By Proxy(77)

For the first time since he left, she didn’t cry as she sorted through their memories. She still wasn’t sure of herself, but at least her eyes weren’t burning with tears on cue. She thought of Maggie’s words. Why wouldn’t she just go to Chicago? Why couldn’t she just go? Was it because she was scared? She swallowed as she evaluated these questions and realized Maggie’s words held truth. While she was here in Great Falls her mother had succumbed to cancer. Lord only knows what could happen if she went as far as Chicago.

Even as she articulated these thoughts to herself, she knew they didn’t really make sense. Staying in Gardiner wasn’t going to prevent her father or the boys from getting sick or hurt. Sam said Gardiner was where she went to “hide her head in the sand” and “give up.” She frowned, walking even more briskly.

How come his words about giving up and selling out haunted her so much? Had she given up? Had she sold out? Her mother had hidden her illness from Jenny specifically so she would stay in Great Falls and make a life for herself there, but in the end she’d turned her back on that life.

Suddenly, Jenny saw the whole picture and she gasped in realization, stopping in her tracks: Sam and Maggie are right. I went home to care for Mamma, but I stayed home out of fear. She had given up on her dreams of a life in Great Falls. Grudgingly, Jenny realized Maggie was right about something else, too: Jenny was holding on to her brothers and father too tightly even now. She was scared to leave.

So, was that the real reason she didn’t go to Chicago with Sam? Fear of leaving her family? She started walking again, still processing her feelings.

“No!” she exclaimed aloud. She bristled against the insinuation that fear was totally immobilizing her. She bristled against the weakness of it. Family is important, for heaven’s sake! And besides, she had a life in Gardiner: her job, her church, her apartment, her friends.

However, the shift in her clarity made her justifications feel like excuses. The weakness she so resented became blaring in her growing self-awareness: You could have left your job, your church, your apartment and your friends, Jenny. You could have left them all behind for Sam.

Then she pictured the faces of her father and brothers in her mind, and like a punch in the gut, she felt the strength of her fear. She furrowed her brow, walking so fast now the cold air burned her lungs and her hands sweated in her mittens, even though it was only twenty-three degrees.

I’m not weak! I’m not the sort of person who lets fear hold dominion over her life!

A small, soft voice in her head answered back, But you did. You pushed him away because you were scared to leave Gardiner.

But staying in Gardiner kept her heart safe, didn’t it? Being close to her brothers and father meant she wouldn’t experience the sort of heartbreak that had accompanied her mother’s death.

Except, if that was true, how come every day away from Sam broke her heart a little more? The campus blurred and swam before her as tears flooded her eyes. Could the very choice she’d made to protect herself cause the worst heartache of all?

She turned into the small campus, walking the familiar paths without enjoying them at all, lost in her thoughts. She brushed some snow off a bench with her mittened hand and sipped the last bit of her now-cold latte. She took off her mitten and wiped a droplet from her lip with her bare finger and let her finger linger there for a moment, remembering the possessive hunger in the kiss they had shared after the vows. He had held her flush to his body, unyielding, demanding, and even in the desperation of the moment, she couldn’t deny how perfectly they’d fit together.

Always eclipsed by that kiss, however—in both intensity then and pain now—would be his eyes during the vows. Those eyes haunted her even now, the memory of which was at the crux of what made it unbearable to be away from him. His eyes had carried her through the vows they took for Ingrid and Kristian. She had never felt so intimately connected to another person in her entire life. He had carried her, held her, sustained her, reassured her, encouraged her—all without a word, without a touch, without anything except the power of the feelings behind his eyes.

Her shoulders rolled forward and she crumpled with her chin to her chest, defeated. A searing, certain sadness confirmed without a shadow of doubt that she had made a mistake. In letting Sam go, she had allowed fear to choose her path for her, and she knew with a brutal, heart-wrenching certainty that losing him would be the biggest mistake of her life.

Oh, my God! Help! Help me figure out what to do. Help me have the courage to do it. And please don’t let it be too late when I’m ready.