Standing there, I remembered the Solstice Cove villa and the second chair I had once been unable to look at without crying. That chair had been furnished for the future I expected; this bench had been built for people whose futures I could not predict. Both were places to sit, but only one had required me to decide who was entitled to occupy it. I was beginning to understand how much freedom lived inside that small difference.
That summer, nearly a year after the wedding, my mother mentioned that she had never seen the Bahamas. We were washing dishes at my apartment, and she said it casually while drying a plate, as though the idea did not carry a history for me. She had always dreamed of a beach where the water looked turquoise even under cloudy skies. I felt a brief ache, then realized I did not have to surrender an entire place to the memory of what had happened there.
"Would you want to go?" I asked.
She turned toward me. "With you?"
"Of course. We could take four days. Somewhere quiet. No elaborate itinerary, no work meetings, no one who needs a report finished."
My mother smiled. "That sounds like a vacation, Clara. I think I'd like one of those."
We did not return to Solstice Cove. I had no desire to perform a triumph by occupying the same villa or making the same reservations under different circumstances. We chose a small guesthouse on a different island, close to a beach and a town with a market my mother wanted to visit. I booked two separate beds in a room with a wide balcony and asked her to approve the dates before paying a deposit.
She laughed when I sent her three possible flights. "You're asking my permission for everything," she teased.
"I'm asking what you want," I replied. "It's a new habit I'm trying to keep."
In the weeks before we traveled, a few friends began asking whether I was ready to date again. I knew they meant well, and I appreciated that they could imagine a future for me beyond the divorce. Still, I resisted the idea that recovery needed to end with a new man stepping into the place Julian had left. I liked having dinner alone sometimes, liked waking without checking anyone's schedule and liked knowing that I could say yes to company because I wanted it rather than because being alone frightened me.
I was not opposed to falling in love again. I simply wanted the next relationship, whenever it happened, to begin with a person I would not have to become smaller to keep. I wanted affection that survived a disagreement, plans that were made rather than announced and a future in which trust was protected by both people who depended on it. Those hopes were not extravagant. I had simply learned how costly it could be when they were absent.