Page 149 of Again, In Autumn

“I’m not going to bake anything tonight. I have some cookies in the car.”

“Chocolate peppermint?” Francesca asks hopefully.

I pretend, “Oh, no, I didn’t make my favorite cookie this year…”

“Liar.”

I hang the ornament and grab my keys. I find the bags in the backseat where I packed them carefully and listen to Grayson cheer himself on for making it to the top of the treehouse.

“It’s not that high,” he says.

“It feels more dangerous when you’re thirty-seven,” David answers.

“Dad, there’s a mailbox in here.”

I close my eyes and listen to that familiar, squeaky sound. The metal opening, me finding a note from Adam, the giddiness that followed.

Grayson calls out, “There’s a paper in here.”

“What is it?” David reaches his hand to the window of the treehouse, but Grayson snatches the paper out of his grasp.

Grayson folds it open. His eyes frown, his lips move, reading the words he knows quietly to himself. “It’s for Auntie Vee.”

Chapter Forty-Two

Vienna,

I’m in this treehouse right now hoping it doesn’t collapse. I left after dinner yesterday because I was upset and needed to get away. I hate that I left like that. I’m not a kid anymore. It was fucked up – I’m sorry. I should have stayed and talked to you.

When I realized this, I turned around and booked it back here. I got in at about four am and figured I’d just stay awake until you got up at sunrise, but I’m not as young as I used to be. I fell asleep on the couch. When I woke up, you and everyone in the house had gone home.

I hope you see this letter. I hope you forgive me. If not, I’ll give it until New Year’s Eve and if the universe hasn’t brought us back together, then I’ll message you on Instagram like a loser.

I want you to know, if I could do anything different, I would do everything different. I would never have asked you to marry me. I realize now that I only did it because I wanted to keep you forever. I knew you would say yes. It was selfish. I was afraid to let you go off to college and ask you when we were older, because I didn’t know who I’d be and how you would respond. It wasn’t the right question, and it wasn’t fair of me to make you answer it.

I knew you would have married me. We could have had a beautiful life. You may not see it, but you’re the same girl I fell in love with fourteen years ago. I’m sorry for all the shit I gave you this week. I know you were true, and you would have never said you loved me if you didn’t mean it fully. You’re the truest human I’ve ever known and loving you has been a privilege.

I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I made you choose between our future and your relationship with your father. You made the right choice. If I was eighteen and could do it all over again, I would say:

I love you. You should go to college, and I’ll go to Nashville. I want to talk to you on the phone every day and I’ll visit you every chance I get. I love you. I want to hear all about your day at school, and work, what you bought at the grocery store, and what you learned about buying health insurance.

I love you.

I want to tell you when I think you’re wrong and challenge you to be brave and always have your back. I love you. Fourteen years is a lifetime, but I still feel like a kid, staring at you for the first time, realizing that my soul can speak. And you answered it with that one life altering smile.

I’ve been talking to you for fourteen years, every time I pick up my guitar and every time I get on a stage. I’ll be doing it for as long as I breathe.

I loved you then and I still do now.

Adam

“Oh my God,” I sigh, falling into the couch.

Adam came back for me. He didn’t leave like I did. He came back.

Francesca snatches the letter from my drooping hands, and David reads over her shoulder.

“I called it!” he says. “I told you he’d come back!”

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