Three Months Later
“Thanks, Nana.” I smile at her.
I could almost fool myself with the glimmer of genuine peace in my smile. It’s been good for me, this past three months with her.
Like coming home.
“Here.” I bring out the gift I hid by the side of the sofa earlier and hand it to her.
“What’s this? We’ve had Christmas?” Her eyes light up as she tears off the paper.
“I know. But this is something to enjoy in January. You always complain it’s so long, cold, and dark.”
“Oh, Maria, love!” She grins and strokes her hand over the half-naked male on the book cover. “You know I love TL Swan. She’s my favorite.”
“I know.” I smile back. “Look inside.”
She turns to the first page and her mouth drops open.
“How on earth did you—? Did she send this all the way from Australia?” Nana turns the book over in her hands, her face glowing.
“She was doing a signing in New York before I left.”
New York.
I swallow the lump in my throat, forcing it away. I need to be able to speak about New York and not immediately think of him.
“Oh, love. This is wonderful! Thank you so much! A signed copy! And done in person for my granddaughter. This really is the best gift.”
The joy on her face warms my chest, thawing a small chip away from the frozen lump that’s lived there for the last three months.
“And there’s another one on the way. To replace the one you sent me.”
Nana reaches over and grabs my hand. I felt so guilty when she told me she had sent her favorite signed copy for me to read when I was in New York. Only, it didn’t arrive before I left and it’s never been returned to sender, despite having her England address on the packet. It must have gotten lost somewhere.
I smile sadly.
She told me it was a love story about two troubled souls who find one another. Now it’s lost somewhere between here and New York.
Oh, the irony.
“Well, it just so happens, I have something for you, too.” Nana grins at me and produces a small box from beside her.
“What?”
She chuckles. “Like Nana, like granddaughter. I have some tricks up my sleeve too, you know?”
I shake my head with a smile as I take the box from her and lift the lid. She was always doing things like this when I was a child. Surprising me with the most thoughtful gifts. She has the biggest heart I’ve ever known.
“I don’t understand. What is all of this?”
My fingers graze the envelopes, a giant pile of them, all with the same mailing stamp.
New York.
Nana reaches over and pats my arm. “This is your story, love. I waited until you were strong enough, and now I see you are. It’s the new year, and it’s time for you to decide how the next chapter goes.”
“I don’t understand.” I look at her and her eyes are misty, filled with all the wisdom and knowledge only living a life as full as hers can give.
“You will.” She pats my arm again. “Read them all in order and you’ll understand.”
Then she stands and smiles at me once more before leaving the room and closing the door gently behind her.
I look back into the box and take out the first envelope. They’re all in date order. This one being the oldest, sent a few days after I left New York.
I pull out the letter and something drops out, landing in my lap. I laugh out loud at the words on the paper napkin from The Songbird’s new coffee deli.
Latte sisters—they taste better with you.
I unfold the letter and read Harley’s words. It’s addressed to Vera, my nana. Harley says she found her book delivery when she was sorting out my old apartment. It obviously made it there, after all. She says how she misses me, and that Will, Suze, and Earl all do too.
She wouldn’t have known I was here when she wrote this. I never told her where I was going.
The thought makes warmth swell in my chest. Harley wrote to my nana just to make a friend. That’s Harley all over. A sweet chatterbox.
She talks about things being quieter without me, but that she understands why I needed to leave. She doesn’t mention Griffin, only to say that when he read our envelope with all the evidence about Emily in, he went to see her, and it all came out. She confessed to everything and is a lot sicker than any of us realized. She’s getting the help she needs now, though. Griffin has seen to it and is paying for the best medical care for her.
I move to the next letter. It’s obvious my nana has written back, as Harley asks her what she thought of the big twist in chapter twenty. I smile. Harley’s been converted to the steamy books Nana reads and is enjoying the one she sent over. This letter, though, contains a printout from a small, local paper outside of New York. There’s Gwen, and a man called Rick holding a newborn baby, their wide grins bursting with happiness for the camera.
I clasp my hand to my mouth as tears blur my eyes.
The rest of Harley’s letter says Gwen came to Griffin and they had a talk, and that Gwen has just had a baby with her childhood lover that she reunited with.
Harley knew I saw Gwen with Griffin that night. I left her some garbled, emotional voicemail on my way to the airport about how he was moving on and I was happy for him. She must have told Nana in the hope she would pass the news on.
Maybe she thought I needed to know that he wasn’t moving on?
My shoulders drop. It changes nothing. I still had to leave. We would still have been over, whether or not the baby had been his.
My stomach squeezes. A part of me is happy he isn’t starting a family with Gwen. But a larger part sinks.
He isn’t having a new start. How is he really doing?
I put the letter back into the envelope and move on.
The next one has a photograph inside.
A laugh escapes my lips and I shriek out loud at the photograph. A fancy state-of-the-art pigeon coop has been erected down the side alleyway of The Songbird. Earl is standing proudly underneath it and the words ‘Dandy Residences’ are on a brass plaque above the little entry hole.
I clutch my chest as a wave of emotion rolls through it.
He did this.
Only he would call it that.
I grab the next envelope and whip out the letter, scanning it as fast as I can.
Broken, withdrawn, thrown himself into new projects.
Harley’s talking about Griffin. How he’s working longer and longer days, pushing himself to do everything and more. He’s hired a new spa manager, a man who comes highly recommended from another hotel in Boston. And he’s been investing heavily in new partnerships with The Songbird and a new charity.
Maybe he thinks he needs to replace all the lost funding Emily’s galas used to provide now that she’s no longer running them.
I move on to the next letter, and it contains a press release detailing an exciting new conservation project backed by The Songbird hotel in New York. There’s a picture of Griffin standing in front of a coconut palm shaking hands with Ken.
I scan down the text and almost faint at the amount of money which has been pledged to protect and breed The Bahama Oriole birds.
He’s done all this?
I move on again. Harley’s excitement leaps off the page in her words as she tells my nana about a team building day the staff went on. The theme was trust, and it was all about trusting one another and trusting yourself.
There are photographs of Griffin again, all suited, dark hair styled perfectly, looking every inch the handsome billionaire hotelier that he is.
I bite my lip at the stunning image he makes.
He’s smiling, his blue eyes bright. But I know those eyes. They’re not glittering the way I know they can.
Like two blue diamonds.
He’s still hurting, I just know it. And seeing it here in front of me has my fingers trembling, tears racing down my cheeks as I continue reading.
Letter after letter, Harley talks about Griffin. About how she’s never seen anyone look at me the way he did. Never seen him as happy as when I was there. And never seen him as lost as he has been since I left. She says she eventually admitted to him where I was once my nana confessed I was staying with her, but that he said some cryptic spiel about how you can’t cage a bird.
Am I the bird? Does he think coming after me is caging me? Is that why he hasn’t come?
There are more letters and photographs. All incredible achievements that The Songbird is making.
All incredible things Griffin has done.
The next letter has me choking back a sob.
Griffin posted my bail.
Harley says he even got Reed to help pull some strings at the New York Mayor’s office to apply some pressure to get me out quickly. The police wanted to keep me in, question me further. But Griffin wouldn’t hear of it.
He did everything he could to get me out of there.
Even though he thought I was guilty, he still held on to a tiny thread of hope, whether consciously or not.
And he helped Earl. Gave him money—a lot of money—to help gather evidence to prove my innocence.
He did it all.
He knew I was innocent.
Deep down, he knew. He just needed to allow himself to believe it.
He needed to trust.
I look inside the box. There’s just one envelope left, dated yesterday.
Once I open it, that’s it. All of them gone.
My final peek into his life is over.
I open the thick padded envelope.
It contains a small packet and a note.
This one is in different handwriting… handwriting that the sight of alone is enough to make my throat burn.
I open the note first, unfolding it carefully.
Maria, no amount of I’m sorrys will ever be enough. But I will say it until my tongue bleeds if that’s what it takes for you to believe me. I was stupid. Fucking stupid. I should have trusted my heart, Sweetheart. It will only ever be you. Forgive me… please. Be mine forever, because I’ve been yours since the first moment I saw you. Griff.
I tip the packet upside down, and something drops into my palm. A small, perfect shell, so unique because of its ocean blue center.
The same color as his eyes.
He kept it.
I sob, letting every tear carry out a piece of hurt with it as I stare at the shell I found that day at the cove with him. That was the first time I saw him for who he truly is, underneath the suits, behind the cool, calculated businessman.
My Griffin.
The man who owns my heart and soul.
The man I don’t know if I can live without.
Survive, yes, but live? Really live?
I stopped doing that the second I lost him.
“Maria?” Nana pokes her head around the door.
“Nana,” I sob, looking back into her kind eyes. “All the things he did before I left… and since… he—”
“I know, love.” She smiles at me, and I want to run to her, feel her familiar, comforting arms around me.
But I can’t.
I’m glued to the spot as she holds out another envelope to me.
“I’m not sure I can take another one.” I sniff, smiling sadly at her.
“You’re strong, Maria. You can do whatever you set your mind to. You always could. And I will support you in whatever decision you make. But no one’s perfect. We all make mistakes. And I know genuine remorse when I hear it. That man is haunted by his regrets, my love.”
“You’ve spoken to him?” My voice shakes.
“More than once. He’s a stubborn so-and-so.” She chuckles. “The number of times he wanted to come over here once Harley finally admitted this was where you were. But I told him no.”
“Griffin wanted to come here?” I stare at her as my heart lifts in my chest.
I said before there was an empty hole there. But time with my nana has slowly made me realize, my heart wasn’t gone. It was just bruised so badly that it was hiding in the shadows. Her love and time helped coax it back a little at a time, back into the light.
“He did. But you weren’t ready.”
She sits next to me and wraps a warm arm around my shoulders. I lean into her familiar scent—lavender and sugar—and allow her to hold me.
“He’s a man who knows what he wants. But I needed to be sure that you were healed enough to know what you want. I saw your pain.” She squeezes me tighter. “I knew you wouldn’t speak to him until you were ready, and he had to accept that. You’re just as stubborn as him.” She chuckles again.
“And now?” I ask as I hold the piece of paper from inside the envelope between my fingers, its tiny form seeming like the heaviest weight in the world.
Holding so much promise and so much hurt in the few words held inside.
The words that begin the next chapter.
The one only I can write.
“And now, it’s your decision to make.” Nana rubs her hand up and down my arm, over the goosebumps that have covered my skin.
I unfold the paper, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth as I read the words.
This is it.
My decision.
