She had a right to put herself first, to protect herself. So if that was true, why was she not only fighting tears but also the urge to run back to Finn and tell him she’d help him organize an amazing, albeit last-minute, wedding?
Beah hurried back to her apartment in Notting Hill and after changing, she poured herself another cup of coffee and walked into her sun-drenched living room. She loved her apartment. It was colorful and cozy and the only place where she could fully relax.
Beah looked over to the mantelpiece and smiled at the large photograph of her and her mom, taken just before she got her diagnosis, when life still made sense. Two weeks after that photo was taken, their lives fell apart and everything changed forever.
Beah sighed, thinking that Ben and Piper’s lives had also been flipped over and around. She wondered how they were coping with the harsh reality of a terminal illness diagnosis.
Beah had no regrets about her mother’s death... Wait, that was wrong. Of course she regretted her mom’s death; she still missed her every day, but she had no misgivings or regrets about her mother’s final days. Though Beah had been young, just nineteen—nearly twenty—she’d given her mom the best possible send-off. In those final days and months, they’d loved each hard: up, down and sideways. She’d taken six months off from school to care for her mom and she’d do it all again without hesitation.
They’d always been a team and while they’d had their fights—what mothers and daughters didn’t argue?—they’d been brutally honest with each other, utterly authentic. They’d struggled through her dad’s leaving, together, both equally hurt and astounded and sideswiped by his lack of integrity.
They’d turned to each other for comfort, a rock-solid team of two. Up until the last few days, when her mom slipped into a coma, they’d laughed and wept and hugged. They shared happy memories and, in their own unique way, said goodbye. Back then, having watched her mom die, Beah understood life was meant to be lived, every second of every day.
That was why she jumped, both feet first, into love with Finn, moved in with him at the first opportunity and married him in Vegas. She’d been determined to wring every drop of happiness from her life.
But somewhere between her divorce and today, she’d lost that willingness to jump, to catapult herself into a situation. She’d been badly bruised when her marriage collapsed and trying to reconnect with her dad shortly after she signed the divorce papers had, in hindsight, cemented her need to protect herself.
Beah jumped when her phone rang and she scooped it up, smiling at the familiar number.
“Why are you still awake?” she asked Keely, automatically calculating the time difference. “Have you just kicked someone out of your bed and sent him on his way?”
“Basically.”
Beah’s eyes widened. “Well, wow. Who?”
“That’s a long and complicated story,” Keely replied, her tone blasé. Beah, because she knew Keely so well, also heard the not-ready-to-talk-about-that subtext.
“You didn’t text me to tell me how your dinner went. Did you and Finn resist the urge to kill each other?” Keely asked.
“We behaved until he stripped me naked.”
It took a moment for Keely to fill in the missing blanks. “Hopefully not while you were at still at the dinner table,” Keely drily responded. “So you slept with him?”
“No, sleep didn’t feature much. Earth-moving sex did.”
Beah heard the tint of bitterness in the words and sighed.
“I’m not sure what to say, or how to react to that,” Keely said.
“You and me both.”
Beah pulled in a big breath and a torrent of words accompanied her exhale. She quickly and, hopefully accurately, summarized Finn’s request to help her with the wedding, how she felt about Piper’s diagnosis and how she felt bombarded by memories and the stinging return of past hurts.
“And now, because I’m a masochist myself, I’m remembering how my father wasn’t thrilled to see me after I returned to London after Finn and I fell apart,” Beah muttered, hearing the rasp of tears in her voice.
During that awkward conversation with her dad she learned he’d moved from her childhood home into the one owned by the woman he’d been having an affair with while her mom had been taking her last breaths. On the mantelpiece was a photo of her stepmom and her dad on their wedding day, a scant four days after her mom’s funeral.
While Beah had been nursing her sick mom, her dad had been off playing happy family with his mistress and her then-six-year-old daughter, who called him dad.
Something died in her that day. Maybe it was her naivete, her innate belief that people were mostly good, that love was meant to make you happy, that the men she loved were supposed to love her back.
But those horrible years long ago did teach her to be strong, to be independent, to not rely on anyone else to do what needed to be done. People, especially the people who were supposed to love you the hardest, always let you down.
“I can’t stop thinking that in Hong Kong, a couple is coming to the end of their time together, that a life is drawing to a close,” Beah told Keely, swiping at the tears rolling down her face. “I’m scared to spend time with Finn, Keels. He ties me up in knots, but my heart aches for Ben—I know what it feels like to watch someone you love die. He will be veering between hope and despair, trying to be strong and stay strong...”
“Oh, honey.”
“And Pippa wants a pretty wedding, a celebration of their love, a wonderful memory to hold on to. Hell, I’m as healthy as a horse and I wish I had that memory. I wish Finn and I had that perfect day!”