Breakable (Contours of the Heart 2)

‘Yes, it is,’ he answered. Turning back to me, he said, ‘After you went through some of her things over Christmas, I decided that she’d have been sad to think that her paintings were wrapped up in an attic instead of out where they could be seen.’ Dad’s lips compressed. ‘Well. I’ll let you two rest up from your drive. Got plans tonight, I assume?’

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight. We’re meeting up with Boyce tomorrow.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll see what I’ve got for dinner, if you want to eat here. Several pounds of redfish, caught yesterday. We could do something with that.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Sounds good.’

He nodded again and pulled the door mostly shut behind him.

I sat on the bed heavily. ‘Holy shit.’

‘We never talked about Mom – sentences that began with she would have been.’

Jacqueline lay on her stomach and I lay facing her, my finger drawing invisible patterns on to her back.

At dinner, the three of us had talked about my impending graduation, and the research project with Dr Aziz that had altered my entire way of thinking about what I’d learned in the past four years, sending it spinning in an unexpected direction.

Your mother would have been proud, he’d said, and Jacqueline grabbed my hand under the recently varnished table, because she knew the weight of those words.

Now we lay in bed, in the room my parents had shared whenever we visited this place during my first thirteen years. Dad was back in Grandpa’s room, which he’d painted a seafoam green. Another set of Mom’s paintings hung there.

The pantry was back to holding food, along with neat stacks of storage boxes housing old files. The holes in the wall had been painted over. The three-pronged lamp had been replaced with a normal ceiling fixture. I’d chuckled, standing in that snug alcove when Dad sent me to fetch a clove of garlic. I felt safe, standing there, and was struck by the realization that I’d always felt safe there. Somehow, that had been managed while everything else went to hell.

‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ Jacqueline turned to face me in the dark, her eyes reflecting the subtle moonlight from the window. The sound of the waves pulsing across the sand drifted through the window like a slow, gentle heartbeat.

‘Thank you for coming with me.’

She scooted closer. ‘You aren’t going to tell me where you’re applying for jobs, are you?’

‘Nope. And you know why.’

‘You want me to transfer to the best music programme I can get into, without regard to where you’ll be,’ she recited, her tone an audible eye roll. ‘But … I can’t stand the thought that in six months – five months – we could be on opposite sides of the country from each other.’

I had no intention of putting distance between us for the next two years – but I wouldn’t tell her my plan until I’d pulled it off. There was too much luck involved, and I didn’t want her to be disappointed. I traced her hairline from her temple to the corner of her jaw and cupped her face in my hand. ‘You aren’t going to lose me. But I’m not doing to you what he did. You have dreams, and I want you to follow them. I need you to follow them. Because …’ I took a breath. ‘I love you, Jacqueline Wallace.’

She swallowed, her eyes filling with tears. ‘I love you, Landon Lucas Maxfield.’

My heart swelled and I leaned over her, kissing her, loving her, claiming her. In her formal words, I heard the echo of my future – a future I was so sure of that no distance would have daunted me: I take thee, Landon Lucas Maxfield …

Luck could be earned and created. It could be discovered. It could be regained. After all – I’d found this girl. I’d found my future. I’d found forgiveness. My mother would have been happy for me. For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t feel guilty about that.

Epilogue

Jacqueline was invited to transfer into three of the five music programmes she’d applied for, but when she got Oberlin’s letter of acceptance, none of the others mattered. Ten seconds after signing into her email, she shot off my sofa, squealing and sending Francis right under the bed. Once I was certain she was extreme happiness squealing and not I see a spider the size of my hand squealing, I opened my arms and she jumped into them.

‘Congratulations, baby,’ I murmured against her lips, loving how blissed out she was.

She texted Erin. She called her parents. She emailed her high-school orchestra director.

And then she calculated how far apart we would be when she moved, if I remained here. Two engineering firms in town were actively pursuing me, and I was considering them seriously. I’d nailed a second interview for an amazing position with one that specialized in semiconductor robotics – a design job so cool I couldn’t have even imagined it four years ago, when all my energies were focused on getting into college at all.

I took her out to celebrate and refused to discuss the miles and hours and years ahead. ‘Not tonight,’ I repeated, until she relented. If we had to be long distance for two years, then that’s what we’d do. But Jacqueline’s admittance into Oberlin had given me a new goal.

Back in December, I had dinner with Joseph, Elliott and Elliott’s little sister, Reni, who was visiting from Cleveland, where she was a third-year med-school student at Case Western. Their transparent attempts at playing matchmaker went down in flames, but they set the two of us up in a different respect. Fascinated with the details of the research project I’d be part of for the next five months, Reni told me about one of her mentors, whose field of research was bioengineering.

When I emailed her about possible job leads, she passed my résumé to that professor. He was one of the three founders of a small bioengineering start-up in Cleveland. One of the others knew Dr Aziz, and she’d spotted his name in my list of references. A week later, I got a call and a request to apply.

Luck had started the ball rolling. The rest was up to me.

‘Why won’t you tell me where you’re going for this interview, at least?’ For forty-five minutes, Jacqueline had been trying to cajole clues out of me during commercial breaks in the zombie drama we were watching. ‘Aren’t we supposed to tell each other everything?’ Her honeyed tone and earnest secret-discovering expression – wide blue eyes staring up into mine – almost made me cave. She was too good at this.

‘Nice try,’ I smirked, and she scowled.