Page 62 of It's You
Willow swiped at her eyes before taking a deep breath and looking back out the window. “He kissed me.”
“Today?”
Willow nodded.
“Damn, Iknewit! I could feel it. It felt so weird when I got home. How was it?”
“Amazing,” she breathed.
“And then what?”
“His sister came home.”
“No! No! Oh, Will. I interrupted you two? Oh no!”
“No, it’s good. It’s for the best. He’s with Faith. Heshouldbe with Faith.”
She covered her half-eaten sandwich with her napkin and took another sip of water, turning her glance back to the window.
Her voice didn’t change as she spoke in a dispassionate whisper, more to herself than to Darcy. “I’m not right for Amory. He’s open and smiling and light andfaith.And I’m battered and used and cynical and gray. He deserves more than me. Don’t you see? He shouldn’t love me, and I shouldn’t love him.”
“Who are you trying to convince?”
“Me,” she answered simply.
“But, Will…” Darcy sighed, offering her friend a sympathetic smile. “Il est déjà tard.”
It’s already too late.
Willow turned her face back to Darcy and nodded, and somewhere in those dark eyes Darcy could see the surrender, and she knew she was right even before Willow admitted it.
“Damn it, Darcy.” She cursed softly. “I know.”
12
Darcy loved the drive south from Carlisle, in the far north of New Hampshire, to Dartmouth, south in Hanover.
The first third of the drive was on Route 114, a rural two-lane highway that wound through some of the prettiest New England towns of New Hampshire, all of which Darcy knew well from her weekly commute over the past ten years. As she made her way further south, she admired the dogwoods and apple blossoms just starting to explode with color. The fields were green and fertile, and the sun shone down brightly on ancient stone walls and cheerful general stores.
But all of that lush spring beauty and rich history was lost on Darcy as her thoughts and feelings courted chaos in her head. Her heart stretched painfully as the distance from Carlisle, from Jack, lengthened. It was as though her heart physically remained in Carlisle while her body traveled south without it, and the tendons and muscles strained against the growing expanse between them. By the time she reached the Moore Reservoir on the Vermont border, she pulled her car over at the North Littleton boat launch for the express purpose of deciding whether or not to turn around and go home.
She looked at her flushed, cherry red cheeks in the rearview mirror, then rolled down her window halfway. The cool, mid-morning air was bracing, and Darcy took a deep breath, soothed by the view of the vast lake before her.
As tears gathered in her eyes, she put her head back against the headrest and went inside.
Darcy.
Darcy.
Darcy.
She could hear Jack’s faraway voice, but the forest was covered in thick mist when she opened her eyes, and the stark monochromatic palette was jarring to her. She rubbed her eyes and sat up straighter against the tree trunk where she found herself. Her legs were crossed in front of her, the edge of her white linen shift just touching her white satin-slippered feet. Her fingers fluttered gently over something soft on the ground by her side, and she looked down to see emerald green moss in spongy bunches, growing out of hard, white granite surrounding the base of the tree. The contrast made her blink. Vibrant green and white in a sea of mist, softness growing effortlessly out of tiny fissures in the rock.Leucobryum,she thought absently, cushion moss.
Darcy hadn’t spoken inside for a long time, but she tried her voice now.
“Jack?” She breathed into the fog, and she saw the letters of his name in silver mist swirl from her mouth, repeating as it dispersed, until the forest echoed softly with his name beforefalling silent, before the silver blended forgotten into the gray around her. “I miss you.”
She watched her words disperse and disappear again.You, you, youuntil it was silent. Almost silent.
