Page 22 of I'll Be Waiting

Anton pulled that “someday” list out of my brain and handed it to the part of me that loves to plan. We came up with a list of things we’d do in the next five years, and if I was still healthy—the medication gave me honest hope of that—then we’d make another five-year list.

Only we never got through the first one. Now, between my savings and his savings and his life insurance, I have enough money to do everything we planned twice over… and none of it matters if he’s not here to do it with me.

And there I go again, getting sidetracked by grief and anger and a discomfiting amount of self-pity, all triggered by opening the damn windows and hearing the chirps of tiny frogs.

We’re in the nook, sitting around the table with cups of chamomile tea, because that’s what Anton liked when he was here. It was a ritual that pulled in memories of his childhood visits, when he’d get to stay up until his grandmother served tea and shortbread fingers. He’d curl up with his very adult treats and listen to the very adult conversation and feel very adult.

I brought the tea and the shortbread, and we enjoy them ourselves. Drinking and eating. Inviting him to join us. Invoking fond memories.

And then I have to do the hard part. I have to do more than invoke memories. I have to share them. As if this were an evening with friends, telling stories.

Dr. Cirillo is explaining when my attention drifts to the window. I’m sitting right beside it, the chill of the night air making me consider going for a sweater. It’s dark out, and I can’t see the lake. The cliff seems to drop away to nothing. The edge of the world.

I’m still staring out when I pick up something and tilt my head, frowning.

“Nicola?” Dr. Cirillo says.

“Sorry. I just… Do you guys hear that?”

Shania perks up. “Anton?”

“No, it’s a buzzing.” I lower my head to the opening, ear almost against the screen. “I hear a buzzing.”

“All I can hear are the damn tree frogs,” Jin says.

“There’s that, but there’s also a buzzing.”

The others listen, only to shake their heads.

“Nic has great hearing,” Jin says. “Keith always says never talk about her when she’s in the house or she’ll hear.” He grins. “Not that we ever talk about you.”

I roll my eyes. Then I shake off the odd noise. “I’m supposed to share a memory, right?”

“Tell me about the first time you met Anton,” Dr. Cirillo says.

I smile. “He filled out the contact form on my website, if you count that as ‘meeting.’”

“Before that, though. You knew him in school, right?”

Shania looks over, frowning, and I realize she doesn’t know about that. It was a small part of our story.

No, that’s a lie. It was an important part of our story, one that I wanted to gloss over because of what it dragged behind it.

I look at Shania. “We went to high school together. Briefly—less than a year before my family moved east. And I didn’t really know him. He was just a guy in a few of my classes.”

“But he noticed you,” Jin says, his brown eyes dancing. “Don’t leave out that part.”

I try not to wince. I’d have preferred that my final conversation with Anton stayed private, but that’s not what happens when your husband dies at the side of a busy highway, with people all around, at least one of whom stood close enough to report every word to the point where I wonder whether they’d recorded it. If so, I guess Ishould just be glad they didn’t post the video of my husband’s death. Or I’ll tell myself they didn’t, which will keep me from searching, in case it’s hidden in some dark corner of the Web.

I mask my wince by pulling a face, as if I’m just embarrassed to be talking about this. Although, now that I think of it, the fact that Shania didn’t know Anton and I were classmates means she never went looking through those online stories, and I’m grateful for that.

I explain Anton’s “secret” for Dr. Cirillo and Shania.

“Oh, that’s so sweet,” Shania says. “He had a crush on you.”

I try not to make another face. “I don’t think it was like that. He just meant that he noticed me, and then he sought me out after seeing that article. Which is still very sweet.”

“But you never noticed him?” Shania says, her voice rising with hope. She wants this to be a romantic story, two teens with secret crushes who reunited twenty years later.

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