Before Ever After (41 page)

A fortress of cypress on the horizon caught Shelley’s attention. She inhaled sharply. She pointed in its direction. “Over there.”

The rugged man behind the helm nodded. He smelled as salty as the
lagoon he made his living on. He steered the boat toward the crumbling dock.

Shelley stuffed the sandwich into the back pocket of her jeans and climbed onto the walkway.

“Should I wait for you?” the man asked.

“No,” Shelley said. The boat sped away.

She shivered. She turned her collar up against the sea wind and shoved her hands deep into her pockets, jostling the hard-boiled eggs. The wooden planks creaked as she made her way to the shore. Not much had changed, she thought. She took another step forward. Her foot shot through a gap in the walkway. She stumbled forward and grabbed onto a post, then pulled herself up and rolled back onto the dock. Her sandwich talisman smashed into a pulp under her weight. She groaned. Still, squished chicken salad was better than nothing.

The path was overgrown with wiry branches and shrubbery. Shelley pushed her way through. The caretakers had stopped coming to the island when Max died. They had never forgiven her for stealing their boat despite her profuse apologies and the Christmas cards she sent them every year. She had not bothered to replace them and now had several sufficiently arduous minutes of getting snagged and scratched along the bristling path to regret this decision. She emerged from the thicket with a nest of twigs and leaves hopelessly entangled in her hair. She pulled off what she could, thankful that there weren’t any house-hunting seagulls in the vicinity.

The moonlit courtyard opened in front of her, opalescent like a fading dream. Alex looked paler than she remembered. She took a breath and walked across the mosaic chicken. Her shoe scraped against a hole where a loose tile had been. Her heart stopped, then began racing.

Shelley reached the threshold of the main house. She dug into her pockets for a key and unlocked the door. She ran her hand across the wall, feeling around for the light switch.

A Murano glass chandelier sparkled to life. A prism of colors fell over
the room, and Shelley narrowed her eyes at what she was seeing or, rather, what she was not.

Unlike the dock’s familiar state of disintegration, in this room everything had changed. The grinning jade Buddha was not smiling at her from his temple of vinyl records. Fabergé eggs and ancient armory no longer littered the floor. The marble floor glistened. The maze of Max’s past was gone.

Shelley felt colder. She blew into her hands and rubbed them together.

She walked to the foot of the stairs and looked up. She gripped the carved wooden banister and braced herself for the climb.

Every step sent a sharp pain shooting through her body. Shelley stumbled over the last step and crumpled to the floor. She lay on her back and waited for the world to come into focus. It never did. Her vision remained blurred like a fogged-up window. But what she did see was enough to let her know that she was now just a few feet away from her destination. At the end of the hallway was the room she had fled from a lifetime ago. Behind its wooden door was what she had come to find. She picked herself up and dragged her numb feet toward the door. It was ajar. She peeked through.

The wrought-iron bed lay in a pool of moonlight, white cotton sheets draping over it like frosting. The pillow on which she had laid her head five years ago remained slightly rumpled. It was exactly the same.

He was exactly the same.

Max’s face was nestled next to her empty pillow. He still slept on his side of the bed, Shelley thought. She pressed her frozen palm against her heaving chest. She walked to the bed, emptied her pockets on the nightstand, and undressed. She climbed into the bed and slipped under the warmth of Max’s arms, melting into every curve of his body.

“Shelley …” he whispered into her nape.

Her name. His voice. It was a marriage of sound and meaning that she thought she would never hear again. She turned to Max and saw that he was still asleep. She began to cry. Hot drops fell on the back of his hand. He stirred from his dream.

“Max …” Shelley’s heart broke in her voice.

Max reached out to touch her face. “Shelley, you look so real.”

She wondered if any of this was real. Her vision remained blurry. The room was fading into mist and only Max’s arms around her kept her from flitting through the window. She heard Max calling her back.

“Are you?”
Max asked.

The pain in Shelley’s chest was greater now. She dove into Max’s eyes, searching for some place where it did not hurt. She had to say something—anything—while she still could. “Max,” she said, “you … cleaned the house.”

“Well, um, yes,” he said. “I did. It was making me sneeze.”

Shelley winced through another wave of slicing pain.

Max looked at her worriedly. “Are you hurt?”

“I was,” she said. “Not anymore.” There was no part of her body that was not in pain, but she was not lying to Max. Max’s death hurt. Learning he was alive hurt. But finding him and lying in his arms—that did not hurt at all.

“Shelley …”

“Max, please,” Shelley said. “No more words.” She pressed her lips against his, and for a moment she forgot the pain.

Max kissed her back.

And then there were no words spoken between them for a long time.

A very long time.

Max and Shelley caught their breath, gasping from all the words they didn’t exchange.

“I never wanted to leave you, Shelley.” He rolled on his back. “You don’t know how many times I had to stop myself from going back. One time I even got as far as your doorstep. I knocked …”

Shelley’s breath caught in her throat.

“But you weren’t home.”

She regretted for the second time in as many weeks that she had not listened to Brad and hired a butler.

“I was glad,” Max said.

Shelley’s heart crumpled. “Why?”

He cupped her face in his hands and gently ran his thumbs over her cheeks. He wiped away her tears.

“I wanted you to be happy.”

“I wasn’t.” She looked away.

“In time you would have learned to be.”

“Like you?” Shelley asked. “In your little café in the Philippines?”

Max took a deep breath. “Did you see the water, Shelley?”

“The water?”

“Around the island,” he said. “Did you notice the color of the sea?”

Shelley remembered the aquamarine that had lapped against Manny’s outrigger.

Max tilted her chin to face him. “It is the color of your eyes,” he said. “It was the reason I hid there. I built a home on a cliff so that whenever I felt selfish enough to return to you, I would look out onto the water, see the peace in your eyes … and find the will not to disturb it.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Until Paolo found you.”

“Yes.” Max sat up in bed. “And I knew it was just a matter of time before he found you, too—whether or not I had asked him to.”

“What do you mean?”

“No one wants to be alone,” he said. “Paolo would have eventually sought you out to share the burden of his discovery. That’s why I decided that the kindest way for both of you to learn the truth was … at the same time. He needed the context only you could provide, and you needed to come to see the truth in all that I had already told you.” He swallowed. “But there was also another reason.”

Shelley stiffened. She pulled the sheet over her breasts.

“I would not have admitted it then,” Max said, “but deep inside I knew that I had asked Paolo to find you as much for my sake—if not more. I realized, however, that if I ever saw you again, saying farewell would never have been an option.”

“And so you came,” Shelley said, “here.”

Max nodded. “But how did you know where I was?”

“You told me,” she said.

“Told you?”

“In your letter,” she said. “You wrote that this place is your sanctuary.” The pain caught up with her. Shelley clutched her chest and cried out. She rolled to her side.

“What’s wrong, luv? Are you all right?” Max sat up and switched on the lamp on the bedside table. A sliver of metal flashed in the light. The silver vial lay next to the eggs and the rest of the contents of Shelley’s pockets. “Shelley”—his voice was laced with panic—“what is this?”

“A snack?” She smiled weakly. The pain was subsiding now, like a rip that had reached its end. She was drifting away.

“No.” Max snatched up the vial. “What is
this
?” He tore its silver cap off. It was empty. “What have you done?” His face crumpled with despair.

“I made my choice.” Shelley saw a table set before her, and she was being called to sit in front of it. “Gestrin … he was … very helpful.” Her voice was growing fainter with each word.

“No!” Max cried. “Shelley! Why did you do this?”

“It will work.” She took his face in her cold hands. “It has to.”

Max pulled her hands off his face and held her by the shoulders. “When did you take the poison? You need a doctor—”

“No, please,” Shelley said. “This is what I want.”

“You would kill yourself … on the word of a madman for the chance to live forever?”

“No, not for … ever, Max,” she said. “For you. I would die to live for … you.”

He was sobbing now. “You didn’t have to do this. I would have stayed …”

“But I wouldn’t have,” Shelley said. “I don’t want to ever have to leave you, Max.”

“But that’s what you’re doing now.” Max’s voice shook with fear and grief.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You’re dying, Shelley.”

“I am,” she said. “But I will make the right choice in the end. I already made it once before.”

“I don’t understand …” Tears streamed down his face.

“You made me a widow. I’ve already been torn in half. I chose to live then. I know I can do it again,” Shelley said. “I’m just very … tired … right now …” She closed her eyes. “Let me sleep … just for a little … while.”

Max gathered her to him. She was growing limp in his arms, but her face remained full of hope. He kissed the secret spot behind her ear. “Good night, luv.”

“Good night, Max.” Shelley curled into a ball against him.

He pulled her closer. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Breakfast?” Shelley asked. Her voice was barely a whisper. Time was slowing. There were cards being laid before her, pictures of places. Faces. She saw her mother, Paolo, Brad, Max … but not her own.

“Yes,” Max said, “for tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Shelley was beginning to forget what the word meant. She just wanted to sleep. She was so tired. She nuzzled closer to Max. A blank Scrabble tile brushed her cheek.

Tomorrow, she remembered, from the Old English
to morgenne
, dative of
morgen
or “morning.” Written as two words until the sixteenth century and then as “to-morrow” until early in the twentieth century. “To morning.” Shelley repeated the words in her head. To morning—this was the direction she needed to go in. She found the strength to speak. “It’s Sunday tomorrow,” she said. “Do you have to ask?”

“Baked eggs and cheese it is, luv,” Max said, “and tea …”

Jasmine
.

It was not Shelley Gallus’s top choice for her last thought, but it would have to do. She wondered if there was still time to say it out loud.

A
sprig of tarragon lay next to broken eggshells on the counter. In the oven, cheese melted into cream. The kettle whistled, calling to a chipped floral teacup waiting patiently on a picnic table set for two. It was Sunday morning.

I have now come to the part of the book that I believe is the hardest to write. It is difficult because I know that I will never be able to come up with the words to sufficiently express my gratitude to all the people who have helped to put this book in your hands.

The first ones that I will fail miserably to thank enough are my family.

Grandma, you never got tired of playing with me when I was little and because of you a part of me will always be the five-year-old who believes in fairy tales.

Dad, this novel is here because you taught me that things happen twice—first in our minds, second in reality. (So if you feel that you’ve read this before, you know why.)

Mom, you are the true author of this book. The journey toward
Before Ever After
began when you told me stories about elephants that loved ice cream and little engines that could. It continued when you bought the “newspapers” I made and told me that my imaginary mice were brilliant. Finally, you patiently read Max and Shelley’s story far more times than the safety limit set by the International Proofreaders Union until it became fit for human consumption. All the dotted i’s, crossed t’s, and well-placed commas of this book thank you from the bottom of their Times New Roman hearts.

Vince, you braved the first draft of this book and showed me the importance of happy endings.

Derek and Trina, you challenged me to write a book that you would read. Here it is. No skimming allowed. There will be a quiz later.

Second, I would like to thank my wonderful circle of friends, both online and off, who have been so generous with their time, support, and happy-dancing bananas. Rez, PV, Pinky, Dino, Johnny, Cathy, Tina, Jebot, Rochelle, Fino, Mutya, Jinggoy, Kris and Jake, thank you so much for enduring countless dinners with me where the menu often featured my endless writing rants and rambles as the starter, main course, and dessert. To my blogger friends and AW family, thank you for sharing this journey with me. Virtual hugs feel just as warm as real ones. Bopet and Cecile, you rock. The photos you shared for the book’s trailers were incredible. Reich, my fellow happy camper, I will never forget the “real” Slight Detour we took together. There’s no one else I would have rather spent a homeless night on a bridge with. And for the record, I owe you a gyro.

My deepest gratitude also goes out to my amazing agent, Stephanie Kip Rostan. Steph, you were the first person who did not share my last name to fall in love with Max and his chickens. Thank you for staying up late to finish reading his story and for believing from day one that it was worth sharing with the world.