But what if it was all worth it?

Chapter Eighteen

Vivian had never been one for wallowing. She’d always been in the “let yourself have a good cry and get it all out, then move on to the next thing” camp. At least, that’s the advice she’d always given to Maddie, and to various patients and friends.

She’d tried hard to take her own advice, over these past three weeks since she’d sent that postcard to Malcolm. But the tears just wouldn’t come.

They’d hovered, so close she could feel them, ever since she’d dropped that postcard in the mailbox. When she sent it, she’d hoped he’d call her as soon as he got it, time difference or no time difference, to tell her he was falling in love with her, too. She’d thought she had reason to hope; that the tiara was a symbol of how he felt for her.

But then she worried she’d read it wrong, and that he might send her a card back to say he had feelings for her, but that their lives were too different and far apart to do anything about how they felt. And of course, at three in the morning, she thought he’d say he’d had a great time with her over the holidays, but love didn’t come into it, or sometimes that he’d send her a postcard and not mention her declaration at all.

She didn’t, however, think he might just leave her in limbo like this. Forever.

It had taken her a while to realize that was what he was going to do. For the first week, she’d checked her phone and her mailbox obsessively. After a week had gone by, she’d gotten worried, that maybe something was wrong, that something had happened to him. But no, that was the useful thing about him being an actual public figure—she’d googled him, and everything seemed fine. Then she wondered if he’d never gotten her card at all, and that’s why he hadn’t responded to it. But she’d rejected that idea; he would have kept writing to her if that had been the case. No, this silence seemed pointed.

She’d thought he was better than this.

She knew she deserved better than this.

At least she was glad he’d helped her realize how much she loved her job. She was still the interim director until they hired someone permanently, but she’d gotten called in to deal with a tricky case earlier that week, one that had made her proud of the work she’d done, and happy she’d get to go back to that work full-time soon. She’d helped a family deal with the aftermath of a car accident, navigated the various services that applied to them, and repaired a few relationships between family members on the way. She didn’t flatter herself that those relationships would stay repaired forever, but at least it was a step, and the whole family had seemed genuinely grateful to her for her work with them. The teenage patient had been released that day, and she hoped he’d come back to visit, in maybe a few months, or a year, and let her know how he and his family were all doing.

She knew she was doing the right thing, she knew she was in the right place, she knew she’d made the right decision about that job. This was her talent, this was her skill, this was what she loved to do.

She just wished . . .

She shook her head and turned on the radio.

Ten minutes later, she pulled into her driveway. She smiled at the flowers in her yard as she got out of her car; thank goodness spring seemed like it was finally here. When she turned to her front steps, she jumped. Why was someone sitting on her front steps?

She backed away, ready to duck inside her car and decide whether to call the police or to just wait the guy out. She usually tried to avoid calling the police, but she didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. She was a social worker, sure, but— “Vivian! It’s me!”

She stopped and looked at the guy on her porch directly for the first time.

“It’s me. Malcolm.”

She dropped her purse to the ground.

It really was him. He had an overnight bag and a bouquet of flowers next to him. He looked rumpled and sleep-deprived and worried. And perfect.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I got your postcard,” he said.

She looked at him for a long moment.

“The one I sent three weeks ago? Was there some sort of nationwide mail shutdown in Britain I didn’t hear about?”

He shook his head.

“I deserved that. No, there wasn’t. It just took me . . . a while . . . to figure everything out.”

He stood up and took a step toward her. She didn’t move.

“What did you figure out, then?”

He folded his hands together, then dropped them by his sides.

“I know you hate surprises. I’m sorry, and I’ll leave right now if you want me to. But I had to talk to you, and I couldn’t wait for the mail, and I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”

If he’d come all this way for a bad surprise, she was going to create a motherfucking international incident over it.

“None of that explains why you’re standing on my front porch right now,” Vivian said.

He nodded.

“Right, yes, I know that. The thing is, I’m not good at this, as I think you are aware. I do this thing—I pull away, I brood about things, I shut down. You saw me do it in London . . . more than once, actually, but you brought me out of it. Well, there was no you around after your postcard arrived, so Miles had to be the one to make me realize what a fool I’d been.” He laughed. “See, there’s another thing you fixed for me: I would have ruined my relationship with Miles for years if it wasn’t for you getting me to pull my head out of my ass.”