She should open it. Should read his good-bye, which doubtless included many apologies and would only confirm the very reasonable conclusion she’d drawn: that relationships were just too risky, and they’d both been fools to try. That she needed to be alone, because it was safer. After all, if she’d been alone these past weeks, she wouldn’t have spent last night sobbing until she lost her voice. Wouldn’t have had a reason to.
Chloe put a hand to her raw throat and reminded herself that he’d left, and he’d do it again, and it wasn’t worth the risk, and she never should’ve bothered with a man anyway, not after she’d been so comfortable without one for years.
And yet, she still couldn’t open the book.
She set it aside with the same care one might use to move a poisonous snake. There were more things in the box, hidden by a layer of tissue paper. She ripped it away to find he’d sent her favorite chocolate. Green & Black’s sea salt. Not in a fancy hamper like the ones she knew they offered online, either—just slab after slab of the stuff, as if he’d walked into a shop and bought out all their stock like a loon. The bright blue bars tugged at her heart for precisely 0.002 seconds before she steeled herself against them. This was a good-bye present. Nothing that should make her wistful or hopeful or regretful.
She put the chocolate on her coffee table so it was within reach while she worked. No use wasting it.
The next day, another box arrived, significantly smaller than the first. This time, she was thoroughly confused. It was from Red, there was no doubt of that, but what else could he possibly need to give her? It turned out to be a jar, one with tiny gold stars embedded in the glass. They twinkled when she held it up to the light, and for a second all she could think about was that night in the woods, stars in the sky, little spots of light inside their tent.
And him. Red.
The jar contained a trio of the hair ties she liked, the soft fabric ones that didn’t snag. She huffed out a laugh as she realized what he was trying to do; she never knew where her hair ties were, unless they were on her head. So he wanted her to keep them in a jar. But, she reminded herself, pushing the smile off her face, jars weren’t any use to her. Between her fibromyalgia and the amount she used her hands for work, the strength in her wrists and fingers was usually zero. It was a rare and blessed day when Chloe Brown could open a jar.
She was about to put it back in the box when she realized that it didn’t actually have a lid. Or rather, not a lid that resembled anything she’d ever seen. There was an odd, transparent-looking bubble thing around the opening, and she prodded it tentatively. It gave under her touch. She pushed just a little bit harder. And then her hand was in the jar.
She stared in amazement, her eyes catching up with what her nerve endings were trying to tell her. There was a circular band of cushioning around the jar’s rim that ballooned up to “close” it, but shrank back under pressure to let her hand in.
Maybe chocolate and a letter she refused to read could be taken as a good-bye, but this, she didn’t know how to take. This was something you gave someone to show them . . .
To show them you cared. Or that you loved.
Maybe she should read the note. Maybe it wouldn’t be a good-bye after all. Maybe it would be sheer magic on a sheet of paper, and it would say exactly the right thing—the thing she couldn’t even define, the thing she didn’t know existed. The thing that would erase all the hurt she’d felt and make her brave enough to do this again.
And maybe she’d run a marathon tomorrow. But she wouldn’t bet her life on that, now, would she? So she steeled herself against her heart’s fanciful interpretations, and she put the jar beside the chocolate, and she absolutely refused to open the book.
Days passed and more gifts came.
Boxes of her favorite fruit and herbal teas. A little stuffed cat that looked so like Smudge, she might possibly have cried just the tiniest bit when she saw it. And maybe, perhaps, sometimes, she slept with it beside her. But that didn’t matter, because there were no witnesses.
Next was a guide to New York City, light enough for her to carry, that gave directions using major landmarks and street signs instead of maps. Then there was a tiny, plastic pink chair, studded with little diamantés, that she realized on a bark of laughter was supposed to be Madame Chair. It was followed by a bag of marshmallows, accompanied by a handwritten recipe describing how to roast them with an oven. She could tell he’d tried to be neat with his rounded block capitals, but there was a smudge of sunset-orange paint on the back of the thick, creamy paper that made her smile. He’d drawn goofy little cartoon pictures next to each instruction.
She missed him. She missed him so much that she was starting to hate him.
She found the gold notebook and held it in her hands and tried to make herself open it. She knew it wasn’t a good-bye. It was almost certainly an apology, an explanation that he’d panicked.
The problem was, Chloe had panicked that day, too, and she hadn’t stopped ever since. Dragging herself out of this confusing, teary fog of fear didn’t feel impossible, but it did feel daunting. As if she might not manage it alone. As if she might get lost in the dark. She could only think of one person who could shine a light on her murky thoughts.
She put the notebook down and grabbed her coat.
*
Gigi’s attic yoga studio was warm enough to make Chloe slightly drowsy, as was the low, gentle music and the smooth hum of the instructor’s voice. “Breathe in for me . . . and out. In . . . and out . . .”
Chloe found herself following those instructions as she waited awkwardly on a beanbag for the class of one to finish. She hadn’t realized what a jittery mess she was until she’d gotten in the car to drive over here. She’d ended up calling a taxi instead.
“One more time . . .” the soothing voice said. It came from Shivani, a depressingly happy, confident, and glowing woman in her midfifties who swanned about in sports bras and leggings and did inhuman things with her spine. Not ripping-it-out-and-beating-aliens-with-it type inhuman things, though. More like particularly impressive bow poses. She stood at the front of the room, opposite Gigi, who was also wearing a sports bra and leggings and had, beneath her fine, crepey skin, better abs than any of her granddaughters. Sigh.
The class wound down. Gigi and Shivani chuckled softly to each other as if their mutual flexibility, fitness, and, presumably, inner peace were some sort of hilarious inside joke. Then they hugged for several long, sweaty moments, murmuring things in each other’s ears. If Chloe allowed herself to think about it for more than five seconds at a time, she would have to accept that Gigi was 100 percent banging her yoga instructor and had been for about the last seven years, which was why Chloe did not allow herself to think about it for more than five seconds at a time.