“Peter,” I said, “don’t be mad, but what if I said I think you may be right and I do need to go? To London, I mean?”
The words felt weird on my tongue, waxlike and wrong. Yet, I was able to ignore that—had to ignore that—because I also felt a certain kind of relief, just hearing them, out in the world, ready to do their work.
“My love,” he said. His voice was still husky with sleep. “I’d tell you that you could have waited until seven A.M. to share with me what I already know. It’s seven A.M. for unsurprising news. That is the rule.”
“So it’s not too late to take the job?” I asked.
“Of course it isn’t too late,” he said. “I accepted the position on your behalf last week.”
I looked down at the phone, totally confused. “But how could you do that?” I asked.
“Well, easily,” he said. “Melinda Beckett Martin, the paper’s deputy managing editor, not to mention Caleb Beckett the First’s very favorite niece, called to ask me if you were taking the job, and I told her of course you were. That you couldn’t wait to bring ‘Checking Out’ into international syndication. That despite appearances to the contrary, you weren’t a fool.”
“No, but what I’m saying is . . .”
I looked around the kitchen, the twins’ stuff strewn about, Cheryl’s watering can left by the sink; pictured Griffin sleeping upstairs; thought again of all that I was walking away from in the name of not being sure if I had gotten there for the right reasons. And how I could stay.
“How did you know I’d get here?” I asked.
He sighed. Then he sighed again, just in case I missed it.
“My love, how can I say this gently before hanging up on you and going back to sleep?” he said. “I never thought you weren’t going to get here.”
I don’t remember how it happened, exactly—who suggested it first—that we go for a walk. It didn’t matter. Both of us, I think, already knew what was about to happen, and neither of us wanted to be inside of the house when it did.
It was after midnight, the moon steering us away from town—toward farther-off farmland, toward the mountains themselves.
I wasn’t sure what to start by saying, but it felt wrong to make him do it. It felt wrong to do anything but make this as painless as possible. As if, for either of us, that was a possibility.
“Do you remember the conversation we had at the beach that day?” I said. “How I tried to tell you about the best and worst thing about being with Nick? And I said the worst was that I rarely remembered feeling safe?”
“Sure . . .”
“I think that it wasn’t fair to put that on him. That feeling of safe? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that. And maybe instead of just deciding that Nick was the problem, or the latest in a series of problems, I should have thought about something else.”
“Which is what?”
I shrugged. “Maybe I’m the problem,” I said.
Griffin looked at me. “Maybe he just wasn’t the right person.”
“And what’s the excuse this time?” I said. “The evidence is mounting that I don’t have any idea how to do it, Griffin. Make a home with someone else, feel comfortable in it. And maybe I won’t be able to figure out how, unless I can do that first piece on my own. Make myself safe and comfortable. And then be able to feel like I’m choosing into everything else.”
It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say. But it was close enough. It was close enough for Griffin to understand.
He leaned in and put his arms around me.
“I know it sounds crazy. How can someone figure out how to stay by going again? ” I said, trying to explain it. “But going again is the only way I’ve ever found what I’m looking for.”
He was still holding me there, to him, when he spoke, so I couldn’t see his face.
“I’m not sure we get to, Annie,” he said. “I’m not sure we get to choose when or where we find what we’re looking for.”
I started to say that maybe that was true, maybe our timing was the problem, maybe if we met five years from now, or five months, or five minutes even, but—and I was looking for the but, for the way out—I was scared he was saying what he was saying to convince me to stay. To stay right where I was, with him, and try harder.
But then I looked up at him, into his strong and resolved face, and realized he was saying it to let me go.
Which was when he kissed me, one last time. And did.