“I HAD NO IDEA.” Caleb heard himself say the words, heard, too, their complete inadequacy.
“She didn’t want you to know, son,” Jeb said, his voice low.
“How long has this been happening?”
“She had a few episodes over the years, but in the past few, they’ve become more frequent.”
“Since Laney died,” Caleb said, a sick feeling washing over him.
Jeb didn’t answer for a moment, and then he said, “Yes.”
Caleb shook his head. “What a selfish bastard I’ve been.”
Jeb put his hand on Caleb’s shoulder. “Son. No one blames you for any of this.”
“This is why you left. Why you couldn’t support my efforts to bring Grace into our lives. Because you knew what it was doing to Mom.”
Jeb shoved both hands in the pockets of his faded Levi’s. “It was the coward’s way out. I see that now. I love your mother. I never stopped loving her, even for a minute. She needs me. And from now on, I’ll be there for her. No matter what.”
Caleb walked over to a nearby window and stared out at the passing traffic for a long time before answering. “I’m sorry, Dad,” he said finally. “Sorry I’ve refused to look outside my own misery. Sorry I couldn’t see what was happening to the two of you.”
“Caleb—”
“It’s all right,” he said, holding up a hand to stop his father from making excuses for him. He was tired of making excuses for himself, and he realized now how very self-centered he had been. “I don’t want to stay in this same place, Dad. And the last thing I want is to hold either you or Mom here with me.”
“Everything’s going to be all right, son,” Jeb said, his voice thick. His eyes bright with tears, he clapped Caleb on the shoulder. “Let’s go see your mom.”
Caleb nodded, and they walked side by side through the emergency room’s swinging door.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Caleb pulled into his driveway and sat for a long time, staring at his house. He couldn’t get the image of his mom in that hospital bed out of his head. He felt as if he’d been in some kind of dream state for years on end, each part of his body finally coming awake again.
He got out of the truck, opened the front door of the house and let Noah out. Ecstatic, the Lab flew down the steps, made three circles of the yard, before returning to the porch to lick Caleb’s hand.
Caleb rubbed the underside of Noah’s chin the way Noah liked, then went inside the house. He stood contemplating the stairs to his bedroom, not sure where he was headed until he sat down on Laney’s side of the bed.
It was the first time he’d sat here since she’d been gone. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at the nightstand on which sat a lamp and the Bible she’d read every morning. He opened the top drawer, the red leather diary she’d written in each day just as she had left it.
He stared at it, then reached for it before he could change his mind.
He rubbed a thumb across the embossed lettering of her name in the red leather. Laney Scott. After they were married, she’d crossed out Scott and written in Tucker above it.
He’d considered looking at it countless times before now, but had never found the courage. He put one hand on the cover, slowly opening it to a random entry.
Dear Diary,
Caleb and I went Christmas shopping today.
We’ve been going out a little over six months now, and I feel like I should pinch myself every day just to make sure it’s still real.
He bought me this really cool book on famous competition swimmers and what it took for them to make it to the Olympics.
He thinks I’m good enough to do that if I want. What a rush it is to have someone like Caleb believe in me. Swimming at the Olympics. Me. It’s a fine dream, but the truth is I don’t think I’ll need anything that big to make me happy.
I have some dreams. I’d like to go to college. Be a teacher.
And then there’s the dream where I’m married to Caleb, and we have this house full of little ones, Christmas and the other holidays bordering on out of control with all the racket and hoopla.
So back to the shopping. I found this cool backpack for Caleb. He loves to go hiking, and I love it when he takes me with him. It’s so great being away from everyone else, just the two of us. It’s as if the world is ours, and there’s nothing we can do to screw it up.
That’s what it’s like when I’m with him. I can be me. Just me. And he’s fine with that. Really fine. Maybe that’s how I know what we have is real.
xxoo
Laney
The words washed over him, but instead of the anguish he’d expected to feel in reading them, he knew an unexpected sense of comfort, the same peace he’d felt those nights on the porch when he’d either felt her presence or teetered on the verge of losing his mind.
He flipped forward, stopping at another entry.
Dear Diary,
I think I weirded Caleb out tonight.
We went with our church youth group on a day ski trip up to Canaan, West Virginia. On the way home, we sat in the back of the bus, cuddled up under a blanket because the heater wasn’t working.
Sometimes, we get off on these strange discussions, like what we’ll look like when we’re sixty-five, how it feels to skydive out of an airplane, what happens after we die. Do we go straight to heaven, or sit in some kind of holding pattern while everyone else on earth gets a chance to make things right?
I think we go straight there unless there’s something back here we still need to do. Caleb disagrees, though. He thinks once we’re gone, we’re gone, and if there’s any work left to do, that’s up to God.
I suspect He’s pretty busy though, and I wonder if He expects us to help out with the hard stuff.
Caleb doesn’t like to think about dying. It’s scary stuff, I agree. But for me, it’s all about knowing what you believe.
So here’s the part that weirded him out. I don’t think I’m going to live to be an old person. I’ve just always had this feeling that I would die young. No idea what that is. Young is relative, I guess. Anyway, it pretty much freaked him out that I could say such a thing, like I was tempting fate or something.
But then I finally figured out it wasn’t the dying part that upset him. It was the thought that we might not be together. That he might have to live without me.
I suspect these are the kinds of words a person hopes to hear once in her lifetime. I wouldn’t say this to Caleb, but I could die happy, now that he’s said them to me.
xxoo
Laney
Tears streamed from his eyes. He didn’t bother wiping them away, but let them fall across the pages, the words in the next entry so blurred he could barely read them.
Dear Diary,
So this sucks, still being in high school, being the one left behind.
I hate it.
Today was the day. Caleb’s first day at college.
I went with his parents to drop him off and get him settled in.
It was so much worse than I ever imagined it would be. With every minute that passed, I could feel the divide between us growing wider and wider. Me still in high school, while he transitions to dorm life, keg parties and no parents to answer to.
The worst part was when we were getting ready to leave. There was this girl out front sitting on a bench with a book on her lap. She had dark hair with these incredible blue eyes.
I saw the way she looked at Caleb. Different from the girls who gawked at him in high school. Like he was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen, and she couldn’t even meet eyes with him.
Driving away, I looked back, biting my lip to keep from crying. The girl got up from the bench, walked over and asked Caleb something. He smiled and pointed toward the dorm.
It was like I was already gone and could only watch them from somewhere really far away. Like he was already out of my reach, moving on.
But this was the weird thing. There was something a little comforting in seeing it, moving farther and farther away until they were a pinpoint, then nothing. And the sad part? I realized I could let go. If I had to.
xxoo
Laney
Caleb closed the diary, his heart throbbing. Like so many things he could not explain about his wife’s death, he wondered if she had led him to these pages. If this was her way of telling him it was time. Somehow, he knew that she had, and with the acknowledgment came an instant wave of peace. The kind of peace he had not known once since losing her.
Grateful, he put the diary back in the drawer and slid it closed. He let her go. And somehow knew she was gone for good.