Perhaps. But that was the future. My present concern was the coffee in the kitchen, the garden coming back to life, and the confirmation letter from the Dublin Hotel on my desk. The money had not changed who I was. I was still Margaret Anne Ellis of Carver Street, Columbus, Ohio, still Roland’s wife, still this house’s keeper, but it had changed certain practical limitations, and I intended to use every scent of it well.
Dublin was everything Roland had told me it would be. Green and rainy and full of people who talked to strangers as if they had always known them. I stood at a low stone wall in County Clare looking at the Atlantic and felt him beside me in the way impossible to explain and unnecessary to explain. Because anyone who has loved someone and lost them already knows exactly what I mean. New Zealand was in March.
We saw the fjords. Dorothy cried, then laughed at herself for crying, and I let her do both. Back home, the porch was restored by June. Roland’s design exactly as it had been. The Roland Ellis Scholarship awarded its first grant to a quiet girl named Destiny, who wanted to study marine biology. I shook her hand and told her the man it was named for had also been told what he couldn’t do.
By December, Derek and Cynthia had separated. The anticipation of money that never arrived had exposed fractures that had been there all along. Derek went back to freight driving. Cynthia moved to Cincinnati. I heard this and felt nothing in particular, which was, I think, the most complete form of peace available.
One November evening, I sat on the porch with tea and the last of the season’s light. Someone down the street had already covered their maple tree in holiday lights, which Roland had always considered too early. The lights came on. I drank my tea. I decided to stop objecting. Would you have done what I did? Would you have stood in that conference room and let the facts speak? I hope you never have to find out.
But if this story meant something to you, leave a comment. Tell me what you would have done. Thank you for listening.
