Free The One Who Got Away: A Novel by Bethany Bloom

think, “I feel like I’m running out of
time, but running out of time for what? I don’t even know what I’m racing to
do.”
    Spilling her emotions like this, she
was taken back to a night when she was ten years old and her mother had checked
on her late, in her bedroom. She had been lying awake and when Christine had
walked in and asked her what was wrong, Olivine confessed, all in a rush, that she
was scared to die. And the admission of her deepest fears, suddenly out in the
world, with her mother sitting next to her, flooded her with a sense of relief.
And here she was again, like a little girl seeking solace, begging her mother
to tell her it was going to be okay. That life was going to be okay and so was
death and that she would never be left all alone.
    “I know you want to leave a mark
on the world,” her mother said. “Your grandmother did it in a most marvelous
way. Yarrow does it in a most marvelous way. Paul does it in a most marvelous
way. You will do it in a most marvelous way. Your marvelous way doesn’t
need to simply be to help Paul with his life mission. You are allowed to have
your own. Your very own mission. You’re even allowed to not know what it is
yet.”
    Olivine shook the soap bubbles
from her hands and folded her mother in her arms. She squeezed her until Christine
pulled away.
    “It’s been a tough week on us
all. How about we not make any big announcements to the group just today? Just
this evening?” Christine said.
    “Of course, Mom.”
    Christine swept a plate of
brownies from the counter and winked at Olivine as she backed out the swinging
kitchen door. Olivine plunged her hands into the dishwater once again, not
bothering to wipe her tears as they fell, ripe and full, into the dishwater
below.
    *****
    That evening, on her way home,
Olivine remembered one of the last days they were together, she and Henry, before
she had ever given much thought to legacies and what life was or wasn’t for.
Back then, she cared for an affluence of time and an affluence of freedom; not
an affluence of money. She and Henry had talked about how they could go
anywhere together. They could live anywhere.
    They had been lying on the floor
of her apartment. Her head was propped on his stomach and he spoke about how
they could write a book together. Some kind of book about…what had he suggested?
Rest area bathrooms. They could travel the country and document the words they
would see etched into the paint on the lavatory walls. Or they could travel the
world and photograph people who looked like their dogs, or they could
photograph cool windows and doors. Or churches. Or spires. Or old trees. They
could go from one idea to another. He could take photos and she could write
something pithy, he had said.
    “Pithy?” she asked, and when he
laughed, her head bobbed up and down on his abdomen, and he told her how they
would find endless new adventures and things to do and they would live like
vagabonds, anywhere they wanted. He could tend bar or log trees or build homes.
And she could write and learn about whatever she wished. She could learn to
arrange flowers, he said, or decorate cakes, or illustrate poetry books, and
when they got bored of one thing, they could move on to one another. And they
could travel and take photos of things and make pithy remarks for coffee table
books.
    “Who is going to buy a coffee
table book on rest area bathrooms?” she had asked him, giggling.
    “Well, if your words were pithy
enough…”
    It had been a warm day, and she
could smell him, a raw musky earthiness, from where her head was positioned on
his stomach.
    She remembered that it wasn’t an altogether
pleasant aroma, but still she lay there, with her head buoyed up on his belly. And
Olivine remembered thinking, just then, how she loved being a woman. How she
loved finding shampoo that made her hair smell just right and she loved
applying scented lotion to her skin. She loved matching her fragrance to her
mood. But