Forgive
and Let Go
You remember what it felt like to see him on that day.
The day he told you that his wife was indeed a traitor. You remember that he’d
worn these sunglasses and while you know that your feelings for him back then
were far from admiring, looking at the sunglasses rack now, not far from the
home that you bought with him, you remember that he had looked good in them.
You browse the rack, slowly. You hadn’t meant to come into this store; you’d
been running some errands, including the one that had you passing through the
train station that gets you to APO, where you resigned your position, finally,
with the intelligence world. Turning in your resignation as well as Vaughn’s
was like a weight being lifted off of your shoulders.
You’d paused in front of this shop, before going in to look around when you saw
the rack, remembering Vaughn telling you one day, after a trip to the beach
with four-month-old Isabelle that the sun was hurting his eyes and he didn’t
have any sunglasses.
”You had some,” you ask with amusement. “Where’d they go?”
He had looked at you meaningfully (though you hadn’t quite understood the look
at the time), and answered, ”I broke them.”
You understand now, what the look was all about. Those sunglasses were a symbol
of another life. One where they were both miserable and
broken. You’re not now.
You see a pair of sunglasses that would look great on your fiancé and you also
notice absently that they are completely different from the ones you remember
him wearing almost three years ago.
Your thoughts are broken when your cell phone rings. You don’t even look at the
caller ID, knowing that there were only two people who were bound to call it.
“Hello?”
“We got it!”
Hearing his excited voice makes you smile. “We got the house?”
“Yeah! We close tomorrow. Can you believe it, Syd?
We’re actually starting this. We’re actually going to have our little family in
a house that you and I bought.”
You listen to him, letting the words sink in. “Syd?”
“Oh, sorry, I guess I just wandered off a little.”
“You okay?”
You breathe in and out. “Yeah.”
“Are you having second thoughts?”
“What? God, no, Vaughn. Absolutely
not. I just…”
“You’re waiting for the sky to fall.”
You snort in amusement. “What?”
You can hear his smile over the phone. “I read Chicken Little to Isabelle the
other night.”
“Vaughn, I told you that that book might just be a little advanced for a
four-month old.”
“And I told you that our daughter is a genius.”
You roll your eyes good naturedly at his typical fatherly confidence. “Yeah, I
guess I am ‘waiting for the sky to fall’ as you put it.”
“Don’t be. I’m alive, you’re alive, and Isabelle’s alive…”
“My dad’s not,” you say quietly and you hear him sigh.
“I know, Syd. Look, why don’t you come home, okay? We
can sit down and talk.”
“Okay, I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
You hang up with him and as you pay for the sunglasses, one thought is ringing
in your mind as you do so: I love that man.
*****
“To the newest little Vaughn!”
Eric Weiss lifts up his glass and looks at you as you stand with your husband
amidst the small crowd at the little party you’re having for the house and
such. Among the people gathered are
Speaking of the love of your life, you and Vaughn have been happily married
almost five years now and you’re pregnant with your second child. You hadn’t
been surprised at all when you found out about this little baby; you both knew
that you wanted Isabelle to have a sibling.
“Bristow-Vaughn,” Vaughn corrects and you look up at him, seeing him with your
daughter planted on his hip. She’s getting almost too big for both of you to do
that, but you have the feeling that Vaughn doesn’t care. He’s trying,
unnecessarily, to make up for the lost time when he wasn’t there for her birth
and the months after it. He’s wearing the sunglasses you bought him five years
ago and the way that he’s treated them over the years, the careful way he puts them
away when he’s done wearing them makes you believe that, as trivial as a pair
of sunglasses may seem, it’s part of the domesticity that you both have strived
for and finally succeeded in attaining.
You’ve also come to believe that they symbolize your relationship, the marking
of a new life. You bought those for him just as you got your dream house, just
as you were planning your wedding. You know that the careful way that he
handles those sunglasses is nothing compared to the way that he handles his family.
He’s a husband and a father and you know that he will never take that for
granted.
Eric’s speech has finally ended and you move straight for the table of assorted
snacks. Picking up the piece of watermelon you’ve been craving all afternoon
you turn back to see your husband and daughter standing in the yard. Isabelle
is still on her daddy’s hip and you know that she won’t get down until
absolutely necessary.
You’re reminded of your earlier thoughts at this piece of evidence of Vaughn’s
refusal to miss out on anything his daughter does.
You twist your wedding band around your finger, which has his initials forever
engraved with the date you were married and as you do so, you reflect on your
admiration of him; of his versatility and kindness and his unending ability to
love with everything he has in him. You could never regret anything that has
happened the last few years and he has told you that he has none either.
Because all of those events – your choices to forgive and let go, but not
forget as they have made you stronger as a woman and as a wife and mother, a
man, and a husband and father – have led you here, to this day remembering a
pair of long now broken sunglasses and the wonderful life that they have led
you to.
END