Harry returned with two large paper bags. Her mom slid off the couch and knelt on the floor, moving the checkerboard and poinsettia aside, and then helped Harry unpack the small white cartons and arranged them on the coffee table. We’re eating here? Olive thought, but Christopher was already opening a pair of chopsticks, and Verona was situating herself cross-legged beside him on the floor. “Ooh, beef and pea pods,” Verona said, as she untucked the flaps of the carton closest to her. Olive sat down next to her mom. It was like the nineties again with flimsy paper plates and reindeer napkins and greasy food and companionable silence and stocking feet and inexplicable Christmas cheer. But her dad wasn’t here. And Phil wasn’t here, either, and Olive wasn’t going to let herself be tricked into enjoying herself.
“Is Aunt Laurel coming over tomorrow?” Christopher asked around a mouthful of fried rice.
“No, she’s working,” their mom said. “We’re going to exchange gifts on New Year’s Day instead.” Olive’s heart flipped over at the mention of the New Year. “Harry and I are probably just going to sleep in, make a big brunch, maybe catch a matinee. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
“Thanks,” Verona said. “We wouldn’t miss it for the world. We won’t be able to stay very long though because my parents are flying in, and we’re having a little dinner for them at our place.”
“Oh, how nice,” Olive’s mom said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Olive could see her mom watching her with great tenderness, and then she tucked a strand of Olive’s hair behind her ear. She murmured, “I hate to see you so sad, honey.”
Harry, with his preternatural hearing, looked up from a losing battle with his chow mein. He really should be eating it with a fork, Olive thought. She waited for him to say something cheesy and meaningless. Instead, he stared at her with a sad little smile of understanding.
“Hey, there are only four fortune cookies in here,” Verona said, holding up a little plastic bag. “We’re short one.”
“That’s okay. I don’t want one,” Olive said. She backed up from the table and pulled her knees to her chest.
“No, no. You take it. I don’t need one,” Harry said. “I’m the luckiest man alive. I have all the good fortune I’ll ever need.” He patted Olive’s mom’s shoulder, and she smiled back at him.
Christopher turned to Olive and pretended to stick his finger down his throat.
Olive’s mom cracked open her cookie and read aloud, “Those who have love have wealth beyond measure.”
“Aw,” Verona said.
Christopher rolled his eyes and then pulled the folded slip out of his broken cookie half. “He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”
“Ah, that’s a good one for you.” Verona chuckled, and Olive’s mom unsuccessfully tried to hide a smile.
“Ha, ha. Very funny,” Christopher said. “What does yours say, Rona?”
Verona held up her tiny white slip of paper and read dramatically, “Get ready! Good fortune awaits you. Lucky numbers: five, seventeen, thirty-three, sixty.” She chewed her cookie. “I guess I’d better go buy a lottery ticket. Olive? What does your fortune say?”
The cookie still lay in front of Olive untouched. She didn’t want to open it. What good were fate and fortune anyway? If there was some sort of plan she was supposed to follow, it was unreadable to her and impossible to stick to. She was tired of fate, which was probably just a made-up concept invented by humans to feel like something or someone was guiding them anyway. God, spirits, cookies, whatever. She was so sick of buying into the idea that there was actually meaning behind any of this. It was just her, blind and alone, making a mess of her life on her own, thank you very much.
“I don’t want it,” she said, and hugged her knees tighter.
“Come on. It’s supposed to be fun,” Christopher said. He snatched her cookie away before she could stop him. His eyes scanned it a couple of times before he read it aloud. “Many a false step is made by standing still.”
Was that the best the universe could do? Olive raged silently in her head. It was a slap in the face, really. What a cop-out. What a generic piece of crap. And yet her face was heating up and her eyes were starting to sting.
“I’m sorry. I need a minute,” she whispered, and fled to the kitchen.
The kitchen was clean and bare. The only clue that it was Christmas Eve was a tin of cookies on the marble countertop. She leaned her forehead against the fridge door and tried to quell the flood of overwhelming sorrow and helplessness that was threatening to rise up and drown her.
Her eyes flickered downward, and she noticed a photo on the fridge. She plucked it from its magnet to get a closer look. It was Phil and Harry playing golf in St. Lucia. Phil, radiant and athletic, good-naturedly enduring the sweaty arm Harry had slung around his neck.
The kitchen door swung open behind her. She didn’t look up from the photo.
“You know I’m not one to meddle,” Christopher started, “or talk about feelings, for that matter. And I don’t know why your relationship ended, but it’s obvious you’re still in love with Phil. And if I knew the guy at all—which I think I did—he’s still probably very much in love with you. That kind of love just doesn’t go away because of some stupid fight.”
“It was more than a fight. I ruined it. He doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore.” Olive returned the photo to the fridge and turned to face Christopher.
“Now would be a good time,” he muttered under his breath.
“A good time for what?” she returned angrily.
“A good time to say when, Olive. Dad was right. You don’t know when to say when. When to admit you’re wrong. When to really lay it all on the line and take a chance.”
“You don’t know that! You don’t know how I’ve tried!” she cried. “I admitted I was wrong. I apologized. I’ve tried really hard to make things right.”
“Well, you obviously haven’t tried hard enough.”
She stood there seething in the frustratingly calm, quiet kitchen. Christopher stared her down. They had the same eyes, she knew. The same chocolate brown eyes as their dad, who could laugh with his eyes one minute and shoot daggers out of them the next. She remembered Phil’s admission—that he had asked for her dad’s blessing before his death. She remembered the crazy thought she had had kayaking—that this whole year was somehow her dad’s doing. Maybe it was his way of watching out for her and saving her from herself.
It galled her to admit it, but for once, her brother was right. She hadn’t tried hard enough; she had let Phil walk away from her twice. She had been too reserved, too passive, believing she deserved whatever punishment was coming to her for a mistake she had made in a parallel year. But she had been punishing herself all along. When would she have fully atoned for her transgressions? When would her conscience be finally clean? She had done the right thing this year, and that meant something. She needed Phil to forgive her. She needed to forgive herself.
She whirled away from Christopher and flung open the kitchen cabinet where her mom always kept a calendar hung. It was the same tropical beaches calendar she had given Olive as a Christmas present last year, but she hardly noticed. Her eyes narrowed in on the last week of December. Seven days. Seven days until the new year. Sweat dribbled down the back of her neck, and her hand trembled as she gripped the corner of the cabinet door.
Phil Russell. She saw his beautiful face; his strong, brown hands; the solid line of his shoulders, almost as if he were standing before her. He was a good, honest man. He saw positive qualities in people that others overlooked. He had helped her through one of the most difficult periods in her life. He had given her the kind of love that made her feel protected and cherished. He made her want to be a better person.
The cabinet door slammed shut, snapping her out of her reverie. Her conviction and clarity of purpose were su
ddenly, blindingly restored. She loved him, and she was going to do everything she could to get him back. She hadn’t come this far just to walk away. He was the love of her life, dammit. The man she wanted to marry. The world had reversed its orbit to bring them back together, for Pete’s sake, and she wasn’t going down without a fight. Fate could only do so much; the rest was up to her.
Chapter 23
The Russell farmhouse had never looked prettier than it did that Christmas Day. Crisp, virgin snow blanketed the hills, capped the trees, and concealed the discarded car parts and broken flowerpots that normally littered the landscape.
With trepidation, Olive surveyed the scene from her idling SUV. The driveway was lined with minivans and sporty station wagons—the vehicles of Phil’s aunts and uncles—but his old Mercedes wasn’t among them. Perhaps he was parked around back by the dilapidated barn. Perhaps he wasn’t even here.
She turned off the engine and trudged through the snow to the house. Despite the cold, it felt unbearably warm inside her down-filled jacket.
She didn’t allow herself to pause before knocking on the side door, which was the entrance everyone except salespeople and Jehovah’s Witnesses knew to use. Inside, she could hear loud, happy voices. Minutes seemed to pass, and then abruptly, the door was thrown open by a blond girl in a red dress with a taffeta skirt. She was Phil’s seven-year-old cousin, Leah, who was a particular favorite of his.
“Hi!” Leah exclaimed brightly, swishing her skirt from side to side.
“Merry Christmas, Leah!” Olive remembered how Phil had bought sidewalk chalk for Leah two Easters ago and the three of them had knelt on the asphalt driveway drawing rabbits, eggs, and rainbows. I love you, Olive, Phil had chalked inside a lopsided pink heart, and Leah had giggled and then pouted until Phil had drawn a heart for her, too.
Olive could hear scrabbling claws trying to find purchase on the linoleum, and suddenly a brown blur skidded across the kitchen to her and jumped at her legs.
“Hi, Cashew,” she said, crouching down and letting him lick her cheek. “Good boy, good boy,” she murmured. His tiny body was so warm and compact, so energetic, so affectionate. He was a bundle of pure love, gift-wrapped in fur. She wanted to scoop him up and hold him to her chest and never let him go. Leah squatted down, too, and started scratching his back. Cashew flopped to the floor and squirmed from side to side, giving her easier access to his tummy.
“Silly dog,” Leah pronounced. She turned and shouted into the kitchen, “Aunt Carol, Phil’s girlfriend is here!”
Olive couldn’t help feeling a tinge of pleasure at being called that, even though she knew a seven-year-old would not understand the abstract concept of a breakup. She patted Cashew’s rump and then leaned through the doorway, hoping to catch a glimpse of Phil, but all she could see was a group of women clustered around the kitchen table.
She hadn’t anticipated an audience. As she’d lain awake last night envisioning how their reunion would transpire, she had imagined a string of scenarios—Phil slamming the door in her face, Phil sweeping her into his arms, Phil coldly asking her to leave, Phil bending down on one knee. The closer her brain had fluttered toward sleep, the stranger the scenarios had become. Standing on the frozen surface of the lake, the ice cracking and popping all around her, she had reached out her hand for his and waited to see if he would save her.
Phil’s mom broke away from the cluster. She was a petite woman with Phil’s thick, brown hair, but streaked with gray. Her apron had a row of poinsettias embroidered across the bosom. The expression she wore was often guarded and unfriendly, the toughened façade of someone whom life hadn’t handled with care. At times, Olive could glimpse Carol’s stark, unadorned beauty, the stunner she must have been in her twenties. At the present, however, she was studying Olive with the look mothers reserved for people who had hurt their children.
“Oh, Olive,” Carol said, and her voice sounded more sad than angry. “I suppose you’re looking for Phil.”
“Is he here?”
“No, you just missed him. He said he was going for a walk along the lake. He didn’t say which lake; he didn’t say for how long.” There was a silent threat in her brown eyes.
“Thank you,” Olive said. There was so much more she wanted to say to her. You don’t know me like you think you do. I love your son just as much as you do, and I only want to make him happy. I’m never going to hurt him again. But promises like these had been made to Carol before, and she had no reason to trust them now. She wore her apron like a coat of armor. “Have a nice Christmas.”
Olive hurried back to her SUV so quickly that she almost fell in the snow.
He was at Lake Mendota, of course. On the lakeshore path. It was the place he went to clear his head and the site of so many of their happy memories together. Bike rides; long walks; stolen kisses in the woods; talks about their future careers, their parents, the afterlife. After their first serious argument—on a Sunday afternoon in early spring, she remembered, but not what the fight was about—they had angrily parted ways only to find each other an hour later, brooding on the same pier. They had instantly made up.
She was certain he was at the lake now, but it was difficult to rein in her hopes that he was there for her: thinking about their relationship, missing her, maybe even wishing she would find him. She tried to remind herself that it had been almost a month and a half since he’d left her alone outside the hospital, and since then, he hadn’t returned any of her calls or tried to see her. But still—still there was this, Phil at the lake on Christmas Day, and she couldn’t drive back into the city fast enough.
She had the radio tuned to the only station that refused to play Christmas carols during the holiday season. For the first part of her drive, the music had fallen on deaf ears, but ironically, as she drove to the University of Wisconsin campus, Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” came on and caught Olive’s attention. If I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I’d take back those words that hurt you and you’d stay.
“Oh, Cher, you make it sound so easy,” Olive said aloud. She sang the rest of the lyrics at the top of her lungs.
With the dorms closed for winter break, no one had cleared the snow from the sidewalks or parking lots, but Olive’s SUV had no trouble plowing over the foot and a half of untouched snow. She parked in the lot next to the old cream-brick dormitory where she had spent her first year of college; hers was the only vehicle. If he was here . . . she guessed that Phil had parked at the Union instead.
The snow crunched underfoot. She would’ve found the shushing rhythm of her footfalls peaceful had she not suddenly become so anxious to find Phil and confirm the hunch she was aching to believe. What if they missed each other, somehow circumventing one another like true star-crossed lovers? What if he had already headed back home? What if he had never been here at all? The serendipitous prospect of their meeting each other here seemed tenuous at best.
It was impossible to run in the deep snow, so she half walked, half hurdled over the drifts as fast as she could. The docks were packed away for the winter, and the frozen lake looked oddly forlorn without these branching arms. The wind sent the powdery snow dancing in swirling patterns across the dull gray surface of the lake. Dark circles marred the ice like pockmarks, where ice fishermen had drilled.
Olive tried to imagine how Phil would view this landscape. Would it remind him of another frozen lake and how he had proposed to her beside it? Would he remember how it looked in fairer weather, when they had sat on the docks together and watched the sun set? Or would it appear to him a bleak backdrop with all meaning drained from it? Was he here, then, to grieve? The last thought made her shudder, and she struck it from her mind.
She came to a fork in the path. Should she go left toward Picnic Point or right toward the Union, where they had fed ducks? She lingered uncertainly at the junction, facing the open expanse of silvery ice and sky, letting th
e stillness of the landscape seep through her many layers of clothing, into her bones.
A loud crack suddenly exploded in the quiet of the abandoned path. A fallen tree? Breaking ice? It was probably just wishful thinking, but it had sounded almost like a golf club connecting with a ball. She remained stationary, watching her puffs of warm breath evaporate in the frosty air. Crack! The earsplitting noise ricocheted off the trees. She strained her ears, trying to determine which direction the sound had come from. It was close by.
She whirled to the left, nearly losing her balance. About forty feet away, a stone bench nestled among the naked trees, and beyond that, a small clearing revealed a view of the lake. As she approached, she caught the dark shape of someone standing there. She held her breath and continued walking, and when Phil’s solemn profile came into focus, it no longer seemed necessary to breathe.
He’s here, he’s here, he’s here, she repeated silently to herself in an effort to convince her brain of what her eyes were seeing. She had been right about this much. He stood in his golf stance with his head down. While she watched, he twisted his body gracefully and then struck the ball with vicious force. Crack! The little white ball sailed over the lake, skittering onto the hard surface at least two hundred yards away.
Phil had either heard her approach or sensed her presence because he suddenly turned his head. He blinked against the glare of the snow and held up his hand to his forehead like a visor. There was a long pause. “Olive?”
“Phil.” She slipped through the trees, feeling unaccountably shy.
Here was the moment she had been waiting for, but it was hard to live up to the fearlessness and passion of her dream self. It was easier to fight everyone else’s battles; it was much harder to feel bold in the face of such painful rejection. To act bravely when her own heart was at stake.
The Repeat Year Page 31
