Susanna

I shouldn’t be here. There’s too much emotion, and yet not enough. Sadness, bitterness, anger, and overwhelming regret. I feel no love, no joy, which is what she deserves.

They chose a good picture of her. She’s much older than she was the last time I saw her in person, but her expression is so familiar to me. She has on that crooked half smile, and her eyes are bright with mischief. The photo must have been taken before the chemo started. I wonder how she felt when she started losing her hair. She’d loved her hair; always said it was her best feature, even though it was her eyes by far.

I was surprised when I got the invitation in the mail. We haven’t spoken in thirty years. Did she keep talking about me, even after I disappeared?

Her husband strides toward me now. I’m scared of what he might have to say. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell him.

He nods. “And I’m sorry for yours.”

I take in the tightness in his stance, the paleness of his face, the tiredness in his voice. Her cancer battle was rough on him. But the crow’s feet by his eyes tell me that he lived out many happy years with her. Jealousy churns inside me.

I turn away, wanting the conversation to end, but he says my name, and I am forced to look back. “Susy was sad when you stopped coming around.” There’s no accusation in his voice, but guilt swallows me anyway. I don’t want to hear this. “She cried herself to sleep every night for weeks.”

“I did what I thought was best.”

“Best for who?” he asks softly.

“Best for both of us.”

“She forgave you, you know. Actually, she never blamed you in the first place.”

“She thought it was the right choice,” I conclude.

“No, she just could never fault you for anything. You were perfect in her eyes.” The edge to his voice tells me he does not share her opinion of me.

I feel a flare of annoyance at this man passing judgment on my life choices. “It was a different time. If I had loved her the way I wanted to... I couldn’t do that to her. Without me, she could live a happy life. I loved her enough to give that to her.”

He laughs humorlessly at that. “A happy life? She was trapped in a marriage to a man she couldn’t love as anything other than a brother. She loved you so much that she couldn’t live without you. And you abandoned her.”

I say nothing. I don’t have a response.

“Different kinds of love, I guess.”

I shrug, and turn away again. This time, he lets me leave. My hand is on the door when I hear him shout, “Bess!” It makes me stiffen. There’s only one person who ever called me that, and she’s gone.

I turn to face the man whose place I could have taken, if I had tried harder, if I hadn’t been so scared. “She asked me to call you that one last time,” he says, “for her.”

I soak that in for a minute before leaning back against the door and walking out of the church.