When We Meet Again

by Kristin Harmel

  “But why didn’t you just explain it?” I asked. “Why send me just a painting and a cryptic note?”

  “Because I didn’t really want you to find me. You being here, it’s the right thing. But do you know how much this is hurting me?” She sighed. “There’s a part of me that wishes you hadn’t come. That you didn’t exist in the first place. I’m sorry. That must be hard to hear.” She drew a ragged breath. “He was always hers.”

  “I’m sure he loved you too.”

  “But it wasn’t the same. It was never the same.” She took a step back and nodded toward a doorway on the left. “There is something I must show you. Will you follow me?”

  I walked behind her down a long hallway to a closed door. Ingrid stopped in front of it, murmured something to herself, and turned the knob. As I stepped into the room and she flicked the light switch on, I could feel my eyes widen.

  The room was the size of a bedroom, which is probably what it was intended to be, but there was no furniture. Instead, there was a single, small painting hanging on the far wall—the only object in the entire room. And in the center of the image were four figures: my grandmother, my father, me, and an older man, who I could only assume was my grandfather. We had our arms around each other, and my grandfather was gazing adoringly at the three of us under the same violet sky that had graced the painting that had arrived at my doorstep from Munich.

  “What the—?” I murmured, staring at it in wonder.

  “After Margaret told Ralph about you,” Ingrid said flatly, “he looked you both up and found a handful of pictures online. While he tried to reach you, he imagined what his life would have been like with the two of you in it. With Margaret in it. This was the last painting he ever did. He painted it the morning he died.”

  I gazed at it in wonder. He had perfectly captured the shape of my eyes, my father’s chin, my nose, my father’s laugh lines. And somehow, he had conjured exactly how my grandma had looked at the end. When I finally turned back to Ingrid, I was crying, and she was too.

  “He got all of it right, didn’t he?” she asked.

  “Yes. It seems impossible, but yes.”

  She sniffled. “That was Ralph. He was special that way. Art critics have speculated for years and years about his technique, but I’ve always believed that he painted with no specific process at all. He just let his heart pour into the work.”

  “I don’t even know what to say.”

  Ingrid looked around the room. “Then just say this: that you’ll take the painting.”

  “What?”

  “It was for you. You and your father. It was his way of telling you he loved you. He wanted you to know that you were in his heart. He would have wanted you to have it.”

  “I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Please,” she interrupted firmly. “It is yours. He always loved your grandmother, and once he knew about you, I know he loved you with every ounce of his heart. The proof is here. This is among the best work he ever created, and he did it in only hours. You and your father restored something in him that had always been missing, Emily.” She paused and wiped a tear away. “In the end, he was happy—happier than I’d ever seen him, happier than I was ever able to make him.”

  * * *

  I left an hour later with the beautiful painting carefully wrapped and packed into a small, flat gallery box.

  “Are you sure?” I asked her once more before we parted. “It feels wrong to take it from you.”

  “Emily,” she said, touching my cheek, “I spent all my years with Ralph trying to pretend that his life before me, his life with Margaret, didn’t exist. But it did exist. It defined him. It was the basis for the man he was. You were the basis for everything he was, even if he didn’t know it until the end. Family’s like that, isn’t it? The ones we love are always in our blood, in our hearts, even if they’re not in our lives.”

  I arrived back in Orlando just past three in the afternoon. I hadn’t told my dad yet about my visit with Ingrid because I wanted to explain things in person, so I called him as I was leaving the airport to let him know I was on my way. He was waiting for me when I walked through his office door twenty-five minutes later.

  “What is this?” my father asked. He embraced me awkwardly and stared at the flat cardboard box in my hand.

  “See for yourself,” I said, handing it over.

  My father slid the painting out, gasping as he saw the image.

  “This was done by my father?”

  I nodded.

  “He painted us,” he said softly.

  I smiled as he gazed at the image of all four of us together. “Yes.”

  “But . . . I don’t understand. How? Where was he all these years?”

  And so I explained everything. The lies that had kept Margaret and Peter apart. The way they’d both always carried a torch for the other, even when the flame should logically have gone out. The way that Peter never gave up, even when he changed his name, even when he tried to become someone else.

  “You’re telling me my father was Ralph Gaertner?” my father repeated in disbelief.

  “That’s how the world knew him,” I said. “But I think in his heart, he was always Peter Dahler, a German boy waiting for the love of his life to come back.”

  My father’s eyes were wide and filled with tears. “But . . . how did my mother never realize it was him?”

  I had asked Ingrid the same general question. “He did one big TV appearance in the sixties, but after that, he became more and more withdrawn. He agreed to very few interviews, and even fewer cameras. Unless you were a huge art buff, or you’d happened to catch that one episode of the Tonight Show, there’s no reason you would have seen his face.”

  “My mother almost never watched TV,” my father said. “But all those years . . . They were both here . . .”

  “They both thought the other was gone.”

  “But then how did he know about us?”

  I told him about Louise’s visit on Valentine’s Day and the phone call he’d placed to my grandmother that night. My father simply stared at me as I explained that they’d died within hours of each other the next day.

  “He was out there all this time,” my father whispered. “He didn’t abandon me. He didn’t abandon my mother.”

  “No.”

  He sat down slowly in one of the chairs facing his desk. “It’s all my fault.”

  “What do you mean? You had nothing to do with your father leaving.”

  “No. Not that.” He paused and seemed to be gathering himself together. “You. What I did to you and your mother.”

  I didn’t know what to say. “Dad—” I began.

  “No. Please let me say this. Emily, I thought that when things got tough, it was okay to leave. I thought that’s what my father had done. And you knew my mother: when life became too much for her, she just shut down. It was hard for me when I was growing up, when it was just the two of us, me and her. She’d disappear, even though she was physically there. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “It doesn’t excuse what I did,” my father went on. “God, it’s the opposite. It makes me an even worse person, because I knew how much it hurt to feel as if you weren’t important enough to stay for. But I thought they both left because when life got hard, disappearing was the only option.”

  I thought of Nick, Catherine. “I’ve done that too.”

  “And that’s my fault too. For teaching you that it’s okay to run.”

  “No, that’s not on you. It’s on me.”

  “I was wrong about all of it, Emily. I became unreliable, because I thought that’s just what people did. I didn’t have the backbone to be better, to stick it out. I guess I felt like I’d been abandoned, so maybe it was okay to abandon you.”

  “Dad—”

  “But he never abandoned me at all, did he?” he continued. His voice cracked. “My dad was there all along, loving my mom. Loving us. And my mom, she wasn’t really disappear
ing from me. She was going to him—or to his memory, at least.” He drew a shaky breath. “God, Emily, I’m so sorry. I was wrong about everything, and I completely screwed up your life because of it. I hurt you, and I hurt your mom, and there’s no changing that.”

  I reached for his hand. “But we can try to do better, okay? We can’t change the past. But we can change the way we deal with each other now.”

  Tears glistened in his eyes. “Emily, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Somehow, I knew from the way he was looking at me what he was about to say. “No,” I whispered.

  He sighed and looked into my eyes. “The cancer, Emily. It’s terminal.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know. And I’m sorry. I didn’t want you letting me into your life just because you felt sorry for me. That wouldn’t have been fair to you. I wanted us to come together on our own terms without the specter of death looming over us. I wanted to try to set things right, to make sure I hadn’t destroyed your life with the things I’d done to hurt you. I wanted you to know that you weren’t doomed to repeat my mistakes, that you’re your own person with a beautiful future in front of you.”

  “But the doctors—”

  “—have done everything they can,” my dad finished my sentence for me, his tone gentle. “I was stage three when I was diagnosed, but I haven’t responded well to treatments. I need to address the shareholders in my company very soon, but I wanted you to know first.”

  I began to cry, suddenly overwhelmed with a powerful sense of despair for a person I thought I’d lost years ago. He was slipping away all over again.

  “I’m so sorry, Emily. So very sorry. For everything I’ve done. For being a fool for so long. For throwing away the most important things in my life. For being too late to fix things between us.”

  My father stood, pulled me to my feet, and enveloped me in a hug. I could feel sobs racking his body too, and I held on tight, wishing I could take away some of his pain but knowing that I couldn’t. Sometimes, I realized, it’s only by going through the fire that you can come out the other side, reborn.

  “It’s not too late, Dad,” I whispered into my father’s chest, hoping that somewhere up there, Peter Dahler was seeing this moment, and that he knew that one of his last acts on earth had led to this reconciliation. Yes, people leave. But sometimes, they come back. And when they do, maybe it’s worth opening the door a crack to let them in. “It’s never too late.”

  * * *

  I stayed with my father for a long time that afternoon, talking about the past and what the future held for us. I wanted to hear optimism in his voice, a sign that perhaps his doctor’s words weren’t exactly the death sentence they sounded like. But instead, I heard resignation and peace.

  “I’m so glad we’ve had these last few weeks together, Emily,” he said as I hugged him good-bye just after twilight fell outside his office window. “I’ll remember them as some of the best in my life.”

  I left the painting with him and promised to spend more time with him in the coming days. We parted ways after I had elicited a promise from him to meet for dinner the next night.

  I cried all the way home, and when I got there, I felt exhausted and depleted. I sat for a long time in the kitchen staring at the painting in my kitchen, the one of my grandmother in the sugarcane field, the one that had started it all. I knew I’d be spending many nights in the future staring at the swirling purples, pinks, lavenders, and violets of the horizon in the background. It was the same sky my grandfather met my grandmother under. If that day hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now. I knew I’d never look at a beautiful dawn the same way again.

  I called Myra twice, leaving her a message the second time she didn’t pick up. I sobbed my way through an explanation about my trip to Atlanta and my father’s terminal diagnosis before asking her to call me back as soon as possible. I really needed someone to lean on. Finally, although it was only 8:30, I crawled into bed, exhausted, placing my phone on the pillow beside me with the ringer turned to high, just in case she called.

  I was jarred awake by the doorbell ringing some time later. “Dad?” I asked aloud, remembering my father’s news the second I was conscious. I glanced at the clock. It was 9:15; I’d only been out for forty-five minutes.

  The doorbell sounded again, and I jumped out of bed, wrapped a robe around myself, and rushed to the front door. I looked through the peephole, expecting to see Myra or maybe even my father standing there.

  Instead, I saw the last person I thought would ever be on my doorstep.

  “Nick?” I murmured in disbelief as I opened the door. He looked tired and rumpled.

  His face creased immediately with concern. “Emily? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve been crying.”

  I wiped self-consciously at my eyes. “Oh. It’s . . .” I trailed off into silence, because it was too much to explain right now. “I’m okay. But what are you doing here?”

  He held up the note I’d sent him two weeks ago. “I got your letter. I needed some time to think, Emily. But I woke up this morning and knew I had to see you. I got things squared away at the office for a few days and left this afternoon.” He smiled and pointed to the upper-left corner of the envelope. “Luckily, you included your return address.”

  I still couldn’t understand what was happening, but I knew that I owed him another apology. Millions of them, in fact. “I’m sorry, Nick. For everything. I’m so sorry.”

  “The past is the past, isn’t it? But you were wrong about something.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’d say I was wrong about an awful lot of things.”

  “No, I mean in your letter. You were wrong. I’m not married.”

  I blinked at him. “But your wife . . .” I paused, trailing off. “It says on your website you’re married.”

  He looked surprised. “Does it still? Obviously I need to change that. The divorce was final last year. Jessica wanted a different life, one that didn’t include me, I guess. She lives in Arizona now. It’s for the best. We weren’t right for each other. We never were.”

  “Oh.” I suddenly felt breathless. “I’m—I’m really sorry to hear that.”

  “Me too. But that’s life, isn’t it? We all take some wrong turns along the way.” He took a deep breath, and when he looked up a moment later, he was looking right into my eyes. I could almost feel the years slipping away. “Did you mean the things you said in your letter?”

  “Every word, Nick.”

  “Then I have a question for you. I know a lifetime has passed. But I never stopped thinking about you either, and that’s got to mean something. And there has to be a reason that everything has felt different since you walked back into my life.”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I just stared, my heart pounding.

  “So I guess what I came here to ask you is, I mean, maybe it’s a terrible idea . . .” He was blushing now. “But in your letter, you mentioned regrets, and Emily, I don’t want to have any. I don’t want to have to wonder what might have been. So what I’m trying to say is, do you think it would be crazy to see if we could try again?”

  “I don’t think it would be crazy at all.” I paused, thinking of the life that might stretch before us, as wide open and beautiful as one of Ralph Gaertner’s violet sunrises, full of promise and hope. “Would you like to come in?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  * * *

  Three months later

  On the third Friday in February, I woke up to a glorious rainbow stretching across a brilliant dawn, and as I stood on my front porch a few minutes later, stretching for my morning run, I was thinking about how beautiful and surprising the world was. The sky was the same blend of violets and lavenders that my grandfather had rendered so many times, and for a moment, I let myself imagine that I was inside one of his paintings. It was a beautiful place to be.

  As I set out on my run, heading west toward Lake Eola with the rising sun behi
nd me, I thought about how after my grandmother had died last year, Myra had told me that she believed you could see the people you’d lost in the magic of a rainbow. I’d thought that she’d just been trying to comfort me on one of my darkest days and hadn’t meant a word of it. But then my father had died right before Christmas, and as I left the hospital on that terrible morning two months ago, there was a faint rainbow looming to the east. “Dad?” I had whispered, already doubting myself. But from that day on, there had been a part of me that believed.

  This morning, as I ran with the rainbow looming overhead, I thought about how maybe I was seeing my father up there today. Or my mother. Maybe my grandmother and grandfather were together, looking down on me. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light that meant nothing. Still, I felt a sense of peace, and I wondered if my grandfather had been right all along about the way the sky holds a certain kind of magic.

  Nick and I were officially seeing each other now, but we were taking it slow. After all, we couldn’t wipe away the nearly nineteen years that had passed between us, nor could we erase the nearly four hundred miles that separated us now. Nick’s life and business were in Atlanta, and my life was here, in Orlando. I was still freelancing here and there, and although it wasn’t the professional life I dreamed of, I was scraping by. I’d probably move back to Atlanta one day, if Nick wanted me to. We had talked about it a bit, dancing around the topic, and I think we both wanted to be together. Rushing into it didn’t feel smart, but now that my father was gone, there wasn’t much to stay for anymore.

  At the beginning of December, I had introduced Nick to my dad, and they’d liked each other, which meant a lot to me. When I’d visited my father at his bedside the next afternoon, he’d squeezed my hand and said softly, “I’m happy to see you happy. Just don’t let go of the way you’re feeling now, the way you love him.” He’d coughed, long and hard, and I’d ached to take away some of his pain. “Why is it only in the last few months that I’m realizing that family is everything?” he’d asked when he could breathe again. “It has been all along, hasn’t it?”