Page 125 of Every Beautiful Mile

When they scramble up the stairs, I grab a piece of paper and a pen.

Ethan,

This note is me taking the coward’s way out. By the time you read this, we will be on a plane bound for Miami, and I will have probably cried myself to dehydration. I couldn’t face a goodbye with you, not after the last two weeks. Not after the way you changed the way the sun rises and sets on my horizon by simply just existing on the same planet as me.

I need to finish what I’ve started with my kids—showing up in their lives actively and on purpose every day, not just when we are trapped in a camper—and I need to learn how to stand on my own two feet without needing someone to constantly prop me up.

I wanted to ask you to wait for me to find my way a hundred times, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair to you. You have an amazing life and a line of women who do very dirty things to straws that I’d never want you to pass up on my account. Please know I will hate all those women fiercely until the day I die.

Of every beautiful mile we drove this summer, my favorite are the ones that led to you. You brought me back to life and made me remember who I am. A river that ran through me, changing me forever.

If I didn’t have to leave, I would have loved you with every broken piece of me.

Nel

The next morning, our car pulls up, and we lug our bags and my oversized painting into the trunk. Then I tape the paper to the front door, Ethan’s name scribbled across it.

Forty-seven

My mom knows the second she sees me something is off. I smile, I laugh, and I hug with gusto at the conveyor belt of baggage claim, but she sees every secret I can’t keep.

“You love him.” It’s not a question. It’s a statement of her delusion.

I scoff, shifting my luggage trash bag on my shoulder as we walk through the airport. “Love, Mom? That’s a bit extreme.”

“I knew I loved your dad the minute I met him. What’s so ridiculous about you spending a few weeks with a man and feeling the same thing?” She looks entirely bewildered at the thought.

I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter what it was or wasn’t, not really. I’m here, and he’s there, and each mile that separates us seems longer than the next. I want to focus on the kids now—enjoy our time together before Finn moves away and never wants to come back.” I try for a joke, but nothing feels funny.

She hums knowingly. “Just remember, Penelope, no two loves are the same.”

Piled into the car with my dad behind the wheel in a shirt covered in parrots, we spend the next hour driving toward the island we left behind almost two months ago. I crack the window as we cross the bridge from the mainland and let the familiar smells of saltwater that blow across water the color of Ethan’s eyes, welcome us home.

It’s after we’re settled and starting loads of laundry that I work up the nerve to turn my phone on, holding my breath as the messages come through from Ethan in rapid fire.

A note? Really?

Nel, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can figure it out.

Dammit, answer your phone.

Will you at least let me know you made it home?

My eyes burn like hot coals are jammed into them as I read and re-read his messages.

Finally, I find the courage to respond. Hi is all I can write.

A minute passes, then two, then finally three dots appear and disappear several times before a text.

Ethan: Hi.

My bones go soft just reading the word.

Ethan: Did you mean what you wrote in your note?

Me: I did.

Ethan: Okay.

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