Page 146 of How to Walk Away

That’s when my dad put an arm around my mom. In that one gesture, I knew something.She was okay.

More than that:Theywere okay.

All that worry about her? I could let that go. They’d found each other, and they knew what to do. They’d either work it out or they wouldn’t. But my job there was done.

***

THE BOAT DIDN’Tslow. We kept moving ahead. My parents receded into the Bruges night, waving a little longer, then dropping their hands and turning to continue their stroll.

Ian watched them, too, for a minute, before turning back to me.

“Why are you here again?” I asked.

“I came to find you.”

“You came all the way from Scotland to find me?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“Because I miss you.” The word sounded like “mess.”

“You do?”

Ian nodded. “Every day.”

I didn’t want to break this easily. I wanted to hold out and be tough and stay mad. Maybe it was the thump of his heart against my hand, or those earnest eyes, or that tuxedo he was not just wearing butrocking—but I couldn’t hold out. “I miss you, too.”

“Even after so long?”

“I think it might be getting worse, actually,” I confessed.

“I told myself I had to wait a year to find you again—give you time to settle and find your way. I consulted with my brothers, even, and everyone agreed—a full year at the minimum. Now, it’s a year. I had just bought a plane ticket to the States when I saw Kit’s post about you coming to Belgium.”

“You bought a ticket to the States?”

Ian nodded.

“But then you came to Bruges?”

Ian nodded again.

“Did Kit know you were coming?”

“In a way, I suppose. She texted me your flight schedule, and the hotel, and a photo of the wedding invite. And then she swore that you’d be all alone all evening long while she and your mother went to this crazy wedding. And then she told me she’d rented a room for me down the hall.”

I shook my head. Kit. So sneaky. “So you went to the hotel?”

He nodded. “When I found her there instead of you, she sent me running toward the church.”

“And they sent you running to the canal boats. And here we are.”

“But,” lan said, “she didn’t tell me about Scotland.”

I met his eyes. “No?”

“Why were you going there?”

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