When she rolled up her sleeves and poured her creativity, her matchless energy, into building a business together we can be proud of.
When she gave me our children and became a mother who made magic, who held up everyone else, carried the world on her shoulders with infinite grace. Even when she fell, shestayed; when everything urged her to give up and go, shestayedfor us, and she fought until she found herself again.
I’ve fallen in love with the warrior woman who walked through fire, the one who came through stronger, reshaped by sorrow, reformed by grief, reborn in joy.
I think of her today with her small fist over my heart. She stood bravely in front of me asking that I take her back. Offering me the chance to have everything that really matters again—my home, my family, mywife. She offered it all to me on a platter, and I basically tossed it back in her face.
Panic rings a bell in my head and the sound of my own blood rushes in my ears like an alarm. The walls I’ve built to contain my feelings are falling. It’s not a wrecking ball that starts the demolition. It begins with a tremor, a realization that love happens in the fragile context of our mortality. That love and life occur just beyond the reach of our control. There is only one letter of difference betweenloveandlose, and somewhere along the way, for me they became synonymous. I understand now that something broke in me after my parents died that somehow healed wrong, and I started measuring how much I loved people in terms of how much it would hurt to lose them.
Once the first brick topples, they all begin to loosen and collapse. It feels like every hurt, all the grief of a lifetime, falls on me in one landslide of emotion. In seconds, I’m standing in the ruins of all the things I thought would keep me safe from ever losing something precious again. It’s cathartic, this release and relief. It hollows out a trench inside me for waves of dammed pain to pass through.
The tissue Dr. Musa thrusts in my direction like a white flag startles me, and I look at him, confused.
“What’s that for?” I ask, my voice emerging like gravel.
He nods to my face with a faint smile. “For the tears.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Yasmen
In the kitchen alone, I assemble the ingredients for Byrd’s homemade mac and cheese. The uneven scrawl of her handwriting on the page of her old notebook blurs through the scrim of tears over my eyes. I don’t think I’ve gone ten minutes without crying since Josiah walked out the door a few hours ago.
“Dinner,” I say, swiping my cheeks with an impatient hand. “I’m going to make a meal for my children that they probably won’t eat because that’s just the kind of masochist I am.”
Haven’t I had my share of humiliation for the day? Or do I think I might top throwing myself at my ex-husband, begging him to move back in, declaring my undying love for him…and watching him storm from the room without a word? Because I suspect that will take the prize.
“Elbow noodles, cheese, milk, eggs, salt and pepper to taste.”
I mutter the ingredients under my breath over and over like an incantation I wish could summon Byrd here. Or at least call on her wisdom, because I’ve messed things up so badly, I don’t know what to do. If the ingredients are the prayer, the steam rising from the boiling pot of noodles is the incense and this kitchen a temple where I would sacrifice just about anything to have her here with me right now.
“I miss you so much, Byrd,” I say, licking the tears from my lips. “Still.”
On my wedding day, she said, “I love you like a daughter, Yasmen, but if you hurt my boy, I’mma whoop your ass.”
I laugh through my tears, leaning my elbows on the kitchen island and dropping my head into my hands.
“Sorry I let you down,” I whisper. “I’d take that ass whooping just to have you back for a little while. I promise I’m trying to fix it, but it may be too late. You know how he is, though. As stubborn as I am.”
I close the recipe notebook. At this rate, we won’t eat before ten o’clock. Delivery then. I grab my phone and pull up a delivery app, hoping to find something we haven’t eaten recently. I’m ordering Mexican when a key turns in the lock of the back door and it opens. My jaw almost unhinges when Josiah fills the doorway. We stare at each other in elastic seconds that stretch into an endless silence. I’m mummified. Wrapped in a dozen reactions at once that paralyze me. I can’t move or speak.
“Hey,” he finally says. “Sorry I left like that.”
I blink at him and nod because it’s okay. He’s here and it’s okay.
“Just wondering,” he says, dragging a suitcase in behind him and into the kitchen. “If your offer still stands.”
“Yeah,” I croak out. “You mean my offer to…that if you want…we can…you could—”
“Come home,” he says, saving me from babbling for another twelve seconds. “I just grabbed the one suitcase. Figure I can get the rest later, and I know I have at least one pair of shoes here.”
“Oh, my God.” I cover my mouth, but hysterical laughter spills through my fingers. “I cannot believe I told you that.”
“I’m glad you did. You put all your cards on the table and held nothing back. I needed that from you, but I’m just sorry that in the moment I couldn’t do the same. I had a lot to process.”
It’s surreal that he’s here and saying he’ll come home. As the reality of him being here sinks in, my stomach somersaults and my heart beats so loud and hard, all the blood rushes to my head. My knees literally go weak, and I collapse onto the stool at the counter. My shoulders slump with what feels like years of relief. He crosses the room in a few steps, coming to stand between my legs, gripping me by the waist. He frowns and frames my face with his hands, thumbs skimming my damp cheeks.
“Your eyes are puffy,” he says, leaning down to drop a kiss on each eyelid. “I’m sorry I made you cry.”