It Had to Be You

by Georgia Clark

  Honey nodded, looking away. “I’m not going to pretend like I’m not disappointed. I really like you, Savannah. A lot. But I’m also ready for a girlfriend. Like, so ready. So, so, so ready.”

  They both laughed. Honey dabbed at her eyes with a paper napkin.

  “You’ll meet someone,” Savannah said. “Someone who can see just how wonderful you are.”

  The waitress stopped by to refresh their cups. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything else?” She ran her fingers through her mop of hair, her eyes lingering on Honey. “Anything at all?”

  Savannah twirled a lock of her own hair. Maybe she should try something shorter. She’d had the same haircut for a very long time. “Oh, you’ll be more than okay,” Savannah said to Honey, after the waitress left. “She was totally into you!”

  “Was she?” Honey craned her neck, staring after her with a bashful smile. “I should get dumped more often.”

  Savannah forced a chuckle, titillated, even relieved—but mostly sad. It was too soon to be talking about Honey’s love life in a way that didn’t involve her. But that was what happened after you let someone go.

  They hugged under the café awning, and Honey told Savannah to come by the restaurant; a whiskey for old time’s sake. Savannah said that she would. But she suspected this was the end of something. Honey dashed up the street, jumping puddles in a bright yellow raincoat. And then, she was gone.

  Savannah pulled out her phone. It was time her parents knew two things. First, she wasn’t moving back home. She was staying in New York. She had to live her life, even if that meant disappointing people. And second, Terry and Sherry needed to stop assuming that she was only looking to date a guy. Because the more she thought about it, the more it felt like that was not a possibility. She knew they’d worry about her. They just wanted her to be happy. So, she’d have to tell them that she was happy. Breakups notwithstanding, she was.

  Terry answered on the first ring. “Hi, Pookie! Great timing, I’m making turkey burgers.”

  “Dad, can you grab Mom?”

  “Sure, honey. Is something wrong?”

  The rain started to relent. It was always so nice out after a deluge. The streets were washed clean and everything smelled earthy, like fresh shoots. Like new life. Savannah switched her phone to her other ear. “No. Nothing’s wrong at all.”

  81

  Liv went through the motions of her life. Fall was busy in a different way from summer. In Love in New York focused on meeting with prospective clients, doing early-stage planning for couples who were wedding next year, and finalizing the books. But Liv’s mind was never far from Eliot.

  Eliot had been ill.

  The thing that drove him to Savannah was fear of death. The terrifying realization that all the eternal-seeming roles humans create to order our experience—becoming a spouse or a parent or a business owner—were just ways to forget about our mortality. The temporariness and seeming insignificance of anything done on earth. Confronted with that, the man she’d married couldn’t inhabit his life anymore.

  And he hadn’t confided in her about any of it. His wife.

  In retrospect (the place Liv was almost exclusively spending her time), there was one moment where maybe, he was considering it. Around this time last year, when the temperature had just started to drop. He’d come home late, puffing as he hung up his coat. (Out of breath from the five-minute walk from the subway. She hadn’t noticed.)

  “Hey.” He greeted her with a paper-thin kiss.

  “Where were you?” Her greeting. As cold as his lips.

  He hadn’t replied, chatting instead with Ben about homework until Liv sent their son upstairs for a shower. Eliot opened a bottle of red and poured himself a glass. The house was cold, and quiet. “Liv.” He spoke the word in a way that was sort of… raw.

  She was scrolling through her email, distracted. “Mm?”

  “Do you ever think about your legacy?” He drew out a chair at the dining room table, sitting in Ben’s spot. “What you’ll be remembered for?”

  Liv didn’t look up from her phone. “No.”

  He was silent for a few minutes. “I don’t quite know how to say this—”

  “Oh, shit. The Robinsons want to switch their hotel block from the Marriott to the Hyatt! Jesus.”

  “Liv—”

  “Yeah, I don’t really have time for your legacy right now.” Pushing off from the kitchen counter, she gestured at the frying pan. “There’s leftovers, but can you help clean up, please? This isn’t a hotel.” She went into the front office and shut the door.

  Was that the moment? The moment her husband of twenty-two years tried to tell her something life-or-death, and she’d unequivocally blown him off?

  Over admin. Over nothing.

  He was suffering, and she didn’t know about it. He’d died alone in a midprice hotel room in Kentucky. The final thing he saw was probably boring beige blinds or a bathroom light, still on.

  The way Eliot had decided to act didn’t exonerate his deception. But it did explain it. It evolved his absence. And she missed him. She missed him in a way she hadn’t in months. She missed his love of dill pickles and sour gummy worms. The way he could tell a story at a dinner party and have everyone in stitches. Even his mood swings. She just missed him.

  Sam and Dottie started staying over half the week. Sam moved a bigger television into the den, and the flickering light from the screen reached further into the hallway. Pink socks and frilly girl’s underwear appeared in the laundry. Some mornings, Liv would wake to the smells of stocks and marinades Sam was preparing in the kitchen. Savory but alien.

  One night, as Liv chopped carrots for the kids’ school lunches, she pictured Eliot, creeping up to the patio door and peering in. Would he recognize what he saw? Would he be relieved Liv had moved on? Or angry he’d been replaced?

  The weather turned from fresh to cold. It was coming. One year without Eliot was coming.

  It was the week before Thanksgiving. Sam, Liv, Ben, and Dottie were making homemade pizzas. Outside, it was windy. Cold air whistled under the windowsills.

  “Let’s add some pineapple.” Liv rummaged through the pantry. “I know we have some.”

  “Yuck,” announced Dottie. “No way.”

  Sam laughed, grimacing. “Yeah, I think that’s a veto, love.”

  “We like pineapple,” Liv prompted Ben. “Don’t we?”

  But her son just shrugged, focused on adding cherry tomatoes. “Sam, is it true these are a fruit, not a vegetable?”

  The wind howled. A swell of dark emotion rose in Liv’s throat. “You like it,” she said, louder. “We all—Dad and I—we like pineapple.”

  “Okay, okay,” Sam said, surprised. “We’ll put it on half.”

  “No,” Liv said. “All of it.”

  A crack sounded from outside, followed by a smash. They all jumped, spinning in the direction of the backyard.

  One of the limbs of the willow tree had come through the windows next to the patio door, breaking the glass. A gust of wind blew into the kitchen. Dottie screamed.

  “It’s okay, sweetie.” Sam hugged her. “Just a fallen tree branch. Ben, why don’t you guys watch some TV while your mom and I fix this. Now, please.”

  The kids headed off, rattled but thrilled for extra screen time.

  Liv was already outside.

  A sizable branch of the weeping willow had snapped off. One of its smaller branches had broken the window on the way down. Liv stood by it, dumbly, the wind whipping her hair.

  “Don’t worry.” Sam examined where the fallen branch had come down, calling over the wind. “No real harm. I’ll call my tree guy to see what we should do.”

  Liv sat down on the branch. It was the size of her torso and accepted her weight with a gentle give. She crossed her legs underneath her. This low to the ground, she felt childlike.

  “Honey?” Sam loomed over her. “We should probably get back inside.”

  Liv’s eyes grew hot
with tears. She folded her arms. Twigs and soil blew around the dark backyard, stinging her cheek. Through the patio doors, the house was lit with warm, yellow light. Liv didn’t move.

  “Liv,” Sam tried again.

  “Leave me alone.” Liv waved him away, afraid she was really going to start crying. Her skin turned to gooseflesh. She was shaking.

  Sam stood perfectly still, his expression neutral; inviting explanation.

  “It was our tree.” Her gaze zigzagged from limb to limb, trying to find a place to land. The limbs heaved in the wind, a tumble of shadows far above her head. “Eliot and I planted this tree. And he—he—he was dying too.”

  Once Sam had gotten her inside and wrapped in a cardigan, Liv told him everything: the attorney’s email, Eliot’s diagnosis.

  “I didn’t know,” Liv said, angry and heartbroken and ashamed. “He didn’t tell me.”

  “It’s okay, love,” Sam kept saying, stroking her arm. “It’s all okay.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready. I don’t know if…”

  “It’s okay, Liv. Whatever you decide, it’s okay.” Sam kept offering reassurances, but all Liv could hear was the wind blowing against the newspaper Sam had taped up over the broken window.

  After a long phone call to a local arborist, Sam deemed it safe enough for them to stay the night. “But first thing tomorrow,” he warned gently, and Liv nodded.

  She woke before dawn. Sam found her sitting on the back patio. The backyard looked like a war zone. Leaves and splinters of wood covered the overgrown flower beds. The earth was wounded.

  Sam draped a wool blanket over her shoulders and sat down beside her. Liv turned to him. “It’s not like I’m still in love with him or anything. But I can’t just erase him. He’s still a part of me. Of us. Of all this,” she said, indicating the house, and everything inside it.

  Sam nodded, his large hands clasped in front of him. “I love you, Liv. But I’m still grieving the end of my marriage, too. I don’t require you to be over Eliot in order to be with me.”

  “God,” Liv mumbled, pulling the blanket tighter. “You’re so mature.”

  Sam’s smile was wry. “Is that code for boring?”

  “No.” Liv let out a small laugh. “No, it’s code for… wonderful.”

  Sam put his arm around her, and she snuggled closer. The cold morning air smelled like sawdust. Clean and woodsy. It smelled like Sam.

  They really should spend more time out here. Reclaim the backyard. Liv pointed at the fallen tree limb. “Maybe, we could make a table out of the wood. Something long and solid that’ll weather a few storms. For dinner parties…”

  Sam’s face lightened. “And birthdays.”

  Liv pictured Ben and Dottie in caps and gowns. Bright-eyed young adults with hopes and dreams of their own. Her throat tightened with emotion, then relaxed. “Graduations.”

  “And anniversaries.” Sam’s eyes had a question in them. If she wanted it.

  She did. “Yes,” Liv answered. “And anniversaries.”

  There was only one star left above them, brilliant as a diamond in the soft, gray sky.

  EPILOGUE: IN LOVE AT HOME

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Not many brides spend the morning of their wedding at a cemetery. But Liv Goldenhorn was no ordinary bride.

  The gravestone had weathered over the past few years, and it looked better for it. A brand-new gravestone was depressing. Now it had some character, some authority. Eliot was finally aging well.

  Ben put a jar of dill pickles and a copy of the New York Times sports section on his dad’s grave. He updated Eliot on his various interests and accomplishments: an A on a recent science quiz about the solar system, how the Yankees were doing, the worm farm Sam had built in the backyard, equally gross and cool. He’d grown eight inches in the three years since his father’s death, losing the baby fat, no longer a little boy. “There was a meteor shower last week. Mom let me stay up really late to watch it.” He pushed his glasses up his nose. His newly enlarging Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “I wish you’d been there.”

  Sam put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Why don’t we go for a walk and give your mom some time.” He produced a paper bag from the tote slung over his shoulder. “Are you guys hungry?”

  Dottie eyed the bag. “If it’s lunch, then I’m not hungry. If it’s a treat, then I am.”

  Liv and Sam traded an amused look. “Lucky for you, Miss Sweet Tooth,” Sam said, “it’s apple fritters.”

  As the trio disappeared over a small hill, Liv stared at the etched words and dates on the gravestone, rereading them for the thousandth time. Even after all these years, it still seemed somewhat unbelievable that he was gone. “Well, E. I’m getting married today.” Saying it out loud invoked an untamed moment of laughter. She sank to her knees, settling into the grass, breathing the warm June air. “You’d like him, I think. Oh, let’s face it: you’d probably be a jealous prick about the whole thing. But he’s good for me. Good for Ben. He loves us. We love him.”

  She pulled a blade of grass from the ground, examining its soft white end. It was peaceful here. Soothing. She leaned back against the sun-warmed grave, feeling incredibly close to her ex-husband.

  A few minutes passed before she spoke again. “I don’t have any bad feelings, E. About us, I mean. Oh, there’s things I wish we’d done differently. Ways I could’ve been a better wife. Probably should’ve worked less. Probably could’ve initiated sex more. But I’ve learned from it all. I’ve become a better person. I’ll be a better wife this time. Don’t roll your eyes at me, you bastard,” she added, using the headstone to help get to her feet. “I will. I know I will.”

  In the near distance, Sam rounded the corner. Dottie was on his shoulders, Ben dashing ahead. Their chatter and laughter a warm, happy sound. “This isn’t goodbye, E. You’ll always be Ben’s dad. You’ll always be my first love. But this is a farewell, my darling. Because I’m giving my heart to someone else today, and I need to give him all of it, for us to have a shot. I hope that’s okay.” She frowned, reconsidering. “Why am I asking you if it’s okay? It’s my heart. I can do what I want with it.”

  Liv inhaled deeply through her nose. Warm fragrant earth and the sweet scent of flowers. For a place that honored the dead, there was an incredible sense of life out here. Because there always was life, always movement and momentum. If you weren’t dead, you were alive. A calm sense of certainty filled her. She gave the gravestone a quick smile, turning in the direction of her family, before spinning back. “Oh, and don’t get in your head about it, but Savannah Shipley has a girlfriend.”

  She was laughing as she walked toward her fiancé and children, imagining Eliot’s stunned disbelief.

  * * *

  When Sam and Liv got engaged, the first thing Savannah said was, “You have to let me plan the wedding.”

  “Don’t you mean, Congratulations?” Liv teased, giddy and girlishly happy.

  “Oh my gosh, sorry: congratulations, and you’re perfect for each other, and please, please, please let me plan the wedding.” She looked equally hopeful and determined. “Just me. On my own.”

  Savannah had never done a wedding solo before, from start to finish. This, the vendors all joked, would be her introduction to wedding-planning society. For months, she’d been working on getting every detail perfect.

  “Are you really trusting her to do everything?” Gorman had asked, refilling Liv’s glass as they toasted (again) to sexy Sam. “Isn’t that driving you crazy, Ms. Type A?”

  Liv shook her head. In her leafy backyard, Ben was reading a book about space travel while Dottie was running around in a tutu. “I trust her.”

  Gorman twisted his wedding band absentmindedly. “Isn’t life fascinating?” he murmured. “How it all turns out.”

  Now, as they all arrived home from the cemetery, Savannah made her go blindfolded upstairs into her and Sam’s bedroom, where she was going to get ready. “No peeking!”

  F
or her first wedding, at Temple Emanu-El on the Upper East Side, Liv had gone all out in a Vera Wang ball gown the size of a small planet and six bridesmaids in purple silk. This time, it was different. As soon as she’d laid eyes on the floor-length cream lace dress in a local vintage store, she knew it was the one. Simple and elegant, the dress evoked old-world glamour, and the three-quarter sleeves covered her arm fat.

  Liv did her own hair and makeup. No false lashes or extensions or contouring. Her face was her face. She’d rather look like a fiftysomething than a fiftysomething trying to look thirty. She didn’t want to be thirty. She wanted to be right where she was.

  Downstairs, the house filled with the sound of arriving guests. Nerves bubbled up.

  “Knock, knock.” Gorman stuck his head around the door. On seeing her, his eyes grew wide. Then misty. He pressed his fingers to his lips.

  “That bad?” Liv joked.

  He swatted her. “Don’t even.”

  Henry was behind him, both hands behind his back. “I know you wanted to keep it simple but…”

  “Every queen needs her crown,” Gorman finished. “Take it from the biggest queens of all.”

  The two men presented Liv with an elegant flower crown. Pink roses and purple lilacs and yellow goldenrod. “All from your garden,” Gorman said proudly. “Which is looking absolutely—”

  Henry elbowed him. “Don’t ruin the surprise!”

  Liv marveled at their creation. “It’s beautiful.” She hugged them both, wiping away a tear. “This day is already perfect. How can it get any better?”

  Gorman offered her his arm. “Why don’t you marry a deliciously hot chef?”

  Savannah was in the doorway. Her face was aglow. It’d taken Liv a few days to get used to the new haircut. But the choppy platinum-blond bob suited the woman Savannah had become in New York. “We’re ready for you.”