoots through me like a high-speed bullet. Sorrow and relief both, but mostly relief. Mostly a beautiful, terrible, long-awaited surrender to relief.

My shoulders slump.

My head falls forward to Hope’s waiting shoulder.

And I weep.