Seventeen
Maddox
2018
After Maggie helped Nan frost Kris’s birthday cake, Kris bundled her back up and took her outside. I stand at the kitchen sink and watch them tromp through the snow toward the woods that push against the edge of the backyard, tall white pines and naked maples. Their bare branches dusted with snowfall.
“There was someone, not too long ago.”
I look away from the window to find Nan standing next to me, constructing a lasagna so carefully, you’d think she was building a bomb. For a minute I think she’s talking about me. Asking about Maggie’s mother, but she isn’t.
“He was a nice enough fellow—a little too tidy for my liking, so you can imagine your dad took to him like he was the second coming.” I can imagine it. He’s probably the kind of guy who wears suits to work every day. Gets his hair cut, every three weeks like clock-work. Would sooner throw himself off a bridge than grow a beard. A guy exactly like my dad.
“Who was he?” I hate myself for asking but reason that it’s okay because it’s not what I really want to ask. What I really want to know is where he is. Where I can find him.
“The headmaster at that fancy boarding school she taught at last year.” Nan flicks a glance in my direction. “He proposed and she said yes.”
I look away from her because I don’t want her to see how knowing that makes me feel. That the thought of Kris with another man makes me want to kill something. Someone.
It always did.
“And?” I say it the window, watching my daughter and the only woman I’ve ever loved disappear into the trees. I know where she’s taking her. What she’s showing her.
“I can’t say for sure what happened.” Nan moves beside me, opening the oven door to slide the casserole dish onto one of the heated racks. “All I know is she got a letter from you a few days before the wedding.” The oven snaps closed and she sighs. “Day after that, she was home. Quit her job and broke off the engagement.”
“Are you saying she broke off her engagement because of me?” I’m pretty sure the fact that the thought of it makes me feel good makes me an asshole. I’m also pretty sure I don’t give a shit.
Nan gives me a non-committal shrug.
“You know she sends them back, right?” For some reason, I feel defensive. Like it’s me who should be explaining. Me who disappeared without a goddamned trace. “One hundred and twenty letters. I told her how I felt in every one of them and she never even cared to look.”
Nan’s quiet for a moment. I can feel her studying me, trying to decide how many of her granddaughter’s secrets she should tell me. Finally, she wipes her hands on a dish towel and throws it on the counter like she’s giving up. “I’m sure there’s a reason for that,” she says, reaching out to pat my arm. “If you want to know, I think you need to ask her what that reason is.”
The prospect frustrates me as much as it terrifies me because what if the answer is simple. What if the answer is I let you go because I didn’t love you. I never loved you. Not the way you loved me.
“Are you in love with my granddaughter, Maddox McAllister?”
Looking out the kitchen window, I watch Kris and Maggie emerge from the trees, hand in hand. Maggie is chattering at her, excited and wonder-struck that she’s here. That Kris is real and not just something I made up to get her to go to sleep at night. Kris is laughing, her cheeks stung red from the cold, while she gestures around the yard like she’s painting Maggie a picture.
“Yes.”
I’ve never said that out loud to anyone by Kris. I told her I loved her once, that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. We were laying side-by-side staring up at the stars through the skylight of the treehouse her dad built her when we were eight.
I love too, Mad.
She didn’t look at me when she said it. She whispered it to the stars. Thinking back on it, I can see it now. I get it. She wasn’t telling me she loved me. She wasn’t saying she would wait for me.
She was telling me goodbye.