Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [97]
Eight days remained before the fateful meeting was meant to take place, five days before Lena was meant to open Tibby’s last letter, and there was something Lena was doing, hour after hour, day after day, and it didn’t feel right. She’d done it in her studio apartment and she’d done it alone and with far too much ease. It was the grueling habit she meant to overturn, and yet she had no choice but to do more of it: it was waiting.
But what else could she do? She felt unusually fitful, jumpy, and impulsive, yet she was stuck in a holding pattern and didn’t know what to do other than fret and fret and fret and wait.
Many times she thought of reading back over the twenty precious letters Kostos had written, but something stopped her. I don’t want to turn those into memories, like everything else with him. She didn’t want them enshrined as further exhibits in the Lena and Kostos memorial museum. Maybe they would end up there, but she wanted them to stay real for at least a while longer.
She stared at Tibby’s sealed envelope and had the strangest idea. What if she opened it right now? What if she didn’t wait?
Could I just do that?
She felt a weird gonging in her head. She ripped the envelope open so fast she almost shredded the letter inside.
My dearest Lena,
I know I’ve made a blunt and probably unwelcome maneuver to wrest control of your life from you. And I know that you’ll know that, misguided as it may be, it’s out of love.
You don’t have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don’t have what you want now, you don’t have what you want.
I know you’ve always hated an either-or decision. You always want to choose Option C, as you call it, the third way, which too often, my sweet Lenny, means no way at all. And here I am demanding A or B.
I’ll be honest and tell you I want you to choose A. I feel like I understand Kostos. I don’t think he’s forgotten you. I think he’s waiting too. He’s holding back, because he knows if he comes to you he’ll scare you off. And if he comes to you, there will always be doubt. You have to come half the way. I didn’t think anybody could comprehend you and love you as well as we Septembers do, Lenny, but Kostos impresses me.
If you choose B, I promise to leave you alone, not to haunt you with further letters or demands. I promise I’ll leave Kostos alone too. (And really, what choice do I have?) There will be no doubt or disappointment from me wherever I am. You can free yourself of that notion. Because you will have chosen your path and not put it off any longer, and that’s all I really want.
Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it. Sorry to pontificate, my friend, but my body is giving out and that’s where my head is today.
(I admit to a secret wish that you’ll open this letter before the date on the back.)
Live for me, my friend Lenny, because I can’t anymore, and God, how I wish I could.
Two things happened over the next hour that made Carmen want to wrench open her window and jump off the train to her doom.
First was the crying. Just when Carmen had reclined her chair as far as it would go, gotten herself a pillow and a blanket from Coach Attendant Kevin, as his name tag said, and closed her eyes to rest, it started. First it was little barks a few seconds apart. They got closer and closer together until they turned into full-on crying.
You’ve got to be kidding, she thought. She cast a narrow-eyed look at the man, presumably the baby’s father. Now that she thought of it, where was the mother of this group? Had she come on with them? Maybe she was in