St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
WHEN WE’RE BACK IN our room, packing up to leave, Kyle does prove to me where he was when Josh died. An old album on his Facebook shows him tagged in photos with coworkers at a brunch in the West Village on that same morning.
“I was telling the truth,” he says gently. “You can look through my whole phone. My computer. You can talk to anyone I know. I wasn’t there when Josh died. It breaks my heart that you think I’m even capable of that.”
“I don’t,” I say, sinking onto the bed, my head in my hands. “But you have to see how coincidental it is, and the fact that you never told me you knew who Josh was … I know why you didn’t say anything, but I still don’t like it.”
He moves toward me, like he wants to wrap his arms around me, but he hangs back at the last moment.
“I didn’t know who Josh was,” he says. “That’s the point. If I’d actually known him … I would have said something. I’d only heard things, and it felt better left unsaid.”
“I know you were afraid of scaring me off, but I would have listened to you, Kyle. I trusted you. I—I trust you.” The weight of it takes me by surprise. I do trust him, even now. Maybe even more than ever.
I turn away and shove a wrinkled cardigan into my bag. The could-have-beens feel like a series of bloody scabs, picked over before they could heal. Josh could have been a father; he could have been a lawyer. We would have been celebrating our tenth anniversary this year.
But maybe our love story wouldn’t have turned out that way.
I’d always gone along with Josh’s ideas, loving his spontaneity and lust for life. But did he love me because I was easily malleable, desperate for adventure? Even the idea of opening a wine bar had been his—that it would be a natural wine bar was mine, but the initial seed had been Josh’s.
I don’t know what I believe—if Josh got into trouble in his teen years but wanted a clean slate with me, or if he was capable of so much worse than I ever could have imagined. I’ll never know for sure, but what I do know is the love that’s in front of me right now. I thought Josh was the love of my life, and he was. But here is Kyle, who gets to be with me for the rest of mine, if I let him.
“We can’t pretend it didn’t happen,” I say, pulling my suitcase closed and zipping it up. “But I understand why you kept it from me.”
I blink back tears, and this time, when Kyle approaches and puts a tentative hand on my shoulder, I lean into his familiar embrace. The man who taught me I could love again; the person who helped me believe in second chances.
“You can choose how you want to remember Josh. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of your future. No matter what kind of person he was, I don’t think he would have wanted you to throw away something great.”
For some reason, I think about Bev Kelly and how she must have felt after Michelle died on her property. If she was caught between defending and condemning the boys she loved. Or if she has only ever lived in tortured denial.
Will I continue to do the same?
Everyone was right. Ten years ago, I did marry a man I hardly knew. This time around, I did everything differently. Where Josh and I were fast, Kyle and I went slow. Where Josh and I sprinted, Kyle and I walked at our own pace.
If the two great loves of my life have taught me anything, it’s that the amount of time you spend with a person means nothing. Because no matter how many questions you ask, you’ll only ever see the parts of them they allow you to see. The rest stays buried.
“No more secrets,” I whisper to Kyle.
“No more secrets,” he repeats, and I’m brought back to a beach in Santa Barbara, my eyes ringed with a reddening sunburn from my snorkeling mask, Josh beside me in the sand, his hand creeping up my leg.
“Tell me a secret,” I’d said playfully, and he hadn’t even flinched.
“You already know everything about me,” he had deadpanned, fixing me with his double-dimpled smile, which was almost blindingly white. “You know me better than I know myself.”
I’ll still mourn Josh Kelly, the man I loved at first sight and quite literally ran off into the sunset with. But more than that, I’ll mourn the version of Josh embalmed in my memories. Because I’m not sure that person existed for anyone else but me. If not for a random click on the Backyard’s website, I might never have known who Josh used to be. Just like I’ll never know for sure whether he killed Michelle, or if someone killed him in revenge. They’re questions I’ll have to live with, ones I have to accept might never be answerable.
But there is one thing of which I’m certain. There isn’t just one person for everyone. Two men promised to love me forever, and I’ve made the same promises to both. Two great loves, ones that forever changed me. One is gone, and one is still here, his arms wrapped around me as my head rests on his shoulder, right where it belongs.