She nods and smiles. “I like that. It’s both sad and happy at the same time, but it ends on a dash of hope.”
Yes, that sounds like exactly what it is.
When I leave the office that night, return to my street, open the pink door, and climb the uneven eighty-four steps, I know what the woman in the pink-checkered suit on the plane told me has come true.
Paris is where you go to reinvent yourself.
34
Griffin
Sometimes something is so obvious, you’re not sure how you missed it.
But that’s because it was hidden in plain sight.
Like all those damn angels that followed me around the city while I never noticed them.
That evening, I dig my toes into the coolest sand, the ocean lapping at my feet. As I watch the stars winking in the sky, I read between the lines on the list I memorized long ago.
Ten items and a postscript.
A bucket list.
A dying wish.
But it’s not that at all, it turns out.
Joy unlocked the code before I did. She discovered the real meaning, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. I dismissed her theory, stuffing it away. It took running twenty-six miles halfway around the world to see that it was never a bucket list I carried with me.
It was instructions for living.
For how to live without him.
Ethan didn’t ask me to complete those ten items. He only gave me this list when I told him I’d do anything for him, when I begged him for it. He’d looked at me, studied my eyes, and knew what I needed. Something to live for. Reasons to be happy without him.
“Okay. Let’s do it. One last list.”
It was a list for me, a list of all my hopes and dreams. It was guidelines on how to live a rich and beautiful life. He wrote me a treasure map for how to make it through his death. He was so clever, even up until the end. He knew I’d need a nudge, so my dreams were veiled in the guise of his dying wishes.
I’m the one who wanted to run a marathon. He’d already completed one.
I’m the one who longed to live in Paris, and he made sure I did it.
He told me to travel the world because I’d led the charge in planning our adventures when we were kids.
He knew I’d want to laugh with friends, so he put the caricature item on the list. He knew I’d want to help others, so he put that on the rules to live by, too.
I have lived most of these ten wishes.
But I don’t want to live all of them anymore. I’m not consumed with the same clawing need to visit all the corners of the world anymore. I no longer suffer from an incurable case of wanderlust.
I’ve been cured. I uncovered a new dream right before my eyes.
I have a new wish—to be with the woman I love, wherever she is.
I wanted her to ask me to stay, but that’s not enough. I need to put my heart on the line for her. She never held me back from going, and I won’t hold myself back any longer. If she’s going to be in Texas, that’s where I’ll go.
But there’s one more thing on the list I need to fulfill.
I need to take a chance that terrifies me.
I thought I’d done that. I thought that pursuing Joy counted. But even when I crossed it off, it never fit because wanting to be with Joy never terrified me.
The true risk is letting go of this list and flying without an instruction manual. Navigating without a map. But the time has come to find my own way. I raise an imaginary glass like I did when I said good-bye to Paris, but now I’m saying good-bye to the man I was—a man motivated by a promise, driven by the past.
It’s time to choose something entirely new. Something no one wrote down. But it’s what I want most in the world.
Now, I need to figure out how quickly I can get to Texas.
35
Joy
Lest anyone think I’m just a lush who loves the vino, let the record reflect that I do consume my morning fuel roof-side, too.
I bring the ceramic mug to my lips, and down some of the life-sustaining beverage as I watch the city wake up. Boats glide along the water, and the morning mist burns away from the tower. I glance at my phone. I’m due at the office in an hour, and I need to make it on time. I head to the stairs, stopping briefly at the chaise. Images flash and pop of all the dirty deeds this chair has witnessed.
“Oh, the stories you could tell,” I say in a flirty whisper, bending down to kiss the top of the pillow as I pretend the chair can talk.
A piece of paper catches my eye.
Tilting my head, I study the corner of a flowered card poking out from beneath the lounge. I reach underneath and find the card Griffin gave me when he invited me to Giverny for the weekend. Did I leave it here on the roof that night when he asked me to go? I suppose it’s possible.
I pick it up and head down the steps, flicking it open when I reach the living room.
I stumble and grab hold of the railing, gasping as I read.
Words that shock me.
Words that aren’t an invitation to Giverny at all.
This is another card entirely. Maybe it fell out of his pocket? Maybe he always intended for me to discover it? Or
