There is a path of land that exists
Beyond the sea and the sky.
It is behind the mountains,
Past even the hills—
Those of luscious green that
Roll up into the heavens.
I have been there, with you.
It is not big, although not too small.
Perhaps you could perch a house on its width,
But we have never considered it.
What would be the use?
We already live there.
When the night closes
And the city stills,
I am there, with you.
Our mouths laughing, our heads vacant
Of all but what is.
And what is? I ask.
This, you say. You and I, here.
We are all silent after she finishes. I know what place. It is a field, surrounded by mountains and fog, where a river runs through. It is quiet and peaceful and eternal. It is that apartment.
I pull my coat tighter around me. It’s cold, but the cold feels good. It reminds me for the first time in a week that I am here, that I have flesh, that I am real. Berg steps forward next. He reads from Chaucer, a favorite stanza of hers from graduate school. He puts on a voice. Everyone laughs.
There is champagne and her favorite cookies from a bakery on Bleecker. There is also pizza from Rubirosa, but no one has touched it. We need her to return, smiling, full of life, gifting us back our appetites.
Finally, it is my turn.
“Thank you all for coming,” I tell them. “Greg and I knew she’d want something with the people she loved that wasn’t so formal.”
“Although Bella loved black tie,” Morgan chimes in.
We laugh. “That she did. She was a spinning, spiraling spirit that touched all of us. I miss her,” I say. “I will forever.”
The wind whistles over the city, and I think it’s her, saying a final farewell.
* * *
We stay until our fingers are frozen and our faces are chapped, and then it’s time to go home. I hug Morgan and Ariel goodbye. They promise to come over next week and help us sort through Bella’s stuff. Berg and Carl leave. The gallery girls tell me to come by—I say I will. They have a new exhibit going up. She was proud of it. I should see.
Then it’s just the two of us. Aaron doesn’t ask if he can come with me, but when the car arrives, he gets in. We travel downtown in silence. We speed across the Brooklyn Bridge, miraculously devoid of traffic. No roadblocks. Not anymore. We pull up to the building.
The keys, now in my possession.
Through the door, up the elevator, into the apartment. Everything I’ve fought against, now made manifest at my very own hands.
I take off my shoes. I go to the bed. I lie down. I know what is going to happen. I know exactly how we will live it.
Chapter Forty-One
I must fall asleep because I wake up, and he’s here, and the reality of it, of Bella’s loss, of the last few months, swirls around us like the impending storm.
“Hey,” Aaron says. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
He sighs. He walks over to me. “You fell asleep.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask him, because I want to know. I want him to say it. I want to get it out, now, into the open.
“Come on,” he says, refusing. Although if it’s the refusal of the inevitable, or the unwillingness to answer the question, I do not know.
“Do you know me?”
I want to explain to him, although I suspect he understands, that I am not this person. That what has happened, what is happening, here, between us, is not me. That I would never betray her. But that she’s gone. She’s gone, and I do not know what to do with this—with everything she left in her wake.
He puts a knee on the bed. “Dannie,” he says. “Are you really asking me that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know where I am.”
“It was a good night,” he says, gently, reminding me. “Wasn’t it?”
Of course it was. It was what she would have wanted. This gathering of what she stood for. Spontaneity, love. A good Manhattan view.
“Yeah,” I say. It was.
I catch the TV. A storm is coming, circling its way closer to us. Seven inches of snow, they’re predicting.
“Are you hungry?” he asks me. Neither of us ate tonight.
I wave him off. No. But he presses, and my stomach answers in return. Yes, actually. I’m starving.
I follow Aaron into the closet, itching to get out of this dress. He pulls his sweatpants, the ones he still has here from all the work he did on the apartment, out of the drawer along with a T-shirt he left behind. The only things here that aren’t mine.
“I moved to Dumbo,” I say, incredulous. Aaron laughs. It’s all so ridiculous, neither one of us can help ourselves. Five years later, I have left Murray Hill and Gramercy and moved to Dumbo.
I change and wash my face. I put some cream on. I wander back into the living room. Aaron calls from the kitchen that he’s making pasta.
I find Aaron’s pants flung over the chair. I fold them and his wallet slides out. I open it. Inside is the Stumptown punch card. And then I see it—the photo of Bella. She’s laughing, her hair tangled around her face like a maypole. It’s from the beach. Amagansett this summer. I took it. It seems years ago, now.
We decide on pesto for the pasta. I go to sit at the counter.
“Am I still a lawyer?” I ask him, wearily. I haven’t been to the office in nearly two weeks.
“Of course,” he answers. He holds out an open bottle of red, and I nod. He fills my glass.
We eat. It feels good, necessary. It seems to ground me. When we’re done, we take our wineglasses to the other side of the room. But I’m not ready, not yet. I sit down in a blue chair. I think about leaving, maybe. Not going through with what happens next.
I even make a move for the door.
“Hey, where are you going?” Aaron asks me.
“Just the deli.”
“The deli?”
And then Aaron is upon me. His hands on my face, the way they were just weeks ago, on the other side of the world. “Stay,” he says. “Please.”
And I do. Of course I do. I was always going to. I fold to him in that apartment like water into a wave. It all feels so fluid, so necessary. Like it’s already happened.
He holds me in his arms, and then he kisses me. Slowly and then faster, trying to communicate something, trying to break through.
We undress quickly.
His skin on mine feels hot and raw and urgent. His touch goes from languid to fire. I feel it around us, all around us. I want to scream. I want to tear us apart.
We make love in that bed. That bed that Bella bought. This union that Bella built. He traces his fingers over my shoulders and down my breasts. He kisses my neck, the hollow of my collarbone. His body on top of mine feels heavy and real. He exhales out sharply into my hair, says my name. We’re going to break apart too quickly. I never want this to end.
And then it’s over, and when it is, when he collapses on top of me—kissing, caressing, shuddering—I feel clarity, like it has clobbered me in the back of my head. I see it in the stars. Everywhere. All above us.
I knew it all five years ago; I saw everything. I even saw this moment. But staring at Aaron next to me, now, I realize something I did not know before, not until this very moment: 11:59 p.m.
I saw what was coming, but I did not see what it would mean.
I look down at the ring I am wearing. It is on my middle finger, where it has been since I put it on. It is hers, of course, not mine. It is the thing I wear to feel close to her.
The dress, a funeral shroud.
This feeling.
This full, endless, insurmountable feeling. It fills up the apartment. It threatens to break the windows. But it is not love, no. I mistook it. I mistook it because I did not know; I had
not seen everything that would get us here. It is not love, this feeling.
It is grief.
* * *
The clock turns.
After
Aaron and I lie next to each other, perfectly still. It is not awkward, although we do not talk. I suspect we are, both of us, coming to terms with what we have just discovered: that there is nowhere to hide, not even in each other.
“She’s laughing,” he says, finally. “You know that, right?”
“If she doesn’t kill me first.”
Aaron lifts a hand to my stomach. He chooses, instead, to make contact with my arm. “She knows,” he says.
“I’d imagine, yes.” I roll to the side. We look at each other. Two people bound and tethered by our own grief. “Do you want to stay?” I ask him.
He smiles at me. He reaches over and tucks some hair behind my ear. “I can’t,” he says.
I nod. “I know.”
I want to crawl to him. I want to make my bed in his arms. To stay there until the storm passes. But I can’t, of course. He has his own to weather. We can help each other only in our history, not in our understanding. It is different. It has always been different.
I look around the apartment. This place she built for me. This haven.
“Where will you go?” I ask him.
He has his own place, of course. His own life. The one he was living this time last year. Before the tides of fate swept him up and deposited him here. December 16, 2025. Where do you see yourself in five years?
“You want to have lunch tomorrow?” he asks me. He sits up. Discreetly, under the covers, he pulls his pants back on.
“Yeah,” I say. “That would be nice.”
“Maybe we could make it a weekly thing,” he says, establishing something. Boundaries, maybe friendship.
“I’d like that.”
I look down at my hand. I don’t want to. I want to hold it forever. This promise on my finger. But it is not my promise, of course. It is his.
I take it off.
“Here,” I say. “You should have this.”
He shakes his head. “She wanted you—”
“No,” I say. “She didn’t. This is yours.”
He nods. He takes it back. “Thank you.”
He stands up. He puts on his shirt. I use the time to get dressed as well.
Then he stops, realizing something. “We could drink some more wine,” he says. “If you don’t want to be alone?”
I think about that, about the promise of this space. This time. Tonight.
“I’m okay,” I say. I have no idea if it’s true.
We walk across the apartment silently, our feet light on the cool concrete.
He pulls me into a hug. His arms feel good, and strong. But gone is the charge, the kinetic energy pulling, asking, demanding to be combusted.
“Get home safe,” I say. And then he is gone.
I stare at the door a long time. I wonder whether I will see him tomorrow, or whether I will get a text, an excuse. Whether this is the beginning of goodbye for us, too. I do not know. I have no idea what happens now.
I walk around the apartment for an hour, touching things. The marble countertops, the grainiest shade of green. The black wood cabinets. The cherrywood stools. Everything in my apartment has always been white, but Bella knew I belonged in color. I go to the orange dresser, and that’s when I see a framed photo sitting on top of it. Two teenagers, arms wrapped around each other, standing in front of a little white house with a blue awning.
“You were right,” I say. I start to laugh then. The hysterical sobs of someone caught between irony and grief. The woven tapestry of our friendship continuing to reveal itself even now, even in her absence.
Outside, across the street from the apartment, right by Galapagos, I can see it start to snow. The first fall of the year. I put down the picture. I wipe my eyes. And then I pull on my rubber boots. I grab my down jacket and scarf from the closet. Keys, door, elevator.
Outside, the streets are empty. It is late; it is Dumbo. It is snowing. But from a block over, I see a light. I turn the corner. The deli.
I wander in. There is a woman behind the counter, sweeping. But the place is warm and well-lit, and she doesn’t tell me they’re closed. They’re not. I look up at the board. The array of sandwiches, none of which I’ve ever touched. I’m not hungry, not at all, but I think about tomorrow—about coming here and getting an egg salad on bagel, or a tuna on rye. A breakfast sandwich—eggs and tomatoes and cheddar and wilted arugula. Something different.
The door jangles behind me. A tinkling of holiday bells.
I turn around, and there he is.
“Dannie,” Dr. Shaw says. “What are you doing here?”
His cheeks are red. His face open. He’s no longer in scrubs, but in jeans and a jacket, open at the collar. He is handsome, of course, in the way familiarity is beautiful, if not a little worn, a little tattered.
“Dr. Shaw.”
“Please,” he says. “Call me Mark.”
He extends his hand. I take it. We will stay in that deli until they close, sipping on coffee that turns cold, which is an hour from now. He will walk me home. He will say he is very sorry for my loss. That he never knew I lived in Dumbo. I will tell him I didn’t. Not until now. He will ask if perhaps he can see me again, perhaps at that deli, when I am ready. I will tell him yes, perhaps. Perhaps.
But all of that is an hour from now. Now, on the other side of midnight, we do not yet know what is coming.
So be it. So let it be.
An Atria Reading Club Guide
In Five Years
Rebecca Serle
This reading group guide for In Five Years includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Rebecca Serle. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
In Five Years is a striking, moving love story about Dannie Kohan, a high-powered corporate lawyer who has everything planned out. The story opens on the day she interviews for her dream job, nails it, and gets engaged to her longtime boyfriend—all according to her five-year plan. That night, when she and her new fiancé get home, she falls asleep on the couch. But when she wakes up, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, in bed beside a very different man. She looks over at the muted TV playing the news and sees the date: it’s 2025, five years in the future.
After a very confusing hour, Dannie wakes up again back in her normal life. She tries to shake the dream—or was it premonition?—by busying herself in work. She tells no one about it, not even her best friend, Bella. Then one day, four and a half years later, she comes face-to-face with the man from her dream. This stunning, heartbreaking story will leave you thinking about the unpredictable nature of destiny and make you want to call your best friend immediately.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. From the very beginning of the book, we learn that Dannie has rules and plans laid out for everything in her life. Do you believe this helps or hinders her? How does her philosophy regarding keeping everything in its place change over the course of the novel?
2. To Dannie, the law is “like poetry, but poetry with outcome, poetry with concrete meaning—with actionable power” (page 10). Later she describes the law by saying that “everything is there in black and white” (page 142). How does the law empower Dannie? To what extent do you think the law shapes how rigidly she sees the world? As the book goes on, power is often taken out of Dannie’s hands. Do you think her background makes this lack of control harder for her than it might be for others?
3. While Bella is a tragic character, she is not painted simply in an angelic light. Early on in the story, Dannie describes her as being “spoiled, mercurial, and more than a li
ttle bit magical” (page 6). Is Bella’s portrayal as a complicated, sometimes flawed character unique given the ending of the book and the typical depiction of the tragic heroine?
4. The scene between Dannie and Aaron in Chapter 3 is mirrored by the same scene in Chapter 41. How did your impressions of the two characters change over the course of the book? Why do you think the author chose to frame the story with two identical scenes that will mean different things to the reader at different points in the story?
5. Bella gifts Dannie a print by the artist Allen Grubesic that reads: I WAS YOUNG I NEEDED THE MONEY. All the characters in the book are well-off financially by the time we meet them. What do you think the print’s message means in the context of the story?
6. Dannie believes that “Bella lives in a world I do not understand, populated by phrases and philosophies that apply only to people like her. People, maybe, who do not yet know tragedy” (pages 44–45). How do you think the death of Dannie’s brother at such a young age affects her outlook? Do you think she envies Bella for not carrying a similar burden, or does she look up to her for it? How do you think the fact that Dannie has already lost someone close to her affects her when Bella’s diagnosis is revealed?
7. Bella introduces her new boyfriend as Greg, but, of course, Dannie already knows him as Aaron and has a hard time referring to him as anything other than Aaron. Why do you think he is introduced to us with two different names? Is Bella’s version of him different from Dannie’s version of him?
8. Dannie visits a therapist, Dr. Christine, once after her dream and once after she meets Aaron in real life. Why do you think she sees Dr. Christine only twice? What decisions does Dannie make after leaving these appointments?
9. How does Dannie and Bella’s relationship change after Bella’s diagnosis? How does it affect the other relationships in Dannie’s and Bella’s lives? Why do you think it’s easier for Bella to be around Aaron than it is for her to be around Dannie?
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