Finding The Way Back

Jonathan's frown bores through the back of my cardigan. He shouts over the wind, "Can't you just buy a new coat?"

It's a cruel question.

"Can you please just help me look?"

My eyes scan over the Beachy Head cliffside. Before yesterday's bus tour, we'd both sworn to never come back here. Our children, of course, didn't know that.

Which is why, eight months ago when they'd handed us a slim envelope armed with plane tickets and a travel itinerary, we simply said, "Thank you."

Our considerate, kind, naïve children.

All they knew was that their father and I had met at Beachy Head. They didn't know what Beachy Head was or how we had ended up there that day. Somehow the world had blessed us enough to protect our girls from ever seeking out that kind of destination.

Until, of course, now.

Jessie was the first of the twins to get what they called a, 'grown up job.' If it had been Jenna, the thirtieth-wedding anniversary gift might have been an all-inclusive resort to the Dominican Republic or a fancy weekend in Toronto.

No, Jessie was the one who had the job first and so she was the one to decide what their first 'big gift' to us would be. Now here we were on a week-long trip back to England where Jon and I had met, complete with dinner reservations at the restaurant where he proposed.

Extravagant, thoughtful, perfect down to the last detail. Jessie.

She took on all the qualities I'd first adored in Jon.

Now look at us. Somehow scrambling through the winds of Beachy Head once again with no romance in sight.

Behind me, Jon yells, "Are you sure you don't see it?"

My eyes strain for a glimpse of emerald wool coat amidst the sea of papery grass, thin and yellow and decaying. Still, there is not a drop of green anywhere.

Jon drapes his corduroy jacket around my shoulders, "You're shivering. Please, Janie. Why are you doing this?"

I don't want him to see how much this question hurts. I fix my eyes on the horizon ahead. Jon wraps his arms around me, "This place does something to you. It isn't healthy. Please. Let's go back down."

Still, I make us wait just a minute longer before we leave. A minute where neither of us looks for the emerald coat.

When we make it back to the bed and breakfast, Jon doesn't walk up the little side entrance with me. Instead, he quietly takes back his jacket before slipping into the dusk. He doesn't offer any explanation and I don't ask. I put a plate of dinner for him in the mini-fridge beside the bed. I leave the lamp on as I fall asleep. The light slips through my dreams until suddenly it doesn't.

In the morning, there is no Jon. The plate in the mini-fridge is gone.

All day, I go back and forth on whether or not to buy a new coat. It would be easy to call a cab, go into town, and pick one out. Something new and fashionable. Mature. Like the other women waiting to become grandmothers.

Aren't I too old to be so concerned over this? As if it were a child's missing blanket.

My heart aches. It feels like a betrayal to dismiss the coat's importance.

In the mirror, I look incomplete. The floor-length satin gown, the velvet shoes...no green coat and no more time to look for it. A cab waits outside but it isn't to go shop. In it, Jonathan has returned and is waiting, along with the dinner reservation on the other side of town. Time is up, I tell myself. I've got to go.

I try not to think about the last time I had that thought in England. Or how Jonathan had stopped it in its tracks.

At dinner, Jon tries to hold my hand but I can barely feel him. My mind drifts in and out of thoughts about Beachy Head, like the current swallowing the shore only to spit it out a moment later. I know Jon is trying to tether me to this moment but my feelings don't want to be tethered anymore. I want to float away, to join my missing emerald coat in that vague realm of reality where lost things go.

Jonathan lets go of my hand to pour the wine. I ask, "Does it ever bother you? The way we met all those years ago?"

He starts, "No," before revising his answer.

"Well. I mean I'm sad at the way it happened, yes. I still think it's fate that it did, though."

I let the memory shroud my vision. It's a scene I hadn't let myself watch back for a long time. Maybe not since the day it happened. The wind was just as fierce then. So fierce, I could hardly pin the pages of my journal down as I tried to write what I had planned to be my last entry.

The day was as cold and lonely as I had felt. I don't think I even knew Beachy Head was known for suicides. I just knew sitting there that finally the outer world matched my inner one. It was a pain that felt as ancient and constant as the existence of Beachy Head itself.

No, I didn't know back then. Same as Jessie and Jenna didn't know now. Jonathan did, though.

I ask, "Was it fate or coincidence?"

"Why not both?"

I shake my head, "I could have been anybody."

"But you weren't."

Jonathan tries to meet my eyes but I'm scared of what he'll see. He continues, "All my life, I'd grown up at the bottom of Beachy Head. As a boy, I'd watch people walk up and never come down again. My parents would silently mourn over the newspaper at breakfast the next day. I stayed away from Beachy Head because I was scared to feel responsible for whatever happened up there.

"I hated feeling helpless. I hated seeing my parents helpless. It wasn't until I saw your emerald coat that I noticed the faces of the people going up Beachy Head or how helpless they looked too. How helpless you looked."

I can't stop myself, "So it could have been any twenty-something-year-old who bought that coat."

Jonathan sighs in frustration. He says, "No, Janie. The point is, only you did. Only you in that coat, a continent away from home with your lonely journals caught my attention on that particular day when I was feeling crummy myself. Sure, maybe it was the coat I noticed at first. It was you who made me want to stick around, though."

I challenge him, "What if you hadn't been late to work?"

He says, "I was. Maybe that's fate too."

He's winning. I can't help but smile a little, "Coincidence."

Jonathan raises his wine glass, "The coincidence of a lifetime."

I'm not ready to give in, though. I ask, "Why haven't we talked about this?"

He lowers his glass, "I suppose we swore never to come back."

"Is that fate too?"

"We'll have to ask Jessie."

I touch the stem of my wine glass, almost ready to relinquish, "So then what's a coincidence?"

Jonathan smiles as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment all night. From under the table, he pulls out a box, crisp and white, devoid of any flourish. Inside is my emerald wool coat, ancient. Hopeful.

He explains, "After I got you off that bloody hill - again, might I add."

That cheeky wink I love so much.

He continues, "I was going to walk back up and search a little longer. The tour bus from the other day was passing by and the driver stopped. Turns out, we forgot your coat on the bus."

I forgo the wine glass and walk around to feel Jonathan inside my arms. I wrap myself around his shoulders. He stands up to put the coat over mine. It's then I notice the label on the wine Jon has been waiting to toast with: the same wine we toasted to our engagement with, thirty years ago.

Jonathan was the same romantic man I fell in love with. At some point, I'd forgotten to notice. I was too busy fixated on souvenirs from a past life. So fixated, I became a ghost trapped by the beliefs I had once escaped.

I take the coat off. I pick up my wine glass and wait for Jonathan to join me. The toast is simple. We can't decide whether or not to thank fate or coincidence so instead we thank each other. We toast to leaps of faith and trust falls, to our family and our health.

In the morning, we stop in town on our way to the airport.

We buy new coats before heading home.