This Is Not How It Ends
Page 1
PRAISE FOR THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS
“Set against the backdrop of the vibrant Florida Keys, This Is Not How It Ends beautifully highlights how two single random encounters can influence the trajectory of our lives. This poignant, character-driven tale about love and the choices we make will make you laugh and cry. A thoroughly captivating read.”
—Tracey Garvis Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island and The Girl He Used to Know
“In Rochelle B. Weinstein’s latest, This Is Not How It Ends, Charlotte Myers is caught between two love stories—neither of which she expected, both of which come with great loss. Poignant and evocative, Weinstein has crafted a story that draws you in and won’t let go. Keep the tissues nearby, especially for the heartbreaking yet gratifying conclusion. A wonderfully moving read!”
—Karma Brown, bestselling author of The Life Lucy Knew
“A beautifully written tale about love and the unexpected choices we are forced to make. Full of rich description and soulful characters, Weinstein’s original story will have you turning pages quickly.”
—Elyssa Friedland, author of The Floating Feldmans
“Can a chance encounter change your life? For Charlotte Myers, the unexpected will challenge her assumptions about the meaning of love and family, and question her ability to forgive the sins of the past. Elegant and timely, This Is Not How It Ends weaves a poignant tapestry of three lives threaded together by devotion and secret passion—and will leave readers guessing until the satisfying conclusion.”
—Christine Nolfi, award-winning author of the Sweet Lake series
“Weinstein is at the top of her game here. Poignant and unputdownable, This Is Not How It Ends tackles the heavy hitters—love, loss, betrayal, and forgiveness—and reminds us that in the end, it is always love that wins.”
—Julie Lawson Timmer, author of Mrs. Saint and the Defectives
“I was engrossed from the first page! This Is Not How It Ends is not just one love story, it’s the story of the many ways we love each other, betray each other, and find the strength to fall in love yet again. Vibrant writing, compelling, relatable characters, and the gorgeous Florida Keys setting make Weinstein’s latest a must-read!”
—Loretta Nyhan, bestselling author of Digging In
PRAISE FOR ROCHELLE B. WEINSTEIN
“Weinstein has found her latest novel debuting at precisely the perfect cultural moment. Somebody’s Daughter explores the disturbing rise in cyberbullying—and how women (and mothers) cope with unmerited guilt and shame.”
—Entertainment Weekly on Somebody’s Daughter
“A summer reading must.”
—Aventura Magazine on Somebody’s Daughter
“A deftly crafted and thoroughly engaging read from cover to cover, Somebody’s Daughter showcases author Rochelle B. Weinstein’s genuine flair as a novelist for narrative storytelling, making it an ideal and highly recommended addition to community library Contemporary General Fiction collections.”
—Midwest Book Review on Somebody’s Daughter
“Weinstein has given us a wonderful tale of life and its distractions. She gives us characters that are flawed and yet lovable . . . You will find yourself affected to the very core by the depth of her work.”
—Blogcritics on Where We Fall
“Compelling . . . What We Leave Behind’s twists and turns generate real tension, and Weinstein renders Jessica’s feelings with enough complexity that her ultimate decision carries emotional weight.”
—Kirkus Reviews on What We Leave Behind
“Each word of What We Leave Behind invokes raw emotion as we are brought deeper into the soul of a woman that can be any of us. This moving story will echo strongly with any woman who has had to face love and loss, life and death, and everything in between.”
—Long Island Woman on What We Leave Behind
“A heart-wrenching tale of loss, loyalty, and the will to overcome . . . Weinstein explores the difficult facets of grief that are often too painful to recognize, the solipsism of mourning, the selfishness of regret, and the guilt of moving on . . . Ultimately, this novel full of mourning has a large, aching heart full of sympathy and potential, and will keep the reader listening for signs of restored life.”
—Kirkus Reviews on The Mourning After
“Weinstein hooked me with her first novel, and The Mourning After has made me a fan for life. She has that rare ability to hook you from chapter one, keep you turning the pages and then continuing to think about the characters long after you have put the book down.”
—James Grippando, New York Times bestselling author, on The Mourning After
ALSO BY ROCHELLE B. WEINSTEIN
Somebody’s Daughter
Where We Fall
The Mourning After
What We Leave Behind
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Rochelle B. Weinstein
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542007672
ISBN-10: 1542007674
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
For Nathalie Szemere Birnbaum,
my precious friend who teaches me every single day
how to fight and how to live.
CONTENTS
START READING
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
PART TWO
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOOK CLUB QUESTIONS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In each loss there is a gain,
As in every gain there is a loss,
And with each ending comes a new beginning.
—Buddhist Proverb
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
July 2018, Present Day
Islamorada, Florida
I’ve heard it said that life is about choices. Paths stretch
out ahead of us—sometimes, we make conscious decisions and other times, fate intervenes and chooses for us. Had I known my life was about to take a sharp turn in those early hours of morning, I might have walked Sunny in a different direction. We would have taken the shortcut to the market on Overseas Highway and been in and out of the store minutes sooner. But then he would have missed exercising and swatting his golden tail at the mosquitos that dove inside his shiny fur. And I might have missed dawn scraping at the early morning sky, while the clapboard homes along Old Highway sprang to life.
But we didn’t know, and we didn’t take the shortcut.
Passing through the market’s doors at the exact time as a young boy and his father, we arrived just as crusty Lucille was complaining about the Florida heat. The little boy, about nine or ten, grasped my eyes in his, asking me with their speckled green if he could pet my dog.
“His name’s Sunny,” I said while the man hovered in that slightly awkward way that sends the retriever into a tailspin. “Let him sniff your hand first.” There was no rational way to predict who the temperamental dog would warm up to. It was a logic none of us had figured out. He didn’t like most anyone getting near me. Not other dogs. Not other people. And while he was a gift from Philip, he mostly didn’t like Philip. I pulled hard on his lead, and he sat, letting the boy stroke his thick fur. The man hid his eyes beneath a Cowboys baseball cap, though I could see tendrils of brown hair stuck to his neck.
All I needed was honey, a spoonful of sugar for my daily dose of hot lemon water. I should’ve been able to ask a neighbor, but that all changed when Hurricane Irma bucked Islamorada last year with a vicious roar, and our neighbor’s home was leveled. That our future home was spared was a stroke of luck.
The man and the boy took off inside the market’s narrow corridors, and I kept Sunny close, silently thanking him for not making a scene. I studied the variety of honeys—organic, raw, avocado, pasteurized—impressed that a local market would have enough options to fog anyone’s brain, when Sunny tugged. I paid no attention, tugging back. He tugged harder, dragging me down the aisle.
“Sunny!”
His force sent the honey jar in my hand, a teddy bear with its belly full of sweetness, to the floor.
Sunny raced toward Lucille, who was handing out sample cups filled with a morning snack. The little boy, the one who moments ago had been stroking Sunny’s fur, reached for his own throat.
“C’mon, Sunny,” I said, though I was fixed on the boy who appeared to be gasping, his fingers clutching his neck. The boy’s father was nowhere in sight, and my chest tightened. Sunny was hell-bent on hauling me across the aisle.
The boy fell to the ground, his backpack crumpling beside him, and the next sixty seconds were a blur. Like staring out the window of a fast-moving train, the images spliced into one another. His dad rounded the corner, a green plastic basket crashing to the floor. The contents spilled down the aisle. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. A carton of milk.
The shiny metal bracelet dangling from the boy’s wrist screamed emergency. Severe allergies. The man peered inside the white cup and reached for his son, whose pupils had folded back into his head.
Fumbling inside the nearby bag, he pulled out an EpiPen.
His fingers trembled as he ripped the top off. I was on the floor beside him, waiting for him to penetrate the skin, but he stopped, suddenly going stiff. Around us, his son’s shallow breaths formed an eerie cackle.
Instinct took over as customers gathered nearby. I ripped the EpiPen out of the man’s hands while he cradled the boy’s head. We worked in tandem, shoulder to shoulder, as though we’d done this before. The boy’s skinny legs jutted out of his shorts, and I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing. I jabbed the EpiPen against his thigh and heard the snick of the needle.
The instructions say the effect is immediate, but the waiting felt like an eternity. The man was rooted in place, holding the boy’s palm in his. I reached for his shoulder to reassure him, but he didn’t look up, not until the boy finally stirred.
“He’s back,” I said, my own heart awakening, a steady rhythm that reminded me he had to get to a hospital.
The man pulled the boy toward him, whispering in his hair. “Jimmy. Jimmy.”
“Jimmy has to get to a hospital,” I said. Though he appeared to be stabilized, I knew how anaphylaxis worked. Some patients had a reoccurrence when the epinephrine wore off, requiring a second injection.
“I don’t know what happened,” the man said, his head lowering. “I panicked . . .”
His gaze traveled to little Jimmy, while Lucille shouted into an old flip phone. “Send someone. Fast. There’s a little boy having a bad allergic reaction!”
I focused on the sign next to the brownies. “Vegan and Gluten-Free.” Jimmy had had a severe allergic reaction to whatever was inside. I inspected the half-eaten sweet on the floor, a nut planted in its center.
The man continued, every word a struggle. “It’s been so long since we’ve, since I’ve, actually had to use that thing . . .” He took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair. The same dark shadow lined his jaw.
Jimmy squirmed. The trickle of customers broke apart, careful to step over the backpack. The young boy’s eyes were a similar green to his father’s, though his hair was lighter. A faint spray of freckles covered his nose and cheeks.
Sunny was pacing: I ordered him to sit, and he tried, but he alternated from sit to stand. I stroked the boy’s leg where I’d just injected him, and the steady motion calmed me. I was still holding the empty pen, and the man extended his hand for me to drop it in his palm.
That’s when I noticed my bare finger. The ring that Philip had just given me was gone.
An icy cold fear shot through my body while I searched the ground. The man was watching me, following my desperation. The ring must have been flung off in all the commotion. Philip had warned me to have it sized, but I’d been too busy admiring it. The man could tell that whatever I was looking for was important. He searched, too, and locked on something nearby, a shiny glare from beneath a shelf of canned corn.
He reached across the aisle, holding Jimmy’s head, and handed me the brilliant diamond. He watched me place it back on my finger, and soon the wails of screeching sirens filled the air. First responders surrounded us. They poked and prodded and touched while Jimmy sat patiently.
Sunny watched over the frail child as he often did for me, his paw resting against the boy’s shoulder. Jimmy slowly patted his soft ears, smiling at me, and then at Sunny. His teeth were a perfect pearly white.
The blurry train continued. There was a stretcher. Soon Jimmy was on it. His dad—they’d called him Ben—slowly stood up.
Sunny and I followed the stretcher outside, where the morning sun cast a blinding glow. They were loading Jimmy into the back of the van, when a paramedic who looked a lot like Denzel Washington urged me inside. “The boy needs his mother,” he said.
I looked at the man called Ben, but he hadn’t heard.
“I’m not his mother.”
Jimmy said something then, his gravelly voice a scratch against the breeze.
The paramedic—I wish he had a name—said, “He wants to know if you’ll bring the dog . . .”
I stepped back, creating necessary distance between us. “I can’t . . . I don’t even know these people . . .” But it didn’t feel right to leave. Sunny agreed, tugging me toward the open truck, clawing at the dirt until a plume of dust rose up.
“Normally it’s against regulations, but I’ll make an exception . . . for the boy,” he said.
“I can’t,” I repeated, cursing myself for needing honey that morning. For knowing I wouldn’t be home when Philip walked through the door.
From the look on his face, Ben was biting back a string of emotions, and the glaring vulnerability reached inside me. Without thinking, I let Sunny pull me forward, pushing aside thoughts of Philip. Philip, whose red-eye from Los Angeles would be arriving in Miami any minute.
Philip, who would be wondering where I was, expecting our reunion—intimate and often sweet. Instead, I thought of this little boy, innocent and fresh-faced like any one of my former students, the ones whose needs had always surpassed my own. The familiar twinge beckoned me to act, and soon I was inside the vehicle.
CHAPTER 2
May 2016, Back Then
United Airlines Flight 517 from Miami, Florida, to Kansas City, Missouri
Philip likes to tell the story of how we first met. He calls it a combination of fate and circumstance, and I chuckle because it was really the result of an equipment change at one of the country’s busiest airports. I shouldn’t have been flying that rainy day. And Priscilla, the principal at the school where I taught, shouldn’t have insisted I attend a professional development workshop so close to final exams—all the way in Coral Gables—but I could never say no to Priscilla or her suggestions for personal enrichment. It meant extra work, but I’d always been able to juggle.
I hadn’t been to Miami before, and the city’s vibrancy clung to me like the steamy weather. Perhaps it was the information provided in the seminars—innovative ways to inspire the kids—that had me buoyant and unfazed by the humidity. I was flying back to Kansas City that afternoon. The local news had predicted rain, but we were greeted with far worse. Hard balls of hail crashed against the roof of my Uber, and threatening tides flooded the streets. As I arrived at the airport, the digital monitors buzzed with delays, and when our incoming plane diverted to West Palm Beach, we were forced to board a different plane.
I took my seat in row thirteen, knowing full well the associated superstitions. Passengers were winding down the aisle, the sound of their shuffling mixing with the outside storms. Strapping myself into the window seat, I felt cautiously optimistic that the seat between me and the elderly woman on the aisle would remain empty.
Until Philip came crashing down the narrow walkway.
It’s in poor taste, I might add, to describe this man’s entrance into my world, on a plane, as a crash, but it fit. Philip was pissed. His sculpted cheeks were lit up, the lips puckered, and his brilliant blue eyes baffled. If he wasn’t snapping at the flight attendant, I’d have said he was handsome like the men on Game of Thrones, but the flared nostrils mixed with a testy arrogance stripped him, and me, of any kindness.