“It is impossible,” I agreed. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t be who we are now, together.”
“It seems every time I get weaker, you get stronger,” he said, with what I thought was admiration.
It was undeserved. “You think you’re weak, now?” I balked at the notion. “Neil, you almost died. And not because you were giving up, but because you were sick, and that sickness almost overwhelmed you. I don’t see that as a weakness, at all.
“You’re not getting weaker, and I’m not getting stronger. We’re just changing each other. Everything that happens in our lives, every minute we spend together, I become something more than I could have been without you. And you do, too. Neil five years ago was in pretty bad shape. And I’m not taking credit for that. Five years ago Sophie wasn’t doing so hot in the personal growth arena, either. But together, I think we’re becoming ourselves.”
“I want to say that you put too much faith in me,” he said with a grim chuckle.
“But you won’t say it because…” I let my voice rise in anticipation.
He pursed his lips in annoyance, then relented. “Because I think you’re right.”
“We’re going to go through a lot more changes. There’s nothing we can really do about that. I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. You have to move forward from this massive identity reset… We’re never going to be the people we were when we first fell in love. And that’s okay. I wouldn’t want to be.
“You said in your wedding vows that our life would be an adventure, and that we would never reach a destination. Every adventure has an awful, low point. More than one, if you’re watching those Peter Jackson Hobbit movies.”
“It didn’t need three installments,” Neil interrupted.
“No, it did not,” I agreed. “The point is, for every unnecessary battle scene, the roots of the good story are still there. We still have our roots. We just had to get through some overblown CGI nonsense to get back to them.”
“Well, there was certainly an ‘uncanny valley’ feeling about that hospital. Everything was like real life but just slightly off.” He shook his head. Then, he clapped his hands together and said, “All right.”
He dropped to one knee in front of me and reached for my hand. “Sophie Scaife. Will you be my partner for the next part of this adventure?”
I couldn’t help myself. “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”
Neil grinned up at me. “You utter smart ass.”
“Always.” I leaned down and kissed him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We’d only been in Iceland for two weeks when Neil announced, “I think it’s time to go home.”
I had never wanted anything more in my life than to have a full hour of total darkness at night. I called Mom and started packing immediately.
Our flight to New York was uneventful. Neil read picture books to Olivia when she was awake and fed her a bottle at take-off and landing so that her ears would clear. Everything felt so normal that, at one point, I had to excuse myself to the lavatory to cry. It was relief, I realized; after months of upheaval and uncertainty, we were going home. We were going to be okay.
Mom had proposed a welcome back dinner for Neil, and while I’d been leery of h
is reaction, he’d been enthusiastic about seeing everyone. So, when the helicopter landed and security met us at the helipad with a little golf cart, he could hardly contain himself.
“And Rudy will be here?” he asked for the second time since we’d left Reykjavik.
“Yes. Rudy will be here. And Valerie, and probably the Tin Man and the Lion,” I said, leaning across the seat to give him a kiss on the cheek. He adjusted his hold on Olivia and took a long, deep breath, true calm washing over his features.
My heart squeezed, overwhelmed by happiness.
God, I was going to be a crying mess all night.
Cars choked the circular drive at the front of the house, but the security guy managed to pull us under the porte cochere so we could enter through the kitchen door. Inside, the first person we encountered was Mom, standing at the kitchen island, surrounded by overflowing pots and stacks of utensils. She dropped a jelly roll pan full of asparagus onto the counter and whipped the pot holders off her hands before charging toward us.
Neil only just barely managed to hand Olivia off to me before my mom threw her arms around him. He let out a loud oof as they collided.
She slapped his back hard enough that I thought she might break one of his ribs. “Thank God you’re back. Thank God.” She stepped back and patted his cheek the way she would have done if it had been me she hadn’t seen in months. Neil, to his credit, did not run back out the door screaming into the night.
“Thank you, Rebecca. And thank you, for this.” He gestured to the chaos around the stove, which was probably already driving him insane. Neil was a “clean as you cook” kind of guy, and he loved his kitchen. “It looks like you’ve done quite a lot of work.”