The Look of Love: A Novel

by Sarah Jio

  She climbs onto the bed and straddles his limp body. “Yes, we had it good in that department. Oh, honey, we had it so good. But here’s what you’re forgetting.” She looks deep into his eyes. She wants to be sure he sees her, feels her, hears everything she has to say. “Our love is deeper than physical. Don’t you see that? Don’t you know that? You must know that.”

  A tear streams down his handsome face, and she flicks it away with her finger, then reaches for his hands. Weaving her fingers into his, she grins mischievously. “Your hands still work, don’t they?”

  He nods, looking up at her through his tears. “You’d really want to be with me for the rest of my life? You really think you could be truly happy?”

  “Baby,” Katie says, leaning closer to him, “I wouldn’t be happy with anyone but you.” She kisses his lips and then nestles beside him in the bed. “Tell me you’re not giving up on our love.”

  He turns to face her again. “Oh, Katie,” he cries. “Forgive me. I was just so afraid.”

  “You don’t have to be anymore,” she says, pressing her nose against his. “I’m here. I’m never going. I’ll always love you. Even if your face was maimed, or if you developed a case of late-in-life Tourette’s and cursed at me every five minutes.” She shakes her head and points to his chest. “It’s what’s in here that I love. It’s you.” She wipes a tear from her eye. “Always.”

  “Always,” Josh says, pressing his cheek against her shoulder. “Always.”

  I yawn and drop my gaze to the next line. Just one more to go and then this strange journey is complete. Well, complete is hardly the word. My own story has no ending. I think of Cam, and my heart flutters. I collect myself quickly. He isn’t the one. If he were, it would have worked out. If he were, he would be here.

  I think of Lo instead and smile to myself, before writing “Ludus” on the line above her name. Oh, the game of love. If anyone can play it and keep the upper hand, it is Lo. But will she ever be happy? I think about her and Grant now. Though I saw the look of hesitation in her eyes earlier at the flower shop, they are supposed to be on a plane bound for Paris now. Or are they? I turn to the page and begin writing.

  220 Boat Street #2

  Lo opens her eyes before sunrise and reaches for her phone, as she always does when she wakes up. She scrolls through the list of texts that have popped in overnight and in the wee hours of the morning from the various men in her life. Conor, the surgeon. Jake, the sommelier. Ryan, the Australian with green eyes and stubble on his chin. They know she’s off the market, and yet they continue to reach out.

  And then there’s Grant. They’re supposed to fly out this morning for Paris. First class and a pair of champagne flutes.

  She sits up in bed and peers out the porthole window in her bedroom. The lake is gray and choppy, and she can feel her houseboat swaying ever so slightly in the wind. Didn’t she hear something on TV last night about the possibility of a Christmas Day windstorm? She knows she should get up and shower and pack for Paris. Grant will be here to pick her up soon. But instead, she settles back in bed and lets her head sink deeper into her pillow. She thinks about her life, and men. And she realizes there has never not been a man in her life. She has always had someone. But why? What’s wrong with being alone?

  Lo puts on her robe and climbs down the ladder to her living room. She knows the answer, but she’s afraid to admit it. So she makes a cup of coffee instead and sinks into her couch, where she scrolls through her texts. Conor wants to see her tomorrow night. Jake can’t stop thinking about her, still, even after months since they dated. And Grant says he’ll be over in two hours to pick her up. Her heart lurches in her chest.

  She sets her coffee cup down and picks up her phone. There’s momentum building inside her, and her heart beats faster as she dials Grant’s number. He’s broken her heart. He’s broken her. For the first time ever, she was willing to give herself to a man completely—body, mind, soul. But, most telling, heart. And he waffled. He was dishonest about his intentions, about his situation at home. He carried on with Lo and kept playing house with someone else, with no real intention of making any changes. Even in the weeks following Katie’s wedding, when his wife combed through phone records and exposed her husband’s affair with Lo, Grant still did not leave, or formulate any plan or exit strategy. Instead he smoothed things over at home and begged Lo for more time.

  But she doesn’t want to give him any more time. He’s taken so much already and made promises she knows he won’t keep. And now Lo has an angry woman to deal with. She received a nasty e-mail just this morning from Grant’s wife, Jennifer. The things she wrote hurt, yes, but they’re true. And Lo might have written the same words had she been in Jennifer’s shoes.

  This has to end.

  “Hi, baby,” he says, picking up after one ring. “Ready for Paris?”

  “Hi,” she says vacantly. “I’m so sorry, Grant. I don’t think I can go.”

  “What do you mean?” he says. “I don’t understand.”

  Lo takes a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about this so much,” she says. “And, Grant, what we had was real, and true. I will always believe that. But in the end, it . . . just wasn’t meant to be.”

  He’s quiet on the other end of the phone. She knows she has stunned him. “And I realized something this morning,” she continues. “Something I’ve been trying to ignore about myself for a long time.”

  “Baby,” Grant says, pleading, “what are you talking about?”

  She doesn’t want him to call her baby. Not now, not when he probably calls his wife that too. While she used to love hearing the word cross his lips, now it sounds so cheap, so generic. “Grant,” she continues, “all this time, with you, and with other men in my past, I’ve only wanted to have the emptiness in me filled. I thought men could do that for me. But here’s the crazy thing: I could have filled that space myself a long time ago. I just didn’t know it.”

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “Was it something I said? Did? Do you want me to leave my wife? Is that what this is all about? Because I told her this morning that we need to talk. I told her I am unhappy and that we need to figure some things out. It’s my process. My process for coming to you.”

  “Your process?” Lo says with a laugh. “Grant, if you were coming to me, you would have been here months ago.”

  He’s silent.

  “Listen,” she continues. “Go to Paris. Meet a French girl. Drink wine. Eat the most glorious food. Stay out late. Better yet, take your wife.”

  “But I want to do all that with you,” he says, injured.

  “I can’t,” she says. “Not anymore. I don’t deserve to find love, real love, until I can learn to love myself a bit more.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “I’m almost thirty years old, and I’ve never really been alone. There’s something not quite right about that.” She pauses for a long moment. Tears sting her eyes. “Good-bye, Grant.” She doesn’t wait for his response before ending the call.

  The wind picks up that afternoon, and when the lights flicker that evening and eventually go out, Lo lights candles in her houseboat. She sits in the semidarkness and considers calling Ryan or Jake or maybe even Conor. She could call any of them, really, and they’d be on her doorstep within the hour, with a bottle of wine and arms to fall into. They would help her pass the time, help her not feel alone. Band-Aids for her emptiness. Well, mandaids. She smiles to herself, then shakes her head with resolve. Men can’t fill the hole in her heart. Only she can do that.

  She turns her phone off and tucks it in the kitchen drawer. She will pour a glass of wine, open her laptop, and start writing that memoir Jane always said she should write. Tonight she will not be alone. And she isn’t. She has herself.

  Nat King Cole’s voice seeps through the speakers of her radio. Have yourself a merry little Christmas. She glances at the lonely Christmas tree in the corner
of the room, the one she hasn’t had time to decorate. A box of ornaments from her grandmother’s estate sits beneath, and Lo kneels beside it. She reaches inside and unwraps a star-shaped ornament she remembers from childhood. She touches the words her grandmother painted on the edge: “Christmas 1984.”

  She stands up and hangs the little star on a branch in front of her.

  Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

  Yes. She will.

  Three days have passed when Lo gets the call. She has just stepped out of the shower when she hears her phone ringing from the kitchen. Normally she’d wait, just let it go to voice mail. Whoever’s calling can be called back. But in the back of her mind, she’ll admit, she wonders if it could be Grant calling from Paris. He’s been silent for three long days. And although she said her good-byes, love lingers. And perhaps it always will.

  She wraps a towel around herself and runs to the kitchen, hair dripping along the wood floors.

  “Hello?”

  “Lo?”

  “Yes, this is.”

  “Lo, this is John, Grant’s best friend.”

  Her heart begins to beat faster. She met John once, just briefly. He’s the only person from Grant’s life she ever formally met. “John, yes, hi,” she says, mind racing.

  “I’m so very sorry to call you like this, with this news.” His voice falters a bit. “But I know he’d want you to know. I know he’d want me to call you.”

  She clutches the phone tightly. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  “Lo, Grant died.”

  “He . . . what?” She’s breathless. Her mouth feels dry.

  “We just found out. He went out for a meal in Paris and died at the restaurant. He was alone. It was an aneurysm. There wasn’t anything that could have been done. It was his time.”

  “No,” Lo cries, falling to her knees. “No.”

  “I’m so very sorry.” He pauses for a long moment. “I wanted to be sure you knew about the funeral. The service will be tomorrow afternoon, at Saint Luke’s.” There’s another long silence. “You know he loved you, don’t you? He loved you so much. I’ve never seen a man more in love.”

  Lo walks into the church in a black dress and dark sunglasses and inconspicuously files into a back pew. She doesn’t want to be seen. And a part of her knows she doesn’t deserve to be seen. She was in the shadows of Grant’s life when he was living, and in the shadows she remains in death. To Grant’s friends and family, she is a blip on the timeline of his life. To his wife, a fly she’d probably like to swat away. But to Lo, Grant was the man who taught her to love wholly and completely. And even though their story was ill-timed, fraught with deception and pain, and despite the fact that she feels great sorrow for the pain she’s caused his wife, Lo does not regret loving Grant. Not ever. Remorse and regret are two very different things.

  A man takes to the piano at the front of the church and begins to play, just as the funeral procession begins. The minister walks up the aisle first, and then the casket, carried by John and Grant’s three brothers. Tears spill from Lo’s eyes then. She can no longer contain them, or her sadness. In that wooden box is the man she loved with all her heart. A man she might always love.

  Jennifer walks behind her husband’s casket. She looks beautiful in her long-sleeved black dress. The handkerchief slips from Lo’s hand as she passes, and Jennifer stops to pick it up, then turns to face her. The two women’s eyes meet.

  In that moment, Lo feels panic wash over her. She feels shame. She feels sorely out of place and wonders if she should leave. Perhaps it was the wrong decision to come. She does not belong here. And her presence is only adding more pain. But just before she stands to depart, Jennifer places the handkerchief in the pocket of Lo’s coat, then extends her hand.

  Lo weeps as she stands and takes it.

  “Walk with me,” Jennifer says calmly, through tear-filled eyes.

  Lo nods, astonished.

  “Grant loved you,” she whispers. “I saw it in his eyes that day at the wedding.”

  “I, I’m—” Lo tries to whisper her apologies. She tries to think of something to say in this moment, this profound moment.

  “He’d want you to stand with me,” Jennifer says, nodding. “He’d want me to forgive you, and him. And that’s a gift I can give him today.”

  The two women walk together behind the casket, both with hearts aching, with love for a man they will never see again. And yet, Jennifer’s love for her husband is bigger than the anger and hurt, the broken promises, the deception that rattled her world. Her love is not prideful or self-serving. In the end, it’s love.

  Just love.

  Chapter 27

  Christmas Day

  I have to hurry. It’s late in the afternoon, and it won’t be long before sunset, before the end of my journey, my year. Just one more task lies ahead, the biggest one of all.

  I tuck the flower arrangement for Mary in the passenger seat of my car—a square vase packed tightly with pale green blooms—and drive to the hospital.

  The elevator deposits me on the fifth floor, Labor and Delivery.

  “Hi,” I say, out of breath, to the nurse at the desk. “I’m Jane Williams. I’m here for the birth of my friend Mary’s baby. She’s expecting me.”

  The nurse lowers her glasses on her nose and scrolls through a screen on her computer. “Yes, I have your name down,” she finally says. “She’s in room 523. She’s not far from delivering now. You’re just in time.”

  I hurry down the hallway and knock when I reach her door, then poke my head in. “Mary, it’s Jane. I’m here!”

  “Come in,” Mary says, and I find her sitting up in bed, legs parted, about to endure another contraction. Luca clutches her hand, invested in every cry, every push, every word from the doctor, who is at Mary’s feet.

  “Just one more push and you’ll meet your little girl,” he says. Mary obeys, and a moment later, the room is greeted with the high-pitched cry of new life.

  I set the flowers down on a side table and watch as a nurse gives the baby a quick bath before swaddling her in a blanket, then handing her to Luca, who proudly tucks her in Mary’s arms.

  “Jane,” Mary says, beaming. “Come meet her.”

  I walk toward the bed, with shaking hands and a heart that booms in my chest.

  “She’s beautiful,” I say, swallowing hard.

  “Look, she has green eyes like you.” Mary wipes away a tear. “Grace. I’m going to call her Grace.”

  “A beautiful name,” I say.

  “Would you like to hold her, Jane?”

  “Yes,” I reply, unable to prevent a tear from spilling out onto my cheek as I take the baby into my arms. I touch her cheek lightly, and I feel it then, a warmth that flows through me. A transfer of energy from one soul to another. It has happened.

  It is done.

  Chapter 28

  January 19, 2014

  January tiptoed in quietly. On New Year’s Eve, Jane sat in front of the TV, watching the ball drop in New York City with Sam, thinking about the year before, when she’d spent a life-changing evening shivering on a balcony with Cam.

  Cam . . . Jane said her good-byes, and yet Colette’s vision of the two of them lingers. She completed her journey, fulfilled the prophecies of the gift, and even Dr. Heller agrees that surgery is no longer needed and might not have ever been. Although her brain scans continue to be puzzling, Dr. Heller concedes that some things may defy medical explanation. Jane’s work is done, her health intact. And yet, her heart feels . . . empty.

  Hawaii was nice, Jane thinks as the plane begins its descent into Seattle. A proper girls’ getaway, with plenty of sun, sand, and booze. Mary is brave to take an infant on a plane, but Grace has been the perfect travel companion. She’s sleeping soundly in Mary’s arms when Jane glances at the two of them across the aisl
e. Katie and Lo are asleep in the seats on either side of her. Lo’s black silk eye mask looks lopsided with her face pressed up against the side of the seat. Katie is snoring. She got wind of Mary and Luca’s situation and was able to help iron out his immigration issues from Hawaii, pulling a few strings with the right judge in Seattle, even, and to Mary’s delight, it looked like he would soon be a permanent resident of Seattle, and employed. Matthew put the word out in his architectural circles about Luca, who’d recently started his own construction company, and he’s apparently been flooded with calls.

  As the plane touches down, Jane considers the past year, all of its ups and downs. Her journey, successfully completed; the handoff of her gift to little Grace; reuniting with her father, and having brunch with him and Flynn on New Year’s Day; and yet, there’s still a big gaping hole. Love.

  She thinks of that as they walk to baggage claim and stand beside the carousel, waiting for their suitcases, which they retrieve and wheel outside. Katie’s father-in-law is in town, and he pulls up with Josh in their new handicap-accessible van. The house she was intending to sell in his absence has been retrofitted with a ramp to the front door, and the lower-floor guest bedroom is now the master. She waves and runs to the van. Lo boards a shuttle to the airport parking lot to retrieve her car. Luca drives up next and jumps out of the car to handle Mary’s luggage while she buckles the baby into her car seat.

  And then Jane is . . . alone. She stands on the curb and hails a cab. The Seattle air is frigid, and she smiles to think that she can still feel sand between her toes.

  “Where to, miss?” the driver asks. “Pike Place,” she says. “I live on Pike.”

  The driver nods and turns out onto the road. Jane thinks of Cam then, how they parted. Tears sting her eyes, and she fights them back before they can spill out onto her cheeks. She had every right to be angry. He deceived her, after all.