With my Christmas playlist still streaming on my computer, I look at the holiday cards I’ve amassed over the month, pinned to my corkboard. At the very top of the display, in the center, is a large white-and-gold-accented photo card. “Merry Christmas from the Millers” runs along the top border, above a beautiful family photo. Charlotte, Marco, Alice, George, and Leah are posing in their backyard, with their one-year-old golden retriever puppy. They’re each wearing some sort of a tacky Christmas sweater—this year’s holiday card theme, Charlotte told me.
George is wearing his “cheese” smile. As soon as he sees a camera or hears the word cheese, he gets a tightly pulled, all-teeth-bared grin. The fact that he’s missing a few teeth only adds to the charm. Alice is hugging her sister, Leah, both of them smiling their identical head-tilted-to-the-side closed-mouth smiles. It’s their mother’s standard photograph grin, although Charlotte isn’t wearing hers. Instead, with one arm around Marco’s waist and Marco holding Charlotte by hers, she’s smiling a familiar and heartwarming smile. It’s the kind of smile you can find when you page through her wedding photo album. And Marco’s wearing that same look that he shared with his wife on their wedding day. When I see it, I can’t help but brim with joy and think again about happily ever afters. Some are not like fairy tales. Some are messy and ugly. Some are just plain real life. It’s that resumed-happily-ever-after smile and that promise at the altar of we did and still do that matter.
Charlotte and Marco are still going to marital counseling, but only once a month. Charlotte says it helps remind them that they have to always work for their marriage, even when things are—as they are now—going better than they have in a long time. Also, she says, it’s a great excuse to make a date night of the appointments and get some time away from the kids.
Marco’s started to do more around the house and with the children, showing Charlotte that he’s committed to making her and their family a priority. Work e-mails are checked only once on the weekends, cleaning dishes after dinner is now a joint effort, Marco takes the kids for golf lessons at the club once a week, and Family Friday Nights are mandatory fun nights when each week one child suggests the family activity. They are both equal disciplinarians and shoulders to cry on for their children—a real team effort.
Charlotte refuses to ever wear tracksuits in public unless she’s working out, and she will never again set foot in a coffee shop wearing one. More seriously, she consciously makes a point of showing her love for Marco, whether it’s with a thoughtful text message in the middle of the day, sex on a weekday, a batch of his favorite chocolate-chip-and-walnut cookies, or a Post-it love note stuck to his travel coffee mug (my suggestion). She tanks up his car when she notices it’s running low, and he unexpectedly brings her her favorite flowers. It’s the little things, Charlotte says. It’s the effort.
Among the parenting books stacked atop both their nightstands are self-help and relationship advice books. Charlotte’s taking care of herself. She’s lost a little weight and, more important, she looks refreshed and happy, fulfilled. She started law school this fall, and she’s loving it, even making some friends and reviving the social life she’d lost. She says Alice will probably graduate from college before she will get her juris doctor, but it doesn’t matter. She’s going after her truth, and for that I commend her. Charlotte will always bear the scars of her mistake, but they do not define her. She is not broken.
When I asked Charlotte what Marco thought of her idea of applying to law school, she said he’d asked her if she really wanted to take that challenge on right now. If that wouldn’t bring on more undue stress. Three kids are demanding, no matter the level of help from a spouse. Charlotte told him that, yes, it would be stressful and hard. It’d be hard as hell. She was driven, though. And besides, nothing worth doing is ever easy. When she told Marco her plans, he showed up from work one evening with the paperwork she’d need to apply. Something as bright as that Tiffany-blue bag tells me that Charlotte will be wearing that cap and gown sooner than she thinks.
I move my focus from the Miller family Christmas photo card to the gold ribbon between my fingers. I pull free a length, then snip and wrap it around the rectangular gift. I knot the ribbon at the front, then curl the free ends with a pair of scissors in a fast motion. Perfection.
I fluff the curls into a decorative, wispy ball, then tuck the gift into my tote. I reach for another gift, identical to Marian’s but with its gold bow still intact. A padded, addressed postage-paid envelope rests underneath it. I run my fingers over the address I’ve scribbled onto it. I consider how some numbers are as ingrained in your memory as your birth date. No amount of time or number of following addresses can wipe clean from your memory such pertinent digits.
As I look back up at my collection of holiday cards, my eyes fall to Nina and Griffin’s greeting. The Burkes didn’t opt for the classic family portrait like the Millers. Their card, however, is even more personal and touching than the sweet family-of-three photo that they sent last Christmas. This year Nina’s scanned onto simple white card stock a finger painting that Rylan made—his interpretation of a Christmas tree. It’s a green-and-pink triangle with blue and yellow ribbons and dots of red, and lots of tiny fingerprints that I interpret to be presents dotted about the bottom in a muddy orange-brown hue.
Nina and Griffin are the proudest and happiest parents I’ve ever seen. At two, Rylan is just the rambunctious, joyous toddler you’d imagine. As his godmother, I’ve done my fair share of spoiling. We make sure to see each other as often as possible, and lots of phone calls are made, videos and photos shared. I may not be his aunt in the eyes of the law, as I am no longer Nina’s sister-in-law, but Rylan will always have a special place in my heart; Nina will always be my sister.
Despite Rylan’s condition, he’s a healthy, happy, and apple-of-his-parents’-eye baby boy. Rylan wants for nothing. Nina tells me there are very challenging days when she stops and asks herself how, as a new mom, she’s supposed to handle what she doesn’t know, what she doesn’t understand. Then she says all she has to do is take one look at Rylan, and she realizes that this world is new to both mother and baby. They’re in it together. All that matters is that they finally have their happily ever after.
I hold the wrapped gift in my hands, admiring the perfect crosses and folds of the small bow in the center. I’ve never been prouder of a gift selection or more confident about giving it. Or more confident about whom I was giving it to.
As I look back to the holiday cards, my eyes move, without hesitation or mistake, knowing precisely where to look, to one particular holiday greeting in forest green—a family portrait.
I glance down at the envelope and the address written across it—my old address. Mine and Adam’s.
A year ago Nina told me that Adam was getting married. An elopement. With a woman he’d met at our old breakfast spot, Le Pain Quotidien. She, like him, was eating by herself, and I guess one thing led to another. I didn’t ask Nina for the details, and she didn’t offer them. All I knew was that Adam had met someone—someone who was in her early thirties and wanting children—and had fallen in love. He was happy, and on some white sand beach he promised to have and to hold her, for better or for worse.
It hurt, I won’t lie, but I am happy for him. It was time. It’d been a year since the divorce, and though Adam’s second marriage seemed to happen quick as lightning, who am I to judge? Love can be like that. And besides, Adam’s forty, and he wants a family. And if his wife’s desire to have children was half of what Nina’s was, who could find fault with a quick elopement? This was to be expected. This is what both Adam and I wanted. It’s time to pick up the pieces and carry on.
The last time I saw Adam was about four months ago. I was at a restaurant with Marian, one of our routine girls’ nights out that we’d never missed since I’d moved out. Adam was with his wife. His new, young, beautiful, and very pregnant wife, Bianca.
The sight of him, and then her, was stinging at first
. I just stared in shock across the restaurant. Adam saw me, also wearing a surprised expression. Then the shock kind of melted away. We smiled at each other and waved, and that was enough. Adam’s wife turned in my direction to see if she, too, knew the person on the other end of Adam’s wave. Still waving, still smiling, and with Marian now looking on, Adam leaned toward his wife and whispered something into her ear, and then she, too, smiled and waved. It was a weak and hesitant wave, as was her smile. Awkward. But I just looked to Adam, still smiling, hand in the air in a dying wave, and he gave a small nod. He looked happy. And that made me happy.
It was then that I realized that the happiness I feel for him now that he’s moving on with his life is finally greater than the pain I feel from no longer having him. That’s the healing power of time, I suppose. And Ben and Jerry’s. And Friends. And friends and family. And focusing on, as my father said, burning bright and fearless.
My eyes move from the envelope back to my corkboard, to the holiday greeting in forest green—the holiday greeting sent from the new Brennan family, with a casually dressed and smiling Adam and Bianca on the beach, with their infant daughter in Adam’s arms. The holiday greeting that reminds me we made the right choice.
Nina had asked if it was all right if she gave my address to Adam, that he wanted to send me a Christmas card. I had a sneaking suspicion I’d be getting a Brennan family portrait greeting, like the one I surely did get. I’ve always been a stickler for sending out holiday greeting cards, and, even though my Christmas two years ago was a mess, I still got out my cards—a month late, but they were still sent out. One of those cards had Adam’s name on it, and I did the same the year after and this year, graduating from “Adam Brennan” on the “To” line to “The Brennans.” Adam’s sending me a card was his way of saying he’d gotten mine, he’d appreciated them, and, yes, perhaps it was his way of saying, Thank you. It was a hard choice but the right one. I’ve found my purpose.
When the Brennans’ holiday card arrived in my mailbox, it didn’t sting as I’d thought it would. It was that feeling of greater happiness than pain that saw me through, and the fact that I, too, had found my own purpose at long last.
I decided on watching the Quadrantids meteor shower with my father after the New Year, the Christmas of my divorce. As Dad had promised, the desert night sky was positively forgiving. Not even the full moon could detract from the brilliant light show of the meteor showers.
I also decided to overcome my self-doubt and chase my passion. I finally wrote that novel. It’s not the next great American novel, but it’s real, it’s heartfelt, it’s mine. And it’s great enough to have landed me a two-book deal (and a very generous advance—those helpful additional funds). Writing a novel was something I’d always wanted to do, and so one night I sat down, dug deep, and I started to write. I made the time, I ignored the insecurities, and I wrote with abandon. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote until, nearly a year later, I had completed my first novel, The Gravity of Love. A novel about a woman trying to find her place after a failed marriage. Seeking answers to questions she never thought she’d have to face. Trying to fly when she’s in free fall.
When I finished, I told Nina what I’d done and told her the synopsis, wondering if she maybe wanted to give it a read, tell me what she thought. She was no longer in the publishing business, Rylan her full-time focus, but her experience and sharp eye as an editor could give me some insight on improvements. She read it, and when she told me she’d found an acquisitions editor at her house to buy it I thought she was joking. That was impossible. Yes, I believed in my work, my characters, my story, but a publishable novel? Nina said “nepotism” may have gotten my foot in the door, but it was the honest and resonating story that got me the publishing contract.
As soon as my advance came in and I’d worked through my budget, I gave my notice at Copper. I’d been given the chance to follow my dreams, and it was about time I started chasing them, started making them a reality.
The wrapped gift on my desk, just like the one for Marian snug in my tote, is a brand-new, soon-to-be-released paperback copy of my first novel. There’s a hot pink Post-it on the inside of this copy. “As promised, Halley,” it reads. I slip the book into the envelope addressed to Adam Brennan, grab my tote and jacket, and make my way to the front door.
On my drive to meet Marian and Cole at an upscale sushi restaurant that’s just opened, which Marian says “has like a two-month waiting list!” I swing by the nearest mailbox.
“Here goes,” I say.
I kiss the envelope before dropping it into the big blue abyss. I have a flashback to the last time I slipped something I had published in the mail for Adam, and I can’t help but squint out a smile at how peculiar life is. How full circle yet how utterly chaotic it is.
Nina once asked me, after reading my novel, how I was handling the divorce. She asked if my novel writing was my way of trying to heal, trying to start fresh, that new beginning. The novel’s storyline is clearly inspired by what Adam and I went through for love. For our brand of love. I told her that my divorce, just like my marriage, was a chapter in my life. Adam and I, I had come to learn and accept, were always supposed to be each other’s chapters—a very significant and special relationship in each other’s lives. We were not each other’s entire story, not each other’s life, not each other’s happily ever after. And that was perfectly all right.
No, our chapter was about learning to find oneself. Learning how to live and love honestly, and that life is anything but fair. Learning that to love sometimes means loving a different way than you planned. That it sometimes means for only a while. That sometimes love means forgiving and letting go. That sometimes love really hurts. Some loves are not eternal, and some change. There are all kinds of happily ever afters, any writer knows. Not every love is the “to have and to hold” kind, not every plan one to be followed through on, not every purpose clear. Happiness means something different for everyone. It’s having that baby, at any cost, however long the wait, no matter the challenges. It’s fighting for your marriage and doing what’s hard, even when the line that’s been crossed seems fatal. It’s putting yourself out there and risking heartache, if only for a second chance. It’s that comet shooting across the sky, reminding you to burn bright.
Not every story is a fairy tale, and not every story has a happily ever after. But some do. And many have their own versions of happily ever after, their own brands of love, their own truths. And I know, as I scan the crowded sushi restaurant, my first novel tucked proudly in my tote, my giddier-than-usual best friend waving to me wildly, that I have found mine.
Acknowledgments
Where do I start? I suppose with the woman who made Everything the Heart Wants happen sooner rather than later, Kelli Martin—editor extraordinaire, warm heart, kind soul, and my drink of no-freakout-water. Kelli, I’m still pinching myself that you found that bright cherry-red cover out of nowhere, read and fell in love with Gracie and Juliette’s story, and decided little ol’ me needed to join the Lake Union family. You have opened wide the doors and did the impossible: you made writing even more fun. Thank you for believing in me and, of course, for keeping in check my freakouts.
Many thanks to my wonderful developmental editor, Lindsay. We were peas in a pod on this novel. I had so much fun shaping this story with you. Let’s do it again!
Thank you to Sadie, Stacy, and the entire editing team. It’s tough work sifting through one word after another, but your efforts have helped make this a novel one of which I am so very proud. (Look, no annoying preposition ending!)
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who worked on this novel with me, from Women, who inspired and informed the story, to the teams of designers, editors, and everyone who has welcomed me and my life’s passions into the Lake Union family and helped get my books into readers’ hands.
Much gratitude to my dear friends and family for being in my life and adding sparkle to it. For supporting and loving me. For celebrating m
y wins and encouraging me during the not-quite-wins. You mean the universe to me.
Last, and never least, HUUUGE thanks to my husband, Christian. I may be a writer, but words still cannot express how much I love you and how thankful and happy I am to be your partner. To the edge of our solar system and back, ich liebe dich.
About the Author
Savannah Page is the author of Everything the Heart Wants, A Sister’s Place, and the When Girlfriends series. Sprinkled with drama and humor, her women’s fiction celebrates friendship, love, and life. A native Southern Californian, Savannah lives in Berlin, Germany, with her husband, their goldendoodle, and her collection of books. Readers can visit her at www.SavannahPage.com.
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