From All the Roads Between
The year I turned fifty, my husband, David, died in a car wreck. Suddenly, my unremarkable, ordinary marriage was over, and I was left alone in my unremarkable, ordinary life. I had spent my adult life taking care of a man I wasn’t sure I had ever really loved.
Ever since David and I had graduated from high school in the Bay Area, we had moved around from city to city, following David’s long career in the military. He was gone a lot, and since we never had children, I was alone a lot. I would think of Jax often—his sweet face and the hope he had in his eyes as he pleaded with me to leave it all behind that night in Ohio. I walked through life with that guilt, wondering if he had ever forgiven me. I prayed he had moved on and that he had found peace out there on the long dirt road.
I couldn’t bring myself to call or write to him because I was afraid that he hated me. If I knew he hated me, I wouldn’t be able to go on. All I could do was hope he understood that I did what I did for him . . . so that he could rise to his potential without me weighing him down.
Later that same year, my father died in jail. The bill I received for his cremation costs was my only notification that the whiskey monster had been laid to rest. I didn’t even know what he had died from, and I didn’t attempt to find out. I sent a check and breathed a sigh of relief. It’s easy to let yourself become the burden of your own life, especially when you were given the label of being a burden by your parents before you could even reject it. I was technically free—of the husband I had settled for, of the father who had sent me down this life path. But I didn’t feel free. My adult life wasn’t tragic, but I could never allow it to be extraordinary either. My self-imposed penance kept me from the bliss that Jax and I dreamed about finding together as we lay in the fields near the creek all those summers ago.
I regretted not looking for my mother, Diana, and making peace with her, but more than anything, I regretted a life without Jax. I would have taken the hardships on the dirt road just to be with him.
Three years after David passed away, I moved back to Ohio, to New Clayton. I didn’t have much to retire on, so I had to get a job at a diner in town, waiting tables. I was at the Salvation Army looking for a pair of comfortable shoes to work in when I passed the used books section. There, front and center, almost placed purposefully for me, was a book with a couple embracing on the cover. The title was First Love Never Dies. But what really caught my attention was the author’s name. Jackson Fisher.
Suddenly, I was fifteen again. It had been thirty-eight years since I’d said his name out loud. “Jackson Fisher,” I whispered. My hand shook violently as I reached for the book. It had an old picture of Jackson on the back, maybe in his twenties. It had been published more than twenty-five years ago. I felt gutted—
12. You Might Find the Truth
I slammed the book shut in the middle of the sentence. I was crying hysterically and couldn’t bear to read further. Why was there so much regret for Emerson when she had made these choices herself? Hugging the book to my chest, I sobbed and sobbed.
Jase had been saying that he had written it for me, but because the details were different, I hadn’t believed him until now. Yet I wasn’t totally na?ve; I could see the parallels in my and Emerson’s circumstances. But there was a scared little girl inside of me who couldn’t accept the fact that someone actually loved her enough to write an entire book to help her heal.
Dawn would arrive in a few hours, but instead of going to sleep, I began to put a plan together.
THE NEXT MORNING, I marched through the parking lot at UCSD, full of resolve. I found Professor James in his office, sitting in his high-back leather chair near the window, looking out at the campus. Since he was the department head, I had to come to him first.
“Professor?”
He looked up. “Emiline. Come in.”
I walked in and stood across from his desk as he peered up at me over his bifocals. “Can I talk to you?” I asked.
“Sure. Have a seat.” He gestured to the chair across from him.
I sat down, clasped my hands together, and stared into my lap. “I want to write something real, I just don’t know what it is yet. I need to take a sabbatical.”
He chuckled. “You’re not a full professor, and you can’t take a sabbatical in the middle of the term.”
“Honestly, I need to do some soul-searching.”
“Famous last words,” he said sternly.
“Professor, I don’t even know if I’m a writer. I think I might just be a really good reader.” I searched his eyes, looking for affirmation.
He held my gaze for a long time. “Emiline, you’re absolutely a writer, but you need to know what the hell you’re writing about, and who your audience is.”