Epilogue: “A Stranger Comes to Town”
Epilogue
“A Stranger Comes to Town”
BLAHBLAH WOULD HAVE APPROVED OF THE SERVICE. IT HAD BEEN
elegant and cheeky and a touch theatrical. Just like her.
They interred her ashes at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, six weeks after she died, and were currently having a garden-party reception at Seasons. Sewanee knew Blah would have wanted to wait that long to be put to rest if it meant more people were able to attend, social butterfly that she’d been.
It had worked.
Marilyn and Stu flew in from the Panama Canal and were chatting with Dan, who was helping Sewanee bartend the event and had just brought them two martinis; Mark was over by the food, telling Alice about the condo he’d found in Costa Rica; Adaku had wrapped the Angela Davis project the previous week and was talking with Mitzi–well, listening to Mitzi–who was still going strong and loud; Henry was on the bench Sewanee had sat on with Nick all those months ago, conversing with Amanda.
Adaku left Mitzi (not that she seemed to notice), took a Mallomar off the massive platter, and came sidling up to Sewanee. She followed her friend’s gaze over to Amanda and Henry and whispered, “Is he making a move?”
Sewanee swatted her.
“What, at least she’s age-appropriate! Progress!”
Sewanee reluctantly laughed as Dan came back, dropped off his tray, and left again to get more ice. The two women quietly assessed the crowd. Adaku hooked her arm into Sewanee’s and murmured, “She would have liked this.”
Sewanee nodded softly.
Adaku gave her a knowing squeeze. It had been a rough six months even before the last two, which had been horrible. But it had also been the most productive time of Sewanee’s life; professionally, personally, emotionally. She could feel everything, including her grief, settling now into a new, consistent normal.
“Sorry about Nick,” Adaku murmured.
Sewanee huffed a forlorn sigh. “Please, don’t remind me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t bring it up, it’s a real sore spot,” a sexy voice said, and they turned to greet it.
He was wearing the suit he’d been wearing in Vegas and the voice that had made him famous. “Maybe his flight wouldn’t have been delayed if he’d flown into Burbank,” he continued, as he came around to stand in front of the bar, “which someone definitely tried to tell him to do.” He beamed down at her. “What a fart-head.”
She reached over the bar and grabbed his face, bringing it to her own. She kissed him half as ardently as she wanted to and threw her arms awkwardly around his neck. He turned his lips to her ear and said, in his normal voice, “I’m so sorry. How are you holding up?”
She swallowed and pulled back. She smiled at him. “Better now.”
With everything going on in each of their lives, they hadn’t been together for the past couple of months, though they’d spoken
nearly every day. In some ways, the distance had brought them closer. But now that he was here, in front of her, she wanted to close the door on everything and everyone else and lose herself in them. First, though: “I see you brought a date.” She turned her attention to the dark-haired man standing next to Nick. “Something you want to tell us?”
“Aren’t you the funny one?” He was back to the Brock voice.
Her laugh broke through as she said, “Jason, I presume?”
The two dimples that appeared on his olive-toned cheeks wrenched an almost imperceptible gasp from Adaku.
Wuh-woh.
“Sewanee.” He held both hands out to her over the bar. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”
She clutched his hands and squeezed. “Finally is right!” The one time she’d gone to New York, they hadn’t left Nick’s apartment; all their other visits had been in L.A. because she hadn’t wanted to leave a deteriorating Blah. By that point, Blah’s original protestations had been forgotten, and Sewanee had been able to have the ending
she’d
wanted with her grandmother. “It was so nice of you to come.” She released his hands and pivoted to Adaku, who already had her palm out, winning smile attached. “This is my best friend, Adaku.”
“Best friends should always meet,” Jason said, taking her hand. “A pleasure.”
“Always,” she parroted. She turned to Nick, cocked an eyebrow. “And hello to you, Mr. McNight. Nice to have you back.”
“Please.” He brought his hand to his chest. “Mr. McNight’s my father. Call me Stiffy.” He turned to Jason, saying, in his own voice, “Okay, I’m done. Never again.”
Jason grinned ear to ear. “I told you not to bet.”
Nick turned back to the women. “We played Choosies on the plane. I lost.”
Jason said to Adaku, “We also listened to Sewanee’s most
recent June project, the one you starred in.” He shook his head, looking a bit awestruck. “Wonderful. You were incredible.”
“Aww,” Adaku cooed. “Thank you.” She hip-bumped Sewanee. “It’s all her brilliant direction.”
Sewanee hadn’t had a chance yet to tell Nick about the Broadway producer who had reached out to Adaku’s people about doing a staged reading/workshop of the project. She’d give him the news later. She had many things to give him later.
Adaku clapped her hands together. “So what can I get you both?” She looked down at the bar. “We have a rum punch and all the martini ingredients available for purchase in this entire city.” Nick said he’d have some punch and Sewanee ladled him a cup.
Jason leaned over to peruse the options. Adaku watched him avidly. “The punch looks great, but I’m sober, so–”
She clapped her hands again. “Ooh I got you covered!” She bent to a box behind the bar. “Do you like grapefruit? I started making this drink when I was in training for a job I ended up not doing, but the drink stuck! It’s . . .”
Sewanee was sure Adaku’s story was absolutely riveting, especially given the way Jason seemed to be hanging on her every word. But she was otherwise engaged. She was staring at Nick. And he at her.
She slipped out from behind the bar, but just as she was about to step into Nick’s embrace, Stu and Marilyn descended upon them, clapping Nick on the back and yanking him into hugs. Sewanee, impatiently patient, waited for what felt like an eternity, as they caught him up on what seemed like every port of call they’d visited in the last eight months. Then Stu said, “Swanners sent us your new song! ‘June’s Bloom,’ right? Terrific. And hey, I’m still waiting for that call to fill in on keys.”
“Anytime.” Through their laugh, Nick caught Stu’s eye and said sincerely, “Cheers, mate.”
Stu answered in kind. “Anytime, Nickster. Anytime.”
“I think it’s my favorite one, Nick. Just beautiful,” Marilyn enthused, hands at her heart. “Is it going on the album?”
More eternity passed. This was cruel and unusual punishment. After Mark had stopped by, and she’d introduced Nick to Henry, and Mitzi had hobbled over to ask him, yet again, if he was single, Sewanee managed to extricate him. She dragged him around the side of the building, took his empty cup, set it on the ground, and pounced on him like a lynx.
After a minute of tender kisses and gently roving hands, he flipped her around until her back was against the wall and things between them, as they were wont to do, turned.
“I want to go,” she breathed.
“But where?”
It was a good question. For the last three months, since Doug Carrey bought Mark’s place, she’d been living in Adaku’s two-bedroom bungalow with the thin walls. But now Adaku was back from filming. She was regretting their decision to invite Nick and Jason to stay with them there this weekend. They should have gotten a hotel.
“Austin?” she suggested, unseriously though desperately.
Nick chuckled. “Six of one.” He and Jason had been living in their producer’s tiny pool house while trying to finish the album.
“I want space,” she whined, against his lips. “Hey. I just inherited some grazing land in Tennessee.”
“Well, maybe that’s where we should moooooooove.”
She laughed fully into his mouth. “But that doesn’t help us right now.”
“True. Back to the problem at hand.”
She smirked. “The problem at hand. You know how I feel about euphemisms.”
Nick brought his hand up between them. The one with the ring on his middle finger. “Who says it was a euphemism?” Then, not taking his eyes off her, he gave the ridge of the ring a familiar lick.
Sewanee’s eye bulged. “Nick! No!” She looked frantically around. They were literally beside a dumpster. In the alley of an old folks’ home.
He didn’t say a word. He kept his gaze on her, as he slid the ring off his finger and reached down–
“Are you insane?!”
–And gently lifted her left hand. It floated up, suspended between them. He slipped his ring onto her fourth finger.
Sewanee’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“I love you,” he said.
“Sposami.”
Her mouth stayed open.
Eventually, he continued. “That’s your cue.”
Sewanee closed her mouth, swallowed. “I love you. I would love to marry you.”
Nick knew the next word all too well. “But?”
“But. You’re seriously proposing to me now?”
“All good Romance novels end with a proposal.”
“But at Blah’s funeral?”
“Can you think of a better way to honor your gran?”
“I . . . you . . .” Sewanee huffed a laugh, dropped her head to his chest, took a breath. She looked up, tears of laughter turning to so much more. “Yes.”
The relief in his eyes. “Yes?” How could he have doubted her answer?
Sewanee grabbed his face and beamed. “Yes.”
They kissed, and some time later Nick pulled back, looking serious. “How do I break it to Mitzi?”
“I think you’re good, I saw her hitting on Jason.”
They kissed some more and then Nick pulled away again. “Hey. You know where we could go?”
“Where?”
She saw the answer in the sparkle of his eyes. Like neon and snow.
Las Vegas.
She intertwined their fingers. “I know a great bar.”
“Or we could find the nearest chapel as you’re obviously mad for me.”
Her heart switched places with her stomach. “Chapel?”
Nick grinned. “We might need some witnesses.”
At that moment, Adaku’s signature guffaw ricocheted around the building and echoed off the dumpster, making them both laugh. “I think we know where we can find them.”
Nick dragged her even closer to him. Giddy, he brushed her hair back, gazed down at her face, searching for anything that wasn’t real. He wouldn’t find it. “Are we really doing this?”
She’d asked him the same question in a text message once, what felt like a lifetime ago.
She answered the same way he had then. “We’re really doing this.”
They kissed once more, and walked back out into the crowd, to their people, to share the news. To see who wanted to continue the party across state lines.
And by the way, in case you’re wondering? At the end of it all, they lived happily ever after.
Six Years Ago
Seven weeks had passed since Nick came home to Prescott.
It felt strange, especially now that both of them were back in the house, Jason fresh from rehab, looking like an alley cat someone had put a bow on. Having them back made her miss them more than when they’d been away. Because she didn’t know these new versions of them. These men.
She sat down at her desk to write the e-mail and recalled how much she’d fought with those two messy, boisterous, stubborn high schoolers. How she’d endured–not gracefully–hearing the same clunky chord progression over and over from the garage. How she’d done her best to tolerate the hours of basketball in the driveway while she tried to write. She’d never realized how much it had meant to her until it was gone. Until it was quiet.
She wanted their noise again. She wanted both boys to reclaim that spirit they’d once struggled to hush whenever she’d walked into the kitchen. A spirit that now seemed permanently damaged. Like her brother when he’d returned from Vietnam, lethargically dragging himself around with wounded stoicism. Until he left again. Permanently.
Sometimes she’d catch herself gazing at Nick, looking for the greasy-haired adolescent happily drying glasses behind the bar in Tom’s pub. Looking for the little boy whose grin was so much like her little sister’s that at times she had to turn away. But all those Nicks had disappeared.
She’d never been good at motherly concern. Her biggest personal failing–as Nick himself had once astutely and angrily pointed out–was that she saved all her emotional investment for her characters. In truth, she wanted another chance. To start over completely. To have the social worker set him down again on her doorstep, him and his ratty Eeyore.
A foolish thought, but one that took her back to memories of the precocious young boy who, a few years after his arrival, began endlessly asking “why” and to her frustrated attempts to answer him. To make him understand what the hell life was all about. Why she was his mother now. Why her sister had died and why she had made the choices that led to that worst possible outcome for him. Why life happened and why you simply had to live with it. Why there were no do-overs. Why we’d love to go back and change things if we could, but we couldn’t.
We didn’t get to live multiple lives and then choose the one we wanted at the end. Sorry.
His seven-year-old answer to all of this, staring her straight in the face, in all seriousness, had been, “Then I better do everything right the first time.”
She’d sent him on a fool’s errand.
And now look at him.
She knew there was no going back for a second chance, but worst of all, there was no going forward for one, either. Nick had stopped asking her why long ago; in fact, he’d stopped listening to her altogether.
So she wrote.
It was the only thing she knew how to do.
To:
Westholme, Sarah
From:
JF Admin
Date:
April 23, 11:51 PM
Subject:
For want of a catchier subject line: HELP
Hello, my dear,
I hope this email finds you well. Hell, I hope this email finds you. It’s been almost a year since we last wrote, since you retired
Sarah Westholme, and I–for the life of me–can’t recall your real name. Perhaps I never knew it? This is my only way of making contact, so I do hope it reaches you.
I’ll get straight to it (you certainly know by now that’s my way): I have a request. More to the point, a rather embarrassing request.
I will put you immediately at ease, this isn’t a solicitation. (Though you know all you have to do is say the word and I’ll give you as much work as you want.) No, I’m afraid this is a personal matter.
I have a nephew. I was given the chore of raising him. I use the word “chore” because I have never been good at taking care of anyone other than myself. A sad fact I now live with.
He’s a good man (for which I take no credit). He has found himself kneed in the balls by life; repeatedly and recently. There are men I have known who deserve that. He is not one of them.
You once shared with me, quite early on, your own horrible circumstance. His return home has brought your accident to the forefront of my mind. Did you find your way back? Are you at peace with it? Have you accepted it? Do you feel whole again? I truly hope so, and if so, I must know how. He must know how.
Now comes the embarrassing request: may I put you in touch with him? I think it would help. Him. You? Please understand, I’m not matchmaking here. Call it writer’s intuition. Hell, call it whatever you want, roll your eyes at my meddling, both of you, I don’t care, so long as you connect with him.
Completely off topic, he might make a good narrator. He has an amusing voice he does in jest which if he ever took half-seriously could be quite good. But that’s not my purpose in writing nor should you consider it relevant. Perhaps just a conversation starter?
I save groveling for my books, but short of that: Please talk to him. Listen to him. I’ve failed at both and here we are.
I realize you may never see this. If I don’t hear back from you, I’ll find another way.
Ciao,
June