Page 86 of His Best Friend's Baby

“But I don’t want to end it this way,” he said.

“Well, I don’t want to end it, so neither of us are happy.” She pushed past him and crept into the room. She packed as quietly as she could, hoping to keep Ben asleep.

When she crept back out, Jesse was still there. She walked past him with her packed suitcase and diaper bag.

She resolved at that moment, setting her son’s diaper bag on the ground by the door, that her life would no longer be dictated by anyone else. Her life as a leaf in other people’s streams was over.

She was here in New Springs and she would stay. Make a life for herself. She had friends. A job she loved. And she would not pine after Jesse Filmore. She would not create dreams of what her life might have been if he’d loved her as much as she loved him.

She brushed the hair from her eyes and marveled at how calm she felt. No tears. No hysteria. A bone-deep pain radiated through her body, but she could manage it. She could manage her own pain far more than she could handle Jesse’s.

She turned and found him watching her, looking like a man being stretched past endurance.

She smiled tremulously. “Good luck to you, Jesse.”

“Julia—” He gasped, reaching for her.

She shook her head and held up her hand to stop him. If he touched her, this equilibrium might rupture like a popped balloon.

“I am so glad that our paths crossed again.” She swallowed. “I hope that you find some happiness in San Diego. I hope—” She took a big breath of air, seeing so clearly what Jesse was too pained to see. “I hope you can forgive yourself for those things that happened to you that were out of your control. I hope you can forgive yourself for Mitch and those men in the crash.”

“My forgiveness seems pretty irrelevant,” he said, his voice low and broken. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not going to tell you that, Jesse.” Her brain, ignored for too long in these sorts of decisions, overruled her heart. “I won’t have you come stumbling back into my life. I can’t take it. My heart is pretty battered.” She tried to smile, but couldn’t.

She could see the effect of the accident on his body, on his entire life, like a bullet wound. It was as clear as all the mistakes she had made. They were two people crashing into each other, propelled by human error, bad luck and disaster. She’d been foolish to think they stood a chance.

Risking terrible trauma, she reached out and stroked his face one last time, reveling in the rough grosgrain of his beard. “You deserve better,” she whispered, a terrible echo of his words to her a million years ago. A car honked outside and she gathered her son, her heart and every dream she’d ever hung on Jesse Filmore before setting out to make her own way.

AS MUCH AS Julia wished she could reject it, or put it in the bank and never touch it, the insurance check was a godsend. A hundred thousand dollars. More money than she’d ever seen in her life. She was dumbfounded by that much money. She put most of it in trust for Ben and his future. With the rest she was going to buy a house. Something small, maybe a new one out by the rec center. But she didn’t want to rush into anything. So she spent one night at the Motel 6 and then she moved to a two-bedroom apartment, close to the nursery, with south-facing windows and a view of the mountains.

She bought some furniture with Amanda and Rachel’s help. They hung curtains and shelves and told Mac where to put the new overstuffed chair she loved along with the rest of the heavy furniture. The entire time all of them avoided mentioning Jesse’s name. But he was there, hovering in the air around them. He was in Rachel’s sad eyes, and Mac’s slightly bent shoulders. They had all been defeated by the stubborn grip Jesse kept on his pain. They were a survivor’s group.

She ordered pizza for everyone as a thank-you and they sat at her new kitchen table and ate off her new-to-her plates.

“Your house rocks, Julia,” Amanda said and Julia lifted her glass of Sprite, triumphant.

“I’ll drink to that.”

Ben, sitting in a booster seat, lifted his hands high over his head, as if his cheerful toddler soul that kept Julia on her feet when she wanted to curl up and die had grown, was in fact growing, filling the room. Their new house.

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