This was something she’d never said to anyone, not the therapist she’d seen for a year, not the police, not the hospital staff — not a single person. Why was she saying it now — to a stranger? Maybe because it was easier to speak with him, someone she knew she wouldn’t see again when this thing between them was over.
It wasn’t a matter of if, but of when it would end.
“It’s Christmas. Why don’t you open this?” he asked as he grabbed a small package and wiped away the dust covering the tag, showing her name clearly written in her mother’s beautiful calligraphy.
“I can’t,” she said, though she took the package from his fingers.
“She would want you to have it.”
“How do you know that? What if she just wants to be home, wants to celebrate the next fifty Christmases with her family, like she’s supposed to?”
“I know she would want you to have it, because if I had a child and I died, I would watch over that kid from above, smile when they triumphed and cry when they fell. I would want my child to go on, no matter what happened. That’s all any decent parent wants for their kids.”
“Do you have kids?” Kyla asked, turning to look at Tanner, really look at him.
He paused. “No, I don’t.” He decided not to add that he probably never would, either.
Kyla looked down at the package, and she suddenly felt herself undoing the paper. Inside, shining up at her from a bed of velvet, was a gold heart-shaped locket with a smaller heart carved into its front.
Her fingers shaking, she opened the locket and found, staring back at her, a tiny picture of her family, one of the photos they’d had taken a month before the accident. On the opposite side was an engraved message: We love you forever and always, Love Mom and Dad.
Kyla smiled and sobbed and laughed at the same time as she closed the locket and struggled to open the clasp on its chain. Tanner gently eased it from her fingers and placed it around her neck.
“How can I go on?” she asked, her mouth trembling as her fingers clutched the golden heart, which rested near her own.
“You have to for your parents’ and your brother’s sake. They wouldn’t want you to mourn them so deeply for this long. They would want you to cry, to say goodbye and then to remember them always. They would want you to live life to the fullest so the beautiful daughter and sister they loved can do all the things they wanted you to do. Weren’t they happy when you succeeded?”
“Yes, my mother was my biggest cheerleader. I would call her almost every day once I moved into the dorms — after a date, after a hard test, after every little milestone. I also came home every chance I got, and she came to visit often. She was my mom and my best friend.”
“Then don’t you think it would tear her apart to know how much you’ve given up?”
Kyla thought about his words. Yes. It would rip her mother apart. She would understand that Kyla needed to mourn her family’s death, but she wouldn’t understand Kyla giving up living altogether. Kyla knew she had been mourning too long now.
“Thank you, Tanner. Thank you so much. I need to be here alone. I know I asked you to come, but I want to be home for a while, to feel close to my family. You can go back to the apartment now. I appreciate that you came, but I need to do this.”
“Are you sure, Kyla? I don’t know if I should leave you here feeling like this.”
“I’m fine, Tanner. I need to say goodbye.” For the first time in two years she believed that she would be okay.
“Then I’ll respect that. But…”
“What, Tanner?”
“I know this isn’t the time…”
Kyla looked at him levelly. “Just tell me please.”
“I’ve had a wonderful time with you during the last three weeks; more than you could possibly imagine, and that’s saying a lot for me. I don’t normally spend so much time with one person – one woman, more specifically. And I need you to know that your memory will always be special to me. But you’re right that I don’t belong in that apartment building. And I really don’t belong to anyone.”
“And?”
“I don’t believe I ever will. If I keep seeing you, I’d just lead you on.”
“I understand, Tanner. And don’t worry about it. If I can say goodbye to my parents and my brother, I can surely say goodbye to you at the same time.”
Tanner stood up and helped her to her feet as he wrapped his arms around her. “Goodbye, Kyla,” he said before leaning down and kissing her.
She tried to say it back, but the word wouldn’t come out through her tight throat. It didn’t matter. From the first moment she’d felt the connection with Tanner, she’d also known he would never be hers to hold.
Would she ever see him again, even once? When he let go, something inside of her knew this was the last time, that when she returned to the apartment building, he’d be long gone. His eyes looked regretful, but they also looked determined. She could change her mind, plead for him not to leave, but she’d known exactly how this affair would end. She’d known all along that he wasn’t a person who fit into her world.
He said nothing else as he turned and left her alone in the family room. The sound of the front door opening and closing had such finality. Kyla sat back down in front of her dead Christmas tree and she wept for the last time, saying her final goodbye to her family and also to the stranger who’d come into her life to help her heal and who had left just as quietly and just as quickly as he’d shown up. Maybe he hadn’t even been real at all.
Chapter Twenty-Six
This is the life, Tanner thought as he kicked back with a sixty-year-old scotch and looked at the snow falling outside the huge picture windows of his penthouse living room.
Home. There was no better place to be. At least there were no rodents scurrying across his floors. There were no drunks yelling outside his door, no broken water pipes or faulty heaters, and he didn’t have to worry that some scumbag was going to come rushing through his door and demand money or drugs.
So why was he tense? Why was the ludicrously expensive liquor practically choking him? Why couldn’t he get one woman’s face from his mind? Because that place had made him temporarily insane.
Tanner stood up. He set his empty glass on the end table and paced his pristine floors, replaying the last few weeks over and over again. He’d hated being Santa, yet he couldn’t erase the image of Billy asking for his parents back, saying what a good boy he would be.