TWO WEEKS BEFORE CHRISTMAS she was on an airplane back to Paris. Thérèse was launching a book—perhaps her last, she’d said, one never knew—and Margaret was able to combine the event with an important client visit that Hugh wanted her to make. Jack was in Sweden, and he might be able to join her in time, or he might not. They had once again recognized and accepted that about each other, that his work rescued him as much as hers did her.
In Toronto she had moved back into the main house. Jack tried to be home more often, and she tried not to put in such long hours. It worked some of the time. When they were both home they had candlelit dinners, not at the long table but at the smaller pinewood table by the window.
Most important, they were beginning to be able to smile at each other again. To smile and to talk, because words were beginning to lose their danger.
She still dreamt about Andrew, and at times she saw him in fleeting day visions, and she hoped she always would. Once from a streetcar she saw him raking leaves in a city park, and one night coming home in a taxi she saw him in a passing car.
Sweetheart, she said to him, and turned to watch his lights recede.
For some reason, tonight she did not mind being on this airplane. Perhaps because it was an overnight flight and it was half empty. Calm and not so bright. It had left Toronto in the evening and would be in Paris in the morning. Now the movie had finished and the lights were turned low. She eased up the window blind and looked out. A quarter moon and a bright star nearby. Their reflections on the long metal of the airplane wing.
She thought back to the first time she met Thérèse at the school, to the Women’s Stories sessions in the lounge. To their last talk under palm trees at the residence. She was beginning to believe that what Thérèse had said that night about loss might in fact be possible; that her sorrow and the way she might learn to live with it would in time become something like a friend. In good moments such as now, she could see the shape of thoughts and emotions that might permit it.
If so, it would probably happen in the cottage in Toronto. Some evenings and weekends when Jack was away, she still walked down there to spend quiet time in the kitchen, since that was where for some reason she could connect most easily with the boy. The corner with the padded bench and the table was where he came to meet her. Where they could sit and communicate without words now, just the two of them. She knew it was all just imaginings in her heart, but in some way it was also real, and slowly, slowly in this way she might be able to let him go.
She reclined the seat a bit and pulled up the blanket. Tucked it in around her chin and closed her eyes. A deep breath in and out.
Thank you, she said.