Chapter 92 Bonus Chapter 20: The Morning He Finally Reached

Chapter 92 Bonus Chapter 20: The Morning He Finally Reached
November 26, 2002. Night.
At night, Chloe cooked dinner.
She said, “Today is your birthday and our wedding anniversary, so I should at least make an effort.”
She made tomato scrambled eggs and spaghetti.
The eggs were a little too salty. The spaghetti was cooked too soft.
But I thought it was delicious.
Because she sat across from me while she ate and said, “From now on, I’ll cook for you every day.”
I said, “Okay.”
She said, “Then you wash the dishes.”
“Okay.”
“And mop the floor.”
“Okay.”
“And take out the trash.”
“Okay.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Why do you say okay to everything?”
“Because today is my birthday. I’ll agree to anything you say.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “Then I want the stars in the sky.”
I said, “Okay.”
“Liar. You can’t pick them.”
“I can draw you one.”
She laughed.
Her eyes curved into two little crescents.
I thought, I would trade my whole life for that smile.
Later, she leaned against me and asked, “Nathan, when exactly did you start liking me?”
I did not answer.
She asked many times, but I still did not answer.
Because the answer was too long.
So long that a lifetime would not be enough to tell it.
Mason hugged the journal against his chest.
Outside the window, the sunlight slanted lower and lower, shifting from gold to orange-red. The study darkened around him. Shadows stretched long across the room. On the wall, the old clock ticked on, one second after another, as if counting something no one could stop.
He thought of Nathan’s final words in the hospital.
“Maybe when morning comes…”
He had not finished.
Because Nathan had waited an entire lifetime and never reached that morning.
But in his journal, in his heart, in his dreams, the sky had always been bright.
Because Chloe was there.
In his fourteenth year. In his twenty-second. On the hospital bed when he was forty-two.
She had never left him.
November 26, 2002. Late night.
Chloe is asleep.
She is lying beside me, her breathing light and even. Her hair is spread across the pillow, golden brown, faintly bright beneath the moonlight. Her lashes are long, like two small fans, casting tiny shadows on her cheeks.
I cannot sleep.
I am looking at her quietly.
I keep thinking, this is my wife now.
From today on, she is my wife.
Not my girlfriend. Not my classmate.
My wife.
In law. Before God. Before everyone.
She is mine.
I am hers.
I do not have to worry anymore that someone will take her away from me.
Never again.
I reached out and touched her cheek gently.
She shifted, burrowed into my arms, mumbled something, and went on sleeping.
I smiled.
I thought, I have to remember this moment.
Remember the warmth of her in my arms.
Remember the rhythm of her breathing.
Remember the scent of her hair.
Remember her sleeping face.
Because, for reasons I cannot explain, I feel as if these memories will carry me down a very, very long road.
Longer than I can imagine.
Mason’s tears finally fell.
He thought of the road Nathan had walked.
A very, very long road.
Twenty-three years.
Eight thousand three hundred and ninety-five days.
Nathan had walked that road for twenty-three years and had never stopped.
Because he believed that as long as he kept going, one day he would reach her.
He did not know she had stopped long ago.
In the winter of 2002.
Before he ever had the chance to say, I love you too.
She had stopped there.
Mason closed the journal and placed it back into the cardboard box.
There were many other things inside.
Chloe’s red coat, the one that had cost less than twenty dollars. Much of the faux fur had fallen away over the years, revealing the fabric underneath. Nathan had wrapped it carefully in a garment bag and hung it at the very back of the walk-in closet.
And there was the photograph.
A photo of Nathan and Chloe together.
Nathan wore a white shirt. Chloe wore the red coat. They stood outside City Hall, hand in hand. The sunlight was beautiful, and both of them were smiling so brightly.
Like the happiest people in the world.
Mason picked up the photo and looked at it for a long time.
Then he put it back into the box and closed the lid.
Outside the window, the sky had darkened. Streetlights came on one after another, warm orange beneath the gray-blue dusk. Farther down the road, cars passed by, their headlights flashing like fireflies.
Mason stood and left the study.
The hallway was dark, but he did not turn on the light.
He walked to the door of Nathan’s bedroom and stopped.
The door was not closed.
He pushed it open and stepped inside.
The room was very quiet.
The bed had been made neatly. The pillow sat straight at the headboard. On the nightstand were a lamp, a book Nathan had not finished reading, and a photograph.
A photograph of Chloe.
Sixteen-year-old Chloe, wearing her school uniform, her hair tied into a ponytail, smiling at the camera.
That was the first year Nathan had known her.
He had carried this photo for the rest of his life.
Mason picked it up and placed it in his palm.
It was very light.
And very heavy.
Heavy with twenty-three years of one person waiting for another.
Heavy with all the love Nathan had never let go of.
“Chloe,” Mason said softly.
No one answered.
Outside, the streetlights glowed.
Wind moved through the trees in the yard, making the leaves rustle.
Mason set the photograph back on the nightstand, turned, and walked out.
Then he closed Nathan’s bedroom door.
Late that same night, Mason sat on the living room couch without turning on the lights.
Streetlight filtered in through the windows, drawing blurred patches of glow across the floor.
He closed his eyes.
Images rose in his mind, one after another.
Nathan standing at the stove, cooking, the spatula tapping softly against the pan.
Nathan sitting at the desk, teaching him math, drawing diagrams on scrap paper again and again until Mason finally understood.
Nathan lying in the hospital bed, looking at empty air and saying, “Chloe, you’re back.”
Mason opened his eyes.
The living room was empty.
No Nathan.
No Chloe.
Nothing.
Only silence.
Endless silence.
Like this night.
Like every night Nathan had lived through for twenty-three years.
Mason lowered his head and buried his face in his hands.
He only thought: if Chloe had not gotten into that car, if she had come home, if Nathan had waited and actually found her at the end of all that waiting...
How wonderful that would have been.
How wonderful.
Outside the window, the streetlights went dark one by one.
The horizon began to pale.
The sun rose slowly, washing the sky in soft gold.
It was beautiful.
Truly beautiful.
As beautiful as all the mornings Nathan had written about in his journal.
Mason looked at the light beyond the window and remembered what Nathan had once said.
“Maybe when morning comes, she’ll be back.”
Dawn had come.
She had not come back.
But Mason knew that in Nathan’s world, she had.
He stood and walked to the window.
Sunlight fell warm across his face.
Mason closed his eyes and said quietly in his heart, Nathan, morning has come.
Did you see her?
A breeze came through, carrying the scent of spring flowers and something impossibly gentle.
It brushed his cheek.
Soft as a hand.
As if it were saying:
I did.
We are together now.
Do not worry.
Mason opened his eyes.
Tears slid silently down his face, catching the sunlight.
But the corner of his mouth lifted faintly.
Because he knew it was true.
Somewhere.
Nathan was with her.
He had finally reached his morning.