“Blank?” I whipped my head around to find Zaki, but he was chatting with my mother by the fire. “That’s weird.”
She nodded.
“Oh … my mother didn’t know I was coming.” Of course, that made sense. But why go to all the trouble of giving me a blank envelope? I drummed my fingers on the table. “Huh. Okay. Well, maybe we should read your question.”
Mary shrugged in a halfhearted way and passed me her envelope. I ripped it open and pulled out the card. “Okay, yours says, Why are you so sad?” I blinked before looking up at her. “Wow. They really didn’t mess around with yours, did they?” She was probably wishing she had gotten the blank one right about now.
“You know,” I said, throwing the envelope on the table. “I get that I’m Summer’s daughter and I should probably be toeing the company line, but if you don’t want to answer…”
“No, I think maybe I should talk about it,” she said, nodding slightly.
I straightened up in my seat. I kind of felt like I needed to brace myself for some reason.
She took a slow, deep breath. “Do you believe that a person has one true love? A soul mate?”
I frowned. That … was unexpected. “I don’t know if I believe we have just one, but…” I was trying to find a way to finish that thought, but it was hard to think with the voice in my head repeating Grady’s name over and over. “What do you believe?”
“I believe…” she said with a hard swallow, “that the love of my life died three and a half weeks ago.”
I froze. “Oh wow … wow … I am so sorry to hear that.” I stiffened. I definitely hadn’t seen that coming. I had no idea what to say. Or if I should say anything at all. I mean, she had said she wanted to talk about it, but … three and a half weeks? “Were … were you together long?”
She folded her hands on the table. “We weren’t together at all.” Mary fiddled with her hands. “We worked together.”
“Oh.”
She looked up at me. “For twenty-three years we worked together. Side-by-side cubicles.” She smiled a little at the thought.
I wrapped my sweater more tightly around my body. “That’s a long time.”
“Nobody knew me as well as Frank did.” She shook her head. “Vice versa too.”
“How … how did he die, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Sudden heart attack,” she said with a swallow. “At the office. I was there.”
“I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.” And just like that Grady popped into my mind again. If something like that ever happened to him—
“I’m glad I got to be with him at the end,” she said, nodding and gripping her hands together.
“Can I ask why you two…?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “He did ask me out a couple of times when we first started working together. But I didn’t think it was a good idea.” She huffed a small laugh at that. “We were working together, you know? But I think really I was just too afraid. My parents went through a really nasty split when I was a child, and my dad left.” Suddenly she looked up at me and smiled. “Maybe that’s my answer,” she said with air quotes.
I smiled back at her. I doubt it had much life though.
“I think I was too afraid of losing him,” she said with a pained nod, “so I never really got to have him.”
“I … I think I know a little bit about what that’s like.” Yup, suddenly this was all hitting a little too close to home.
“He meant so much to me. I was afraid if we started dating, if he really got to know me, he wouldn’t like me anymore. And I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him as a friend. I wasn’t ready. I thought I needed more time.”
“So as the years passed you never once told him how you felt?” I cringed a little. It had just come out before I could stop it.
“He started dating other people—had a daughter with one—and as the years passed we were just so far down that friendship road, I didn’t know how to go back.” She looked off at the fire. “He called me his work sister. I was too late. That’s how he saw me.”
“But … are you sure? Maybe he was just too afraid to be rejected again.” And that was just as bad. What was wrong with me?
She nodded. Tears suddenly fell down her cheeks. “When he collapsed in our office kitchen … I was holding his hand trying to reassure him that the ambulance was on its way, and you know what he said to me?”
I shook my head.
She took a shuddering breath. “He looked at me and said I wish it could’ve been me.”
My breath caught, and I had to blink my own tears away.
“I know. I tried to tell him that it was him. That it was always him. But I don’t know if he heard me. He was gone so quickly after that.”
I grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze.
“I think that more than anything else is what makes me so sad,” she said with a nod. “I don’t know if he died thinking I didn’t love him.”
I gulped down a breath and blinked my eyes again. “I am so sorry.”
“It was all just such a waste, you know? I didn’t think that that could happen. That twenty-three years could pass and neither one of us would … bend. How does that happen?”
I shook my head, but I knew. I knew exactly how that could happen.
“I am so sorry, Mary.”
She nodded. “And that’s it. That is why I’m so sad.”
“I think you should tell my mother this. Maybe even tell the group. Your story … it could help other people, and maybe that could help with some of your … pain.”
She frowned. “You think my story could help people?”
“It’s already helped me.”
She just stared at me, confused.
I pushed myself to my feet. “You have no idea how much you’ve helped me. I am so sorry for everything you have suffered, and I hope you can forgive me … but I’ve got to go.”
Mary looked up at me. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes,” I said with a nod. “There is.”
“Well then, of course, go.”
I turned to the fire. “Mom!” I shouted. “You’re needed over here.”
“Erica?” Freddie called out as I raced toward him and his partner. “What are you doing?”
“I need your boat.”
“But—”
I snatched the keys from his breast pocket. “I’ll be right back … or not if I’m lucky.”