Page 85 of Happy After All

“Sure, that’s one way of putting it.”

“No. Something about my humorless military father and never living up to his standards. Being a kid who’d rather read than do a ten-mile ruck didn’t really make me his favorite.”

“Do you have siblings?”

“Two brothers. Older. Not disappointing.”

“You look like you could run for ten miles,” I say.

“I can. But I’ve learned that you can do things you aren’t suited to, and you can do things you don’t like. You can even become great at them. Even if it never really fits.”

I sit with that for a moment, thinking about my old life. I liked it. I’m not sure I could say it didn’t fit. I don’t think it would now, and that makes me feel strange.

“Do you have children?” I ask.

I’m trying to get a picture of who he is. He’s been a fantasy object for me. An author photo. I know what he does, and I know some of the ways he is now.

I think, if I’m honest, I didn’t really think as deeply about him as I pretended to. Because I didn’t want to imagine who the man was beyond the walls of my courtyard. I wanted him to be this extraordinarily sexy, grumpy, complicated man I couldn’t have. Now he is here, a whole man. One with wounds and the life and pain I hadn’t known about. One who had been in love.

I study the lines on his handsome face, knowing that. He isn’t just rugged to be a fantasy for me. He has lines on his face because he’s lived a whole life that has caused him pain. And so have I.

I look tired because I am.

Because I packed up everything and moved to this place and tried to keep my reality from intruding, but it does, and it is. I haven’t actually left anything behind.

It’s all here with me, at my bistro table.

“No children,” he says. “It wasn’t ever the right time.” He laughs. “God, that seems so stupid now. I mean, it’s not a big regret I have, it’s just the arrogance that we all have about time.”

I nod. Except my loss didn’t make me feel that way about time. I wonder if I’m sitting in the arrogance of believing I have an endless amount of time to be here in this place, in an emotional stasis, because I’ve certainly never thought beyond the motel. I’ve never thought deeply about how I would change and grow.

I’ve just been in this eternal present.

“Why wasn’t this ... I mean why wasn’t it in the news? I know you keep your name separate, but I have a hard time believing this didn’t get dug up.”

My questions seem fractured, out of order. But I’m trying to fill in the holes of the story he gave me.

“The success came after things went to hell,” he says. “Which is ... not to say I had none before, but no one gave a shit about me personally. My wife got diagnosed with cancer, and suddenly the next book had a concept that was hardcover worthy, and then it got optioned, and even more shockingly got made. All in that eighteen months she was gettingtreatments, and horrible prognoses, and put on hospice, and I was in fucking hell. The show started airing two months after she died. She got to see a couple of episodes before, though. She ... she really liked the lead actor too.”

The things he’s said about success make the worst kind of sense now too.

“God,” I say. “That’s ... horrible. Actually, that is really horrible.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I mean, I guess I could have lost everything instead.”

“I guess at least with the success you knew what to keep doing.”

“Yeah, that’s true. I think if I had lost everything, there was a time when I might have just stayed at rock bottom. I can see another version of myself working at a bar and drinking myself to death.”

So can I. It scares me. It guts me.

“I’m writing Sarah’s book as Jacob Coulter because that’s what the publisher thinks will sell. That’s the bargain I made to be able to do it. My name and my pseudonym are going to be unavoidably connected when that happens,” he says. “Some documents just got unsealed that were sort of the last of my legal worries and ... there’s no point keeping them separate anymore. That’s part of why I decided to go ahead and just finish the book. Her book. I mean, also, the publisher was after me for it. I’ve taken a little bit longer than I was supposed to. I’m trying to do an honest job. I don’t want to write about her through the lens of husband, who had certain opinions about who she was, but I need to tell her story. She left behind a lot of journals. Some of them are about my failures.”

He’s silent for a moment.

I can’t imagine how difficult that would be. I can also understand that as a writer, as someone who loved her, he wants to be honest.

“Nothing major,” he continues. “But it might surprise you to learn that I’m sometimes emotionally unavailable.”

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