It was down to me. My decision. Stay? Go?

Chris’s letter had woken me from a deep sleep, and my letter back had stunned me into a fugue. My decisions were my own from now on.

Stay or go?

Not for him. Not to wait, or to pretend to myself I wasn’t waiting.

Just what did I need? What did the people I loved need?

Which master did I serve?

A half dozen little elves came to the house, armed with brooms and buckets. I knew them as Juanita, Mrs. Boden, Pat, Sally and Trudy Crenshaw, and Dina Marcus. I was shooed out of my kitchen and left to go around the outside of the house so I wouldn’t step on wet floors. I wasn’t allowed down the hall where the suite was because another half dozen elves were fixing it. Harper was holed up in her room on the third floor. Taylor dragged his dirty, dusty self up there with plates of sandwiches and came right down after dropping them off.

“Is she eating?” I asked.

“Shoo,” he said, then kissed my cheek before trotting down the hall to the dusty suite.

The house was packed with people who loved me, but none of them knew what I was going through.

I still didn’t know if I was staying or going.

Counting the days, I waited until I could be reasonably sure Chris had gotten the letter. Then I did nothing. He’d gotten it by Wednesday, for sure. Done is done. I had nothing else to say to him. That part of my life was over now. It ended not with a bang or a light, but with an exhale.

Wednesday, the evening before my birthday, I was in my old room, the one that faced the front of the house. Everything was quiet and dark. This was about the time I’d let the sadness creep in and I’d cry myself to sleep. I hadn’t cried in a week, but I’d slept well.

I didn’t know how to feel about anything.

On Thursday, voices from across the house and clopping footsteps along the hall told me people had arrived to work on the suite. I knew how I felt about that at least. Whether I stayed or went, I was glad to see the room taken care of.

I crossed my bedroom naked after my shower. My closet was open because I’d been looking for things to wear to my party later. A full-length mirror hung inside the door and I caught a glimpse of myself.

Most of my friends from school were in town. At nearly thirty, their bodies had been through childbirth at an early age, recovered, and done it again. My body had barely been touched.

My hands slid along my curves. My breasts, belly, hips, round and tight with disuse. All this skin was meant to be touched. It was designed to feel, to receive, to sense and interpret. My breasts were meant for children and the touch of a lover. They remained high and tight from neglect. Hardening under my fingertips, they were ready, and I was too.

I sat on the bed in front of the mirror.

This was me.

I spread my legs.

Still me. The little pink split had a function. I slid my finger there and felt the wetness that reminded me that it was ready. It worked. It could do what it was built for.

Moving my fingers along the liquid folds of skin, I quietly brought myself to orgasm without thinking of Chris until it was over.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the sheets.

I didn’t apologize to the Chris of today or even five years before, but to the sixteen-year-old boy who’d loved me. I’d let him go. I hadn’t chased him. Hadn’t fought for him. Hadn’t looked for him or asked his mother what happened to him. And now I was releasing him with regret. But I was releasing him.

I washed my hands and dressed.

When I opened the door, I gasped. Reggie was in the hall with his fist up as if he was about to knock.

“Oh, sorry!” he said. “I was just—”

“It’s fine.”

“I wanted to tell you something.” The paint splatter on his overalls was multicolored from years of spills and hard work.

“Okay.”

Behind Reggie, Taylor carried a can of paint in each hand.

“Don’t look,” Taylor said to me before tapping Reggie in the behind with a can. “Come on, lazy ass. Let’s get this done.”

“I’m coming, Cali-boy.” Reggie turned back to me. “Private.”

I didn’t have a place for him to sit in my room, so we went to the front porch. I sat on the swing, and he leaned on the railing. The hardware store delivery truck was just pulling away.

“What’s all that?” I pointed at a stack of four moldy boxes in the corner of the porch.

“Found ‘em in the crawlspace over the ceiling. You should check inside. See if there’s anything you want.”

I couldn’t imagine anything of real or personal value in those collapsed, water-damaged, mold-covered boxes. They probably had mushrooms growing in them. I wrinkled my nose and sat back on the porch swing.

Reggie looked at the floorboards, rocking a little as if he was telling himself to get on with it. I folded my hands in my lap and waited.

“You know, I been looking at that ceiling for two days now. I musta been outta my mind.”

“Why?”

“Painting roses on a tin ceiling? God, Catherine, nobody does that. You can paint it a flat color… but flowers? I bet that’s the only tin ceiling mural in the United States.”

“You should be famous.”

“Hell, yeah. I’ve been telling myself that a long time now.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “You know I… ah… well I remember when your father asked for it. You were sixteen and I was engaged to Carla the cheating bitch. But you, girl? You broke my heart. Like…” He squeezed his fingertips to his chest and exploded them like a starfish.

“It was a rough time.”

After Chris left, my parents started the process of splitting up while living in the same house. Everyone knew it. There weren’t many secrets in Barrington.

“You sure could peel the paint off with your crying.” Reggie shook his head slowly with a smile. “Shit, I thought them flowers wouldn’t survive with all your wailing.”

I laughed to myself.

Seeing I wasn’t hurt, he continued. “I thought to ask you to a job site, you know, save us some work with the scrapers.” He laughed with me. “Thought we could even go international with it.”

“Oh, Reggie, do you remember when I asked you to hide flying monkeys in it?”

“I thought you’d gone crazy. But your dad said to just do it.”

“I loved them. I put the bed right under them so I could see them when I went to sleep.”

“I’m glad. I’m really glad you got comfort from it. And I’m sorry you had to wait so long to get that room fixed up.”

“I’m sorry I never asked.”

“Thing is…” He looked away, then at me. “It was always something. You were real young. Then I got married.” He ran through the list more quickly. “Then the factory closed and I was out of work. Then I got divorced. Then your father died. Then your mother left and you spent the next seven years taking care of everyone in this place like it’s your job. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I never got to tell you how I felt about you, and now Chris fucking Carmichael is coming back and I got a sliver of a window to tell you.”

“You don’t have to,” I said. Chris wasn’t coming, which put the burden on me to refuse Reggie. He was a good man, but I couldn’t lead him on. I didn’t feel for him what I’d felt for Chris, and I wanted nothing less.

“I want to. I have to.”

“Reggie, don’t.”

“I love you. I’ve always loved you and I don’t care if you know it. I don’t care if Chris comes back on a white horse and sweeps you off your feet or whatever. I’ll be okay with that. But if he doesn’t, I want you to know that you and me? We can talk if you want.” He took a deep breath as if he’d needed to get that off his chest.

He and I didn’t have anything to talk about. At least, not what he wanted to talk about. If he wanted to talk about how to get over waiting for someone who was never coming, maybe we’d have something to say to each other.

“Okay,” I said, not ready to tell him there would be no Chris. No knight riding in on a white stallion. No fairy tale ending. That was my problem. Not his.

“Okay.” He snapped his fingers as punctuation. “Now that we got that out of the way, I better go make sure they don’t try to paint over my ceiling.”

“Thank you. For everything.”

“I ain’t even done yet.” He tapped the doorjamb twice and went inside.