Midnight Valentine(69)

“Shit, Coop. I’m sorry. I’m not myself today. Ignore me.”

“You think she might…?” He leaves it hanging there, his eyes hopeful.

“I think she’d be a fool if she didn’t.”

That makes him look bashful. He shoves his hands into his pockets and contemplates his shoes. He says softly, “I’ve always…she’s just so…she’s outta my league, is what she is.” His small laugh sounds embarrassed. “I never worked up the nerve to ask her out in high school. I started datin’ my wife our senior year, got married pretty quick after that. The kids came.”

Coop squints into the distance. He shrugs. “Y’know. Life happened.”

“It keeps on happening too,” I say softly. “It’s never too late to start over.”

Until it is.

Coop shifts his gaze to me. His eyes take on a look of worry. “Theo told me to watch out for you. Said to make sure you were okay. Somehow I don’t think you’re okay.”

“Oh, Coop,” I say softly, touched by his concern. “I’m not even in the same universe as okay, but I’m surviving.”

“You gonna call him?”

Now it’s my turn to look into the distance. “I’m probably the last person he wants to hear from right now.”

“Trust me, you’re the only person he wants to hear from.”

Surprised by the vehemence in his voice, I shift my gaze back to Coop.

He says, “Look. I don’t know what the hell the root of all this is, this problem he has with you. All I know is that the thing that breaks you is the only thing that can put you back together.”

If that’s true, all the antidepressants in the world can’t help me.

I’m overwhelmed with sadness. “I told him to stay away from me, Coop. And I called him a coward.”

“Did you mean it?”

My throat tightens. The hot sting of tears prickles the corners of my eyes. “No. I was just…afraid, I guess. Afraid and confused.”

Coop settles his hand on my shoulder. “Call him. Leave him a message. Write him an email. Tell him what you just told me. Please, do it as a personal favor. I think it would help.”

Music swells inside the sanctuary. People begin to sing, their voices carrying past the closed doors. It’s a hymn, one I recognize well.

When I start to laugh—softly, brokenly—Coop asks, “What’s funny?”

“This song.”

“‘Amazing Grace’ is funny?”

“My mother sang it at my wedding.”

Coop frowns. “I don’t get it.”

I sigh, shaking my head. “That makes two of us. C’mon, let’s go inside before Suzanne sends out a search party.”

I link my arm through his, and we walk through a pair of double doors into the sanctuary. It’s packed with people. Everyone is standing, singing “Amazing Grace” so robustly, it’s like a group audition for a reality show about church choirs. I find Suzanne in the front row and give her a quick smile as I slip in beside her.

Standing behind a wood podium on a large, carpeted dais, the pastor is a woman in her mid-fifties with beautiful silvery-white hair. When the hymn ends and everyone takes their seats, she surveys the crowd with an air of serenity. Then she speaks in a voice that carries to the last row.

“Love isn’t born of the flesh. It’s born of the spirit, and so can transcend the bonds of flesh, and life, and time. The poet Rumi said, ‘Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.’”

It isn’t until every head in the room turns toward me and two hundred pairs of startled eyes fix on my face that I realize I’ve begun maniacally laughing.





21





When I burst through the outer church doors, the sun has vanished behind clouds, and it’s begun to rain. I walk home barefoot, carrying my heels, wet and miserable, ignoring the constant buzzing of my cell phone in my handbag and the much louder buzzing inside my head.

Theo’s note was referring to my text about closed doors. The bible quote has nothing to do with Cass, and neither does the hymn. Or the sermon. Or the seventeenth of May. They’re all coincidences.

Sure they are. And I’m Elvis Presley.

Shut up.

You shut up!

I take it as evidence of my mental deterioration that my nagging inner voice now has split personalities that are arguing with each other. Magical thinking has dug its tentacles into my brain. No matter how many times I tell myself it’s all bullshit, that Dr. Singer’s explanation is valid and my grief is making connections where there are none, my heart doesn’t care.

My weak, stupid heart. And my poor, broken brain. Between the two of them, it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long.