She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course. Jane Austen. One of my favorites.”
“Really? She wrote a lot of novels, then?”
She frowned. “Just six. She only lived forty-one years.”
“I see. So. Can you tell me what the novel is about?”
“You should read it.”
“I’ll get to it eventually. I was wondering—”
Her cold stare pinned me down. I had no doubt that in her day she had been formidable professor.
“Young man, if I can sit here all day with this blasted mask on my face, take every prodding, finger prick and blow-in-the-tube test that you order up, then you can damn well read a masterpiece of a novel.”
I twitched my eyebrows in surprise but let the subject drop. “You know the drill, ma’am. Take a deep breath.” When she was ready, I pressed the tube to her lips.
***
Instead of returning to the library, I grabbed a quick bite at home. I opened the book again with determination—and the image of Mrs. Kellerman’s stony gaze at the back of my mind.
Hours later, I glanced up at the clock and was shocked at how much time had passed. The feeling was like coming up for air after swimming underwater—like I’d been breathing in another world. With reluctance, I remembered I had physical needs to see to. I had to pee.
At two a.m., I stopped reading again, this time due to fatigue. I was nearly finished and I wanted—no, I needed—to know the ending. Only a few chapters into the story, I had begun to see myself in Captain Wentworth. In Anne, I read Justine.
Unfinished, I closed the book and rolled over, my eyes closing on the porous ceiling tiles. Memories overwhelmed me like a strong current at high tide…
***
Until the past summer, I hadn’t seen Justine in six years. And at that time, seeing her was the last thing I’d wanted. After six years, the sting of her rejection still cut deep.
It was only once I had arrived at my sister’s house for a short stay that she informed me that Justine was staying with her brother. Across the street. In their parents’ old house, where she had lived when the two of us were undergraduates together at Brown University.
For the next two weeks, we would be neighbors again. I shrugged it off. It didn’t matter to me. I kept busy, playing with my nephews and helping my brother-in-law with home improvement projects.
But I ran the neighborhood tract every morning. I refused to look at the corner section of the sidewalk where Justine and I had once carved our initials into the wet cement. I had no interest to see if they had lasted longer than we had. I tried not to notice that the tree where I’d usually kissed her goodnight had grown taller. I tried not to see her everywhere in the neighborhood.
My luck expired after three days, though I’d chosen an early hour for my runs. I’d been rising before the birds. Like I had to do when I was on call. But one morning, sure enough, when I left the house she was standing on her brother’s front lawn like a lost soul with a trowel in her hand.
At the periphery of my vision, the movement of her bending over a flower box brought me to a stop. Her brother’s gardening gloves made her hands look five sizes too big for the rest of her. She straightened and our eyes met. A ghost from the past greeted me and my chest tightened. It was all I could do to keep my mouth closed despite the shock.
Justine truly looked like a ghost. “Hello, Mark,” she said, a shadow of a smile crossing her pale features.
She had cut off all of her gorgeous hair and dyed what was left of it black. And she had lost so much weight that I barely recognized her. She looked terrible. As terrible as Justine could ever look.
She still had those eyes. Those haunted blue eyes.
“Um. Hi,” I croaked.
“How are you?”
I clenched my jaw. “Fine. Great. Awesome. You?”
She nodded. “Better. I’m getting better.”
I didn’t ask. I burned to ask. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
My feet began to move. I made a stupid show of jogging in place. “Well. Excuse me, have to keep up the heart rate.” With an exaggerated wave, I plugged in my earbuds and left.
I rolled over in my bed, interrupted in my memories for the briefest of moments by remembrances of the words I had just read.
It is over! The worst is over. They had met. They had been once more in the same room.
***
“I heard you saw Justine,” my sister said that same afternoon, as she loaded the dishwasher. I sank my teeth into the tuna sandwich she had fixed for me. The way I love it, with mayo and relish.
“I was running early. I didn’t think she’d be out at that hour. Gardening. Since when does she garden?”
There was a long pause. “It’s part of her therapy.”