The Love Letter (2 page)

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.”

I stopped chewing and swallowed a too-large lump of sandwich. “Therapy?”

Kathy didn’t hear me. Or chose not to answer, I couldn’t tell which.

“So is she back here visiting, or…?”

“She’s been living at her brother’s for a few months. She told me she’ll be looking for her own place when she gets on her feet.”

“She moved back—for good? L.A. wasn’t her cup of tea after all?” For some reason this news brought hot resentment burning up from my stomach. My empty fist clenched but I forced it to relax.

Kathy dried her hands on a dishcloth and turned to look at me for a minute. I feigned sudden intense interest in the quartered newspaper left on the table.

“She had a nervous breakdown, Mark.”

“Hmm.” I grunted without looking up so Kathy wouldn’t be able to see how my heart lurched at the news. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Kathy stared at me for a long time but I refused to look up. “What did you think, when you saw her?”

“I almost didn’t recognize her.”

I almost didn’t recognize her. Those words echoed to me in the present as I contemplated the horror of them again.
She had a nervous breakdown, Mark.
I rubbed my eyes through closed eyelids.

Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne. He said you were so altered, he should not have known you again.

***

The following day, Kathy committed me to a favor before specifying what I would have to do. With the bribe of her delicious caramel turtle cookies thrown in for good measure, she had me trudging across the street with her Rototiller to help with the garden project.

Justine stood surveying a dirt mound next to her fledgling flower box—the location of her future garden—when I got there. She held a shovel in a gloved hand and wore a sleeveless tank top. Her arms were thin and pale, like dried sticks. I forced myself not to look at them.

“So where do you want your dirt?”

“Here. Thanks, Mark.”

“What are you planting?”

“Roses. I know it will be too late to see any bloom this year, but I’m going to get some grafts from the nursery. If we have a warm autumn, I might get lucky.”

I spent two hours over there churning the dirt for her while she dug a shallow trench around the border of the lawn. Fortunately, there was little occasion to talk over the loud whirring of the machine. And when I was done, all I wanted to do was leave. But I couldn’t help but notice the shoddy job she was doing with the watering trench. I suspect she tried her hardest, but there was little strength in her limbs.

I moved next to her to ask if she needed anything else. I wanted to offer to dig a proper trench, but I couldn’t. Something inside me wouldn’t allow it. I swallowed a spiky ball of resentment. Even then, after all those years.

She crammed the ancient shovel into the ground and yanked it back with every bit of her strength. The handle snapped at the tongue and she fell back. On instinct and reflex, I grabbed her before she fell.

Her shock prevented her from crying out. I held her for a moment too long while registering my own shock. She felt so much lighter in my arms than she once had.

What the hell had she been doing out in LaLa Land? Starving herself?

I straightened and helped her stand. Her hair brushed past my face. I caught a whiff of her familiar scent—flowers and mint. My body responded on instinct, flooding with heat. She still used the same shampoo. Memories flashed through my thoughts: holding her in my arms, tasting her lips, pressing my body to hers.

The heat turned to anger at my own subconscious reaction. I released her as if she had burned me. Preparing to retreat across the street, I moved to the tilling machine and locked the blade.

“Heya, Jus, whatcha doin’?”

We both turned. A gorgeous blonde was peeking over the fence from the neighboring yard. She was young, in her early twenties, and had enough hair and enough chest for two women.

“The usual. Working on the garden. I got a huge help thanks to Mark, here,” she said coolly, as if the past moments hadn’t happened.

The young woman’s eyes assessed me and I nodded, sporting my best “charming guy” smile. Her shirt was cut low and it was hard to take my eyes off the stretch of fabric across her breasts. When I finally looked at her face again, she had a knowing smile. My grin widened.

“Mark, this is our neighbor, Chloë,” Justine said quickly, darting looks from one of us to the other. She cleared her throat and uttered the rest of the introduction as if from a great distance. “Chloë, this is Kathy’s brother.”

“The doctor?” Chloë immediately perked up. I got that a lot.

After making sure there was nothing further that Justine wanted for the garden, I moved over to the fence and began to chat with Chloë. To my relief, Justine faded into the background.

That was when, standing at the edge of Justine’s brother’s lawn, I asked Chloë out to dinner. I could hear Justine putting away the shovels, doing clean-up, jobs for which I had not offered to help her. I was sure she was listening to every word. I told myself that I didn’t care.
She
probably didn’t care either. Hadn’t she once treated me the same way? And had she not just brushed me off as if there had never been a past between us at all?

So Justine was unhappy with her life. That was unfortunate, but it was the life
she
had chosen. By
her
choice, deep love had been crushed to please others and her own ambition.

I sighed, unable to sleep despite my aching fatigue, mind racing. No, I hadn’t forgiven her. I couldn’t. It hurt too much to even consider.

He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shown a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure.

***

By my second date with Chloë, I knew we could never amount to anything serious. For one thing, I had less than a week left before I had to return to Colorado to finish my residency. The other reasons? I couldn’t really name them. But I promised myself that they had nothing to do with Justine.

But as I fixed myself a pot of coffee after that sleepless night, I realized with surprising clarity that all of my relationships since Justine had been similarly haunted by our past.

He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman since whom he thought her equal…

***

I finished the novel on the plane the next day. Then I fell against the window and slept the remaining hours. I dreamt of Justine. Of the smell of her hair. Of the first time I’d kissed her, pressed up against the stacks in the back of the library. Of the first time we made love, with fierce kisses and shaking hands. In my agitation, I awoke, shifted positions, willed my restless mind to find something different to dwell on. It didn’t. I dreamt of the plans we’d made for our life after graduation. She’d applied to the law school at the University of Colorado. We’d be there, together, in the mountains. We’d start our life there, together, as husband and wife.

I dreamt of the night I’d proposed to her. The happiest night of my life. She cried when I slipped the ring on her finger.

I cried the night she gave it back. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been accepted at UCLA. I’m going to live there and work in my Dad’s firm.”

My world froze. All of our hopes, plans, our future together breaking to pieces before my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said over and over again between sobs.

***

The following day, Thanksgiving dinner at my sister’s was a trial. Throughout the meal, I couldn’t keep my mind off the house across the street. Was Justine still living there or had she moved on? Was she still unattached? I didn’t dare ask the questions hovering on my lips. What the hell had that book done to me?

Then Kathy announced that she had invited Justine and her brother’s family over for dessert. A warm sense of hope washed over me. The sentiments of the novel were still fresh in my mind. I was now determined to let her know, somehow, that I still thought of her. That she was still in my heart.

When she entered the room, I was struck by her glowing skin, her hair—now honey-colored once again. She had gained weight. The wan smile had new life and now reached her eyes.

Her face lit up when she saw me and my heart missed a beat. “Mark! I’m glad you made it home.” Even her voice sounded stronger. She came close to me. My throat closed and the words I wanted to say went unspoken.

What had brought about this change in me? Why,
now
, could I look past all that had happened before? I could feel the hurt and resentment fading, dissolving a barrier between us.

All that mattered was that the girl of my dreams was before me again. Damaged a little, but still there, underneath the pain and failure of the years that had separated two hearts and minds as connected as ours once were.

Before I could do anything besides ask her about her garden, Kathy hauled me into the kitchen to help her serve pie.

“She’s seeing someone.”

I said nothing, slicing the pies into eighths with surgical precision.

“I said—”

“I heard you.” My heart was in my shoes. I swallowed. “Does her therapist approve? So soon?”

“Ah, sweetie. I think the therapist encouraged it.”

I couldn’t look at her as I wiped pumpkin filling off my fingers.

As dessert wound to a close, I only had one quick chance to speak with Justine again. Tomorrow, she’d be leaving on a shopping holiday with friends for the remainder of the weekend.

After informing me of this, we looked at each other in awkward silence, and then she touched me gently on the sleeve. “Mark, I was wondering… I’m going to Aspen in December to meet my dad for a short ski trip. I’ll be passing through Denver on the sixteenth and…would you like to, maybe, catch up over lunch or something?”

The sixteenth.
“That’s the last day of my medical boards. I’ll be testing all day.”

The visible hope on her delicate features melted away.

“Oh. Oh, yes, of course. I’ll—well, some other time then. Can I give you my cell number? In case you finish early or something?”
Not likely.

We exchanged cards. I nodded goodbye to her, unasked questions about her new boyfriend still hanging between us. I wouldn’t be jealous. I didn’t have the right.

***

How does the story end? In
Persuasion
, of course, Anne finds the love letter that Wentworth has left for her. In it, he tells her that, in spite of his resentment, in spite of his flirting with other women right under her nose, in spite of the fact that she had crushed his heart, he still loves her. After all this time.

They exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement.

But my story?
Our
story, mine and Justine’s? What was my persuasion? To forgive. To let go. To move forward. To never forget.

***

On December 16, my world swam before me. The last test of the boards—an essay test—was here. Lost in a high-vaulted, echoing testing chamber, I stared at the open blue test booklet, unable to focus on the task at hand.

An hour of stretching, clicking my pen up and down, and cracking open my water bottle had produced little beyond a page of my illegible scribble. Seven different beginnings of love letters I had written and then crossed out. Abandoned.

She was in Denver, somewhere. And I was here. And as noon grew into afternoon, my agitation increased. Where was she now?

The choice was clear. I had to see her. Before I realized what I was doing, my feet were on the floor, my legs were carrying me from the silence of the test room.

I didn’t start breathing again until I was in the foyer. Leaning against the heavy wooden door, my cell phone in my hand, I pulled out the card she’d given me. She’d be on the way to the airport by now, I figured.

I typed:
Justine, I don’t know if you’ll get this, but I have to tell you. I need you. Always have. I’ve been stubborn, resentful & full of pride. But my heart never changed. I’ve never loved anyone else but you.

I hit send.

I waited for a minute, heart thudding. Two. Nothing. Cold fear numbed the pulse at my throat.

My thumb hovered over the send button, unable to type the next message.
Can you? Will you?

No answer. Maybe she had missed it? My head thudded against the brick walls of the university hall. Test-takers were now spilling out of the chamber, milling about the hallway, putting on their coats, pulling out their cell phones. It hurt to breathe. Had I walked away from my medical boards for nothing?