"As Fate Would Have It": Chapter 16

Sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I wish I’d never learned

Nothing can be altered, there is nothing to decide … No escape, no change of heart, no anyplace to hide

= Thursday 09 March 2000 =

Laurel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Okay, here it is. I know this is going to sound really stupid, because it is. About two years ago, I met this girl through my high school’s exhibition choir. The choir was in Atlanta for a couple days for a national competition, and she and I hung out a lot while we were there. She and I got to be really tight friends, and around the weekend before Easter, she told me that she knew this guy that she thought I would be interested in. She told me about him, a whole bunch of different things that gave me a general idea of what his personality was like."

As she collected her thoughts, a whole new expression came over Laurel; Isaac’s spirit fell. It was more than obvious that whoever she was talking about, she loved him endlessly, as much as Isaac loved her. He didn’t stand a chance next to this guy, and he almost didn’t want to hear about him. But he couldn’t let go of the image of Laurel weeping in his arms like there was no one in the world to love her. Whoever this person was, he must have hurt her, and for that, Isaac would see to it that something was done. Laurel was too precious and tender of spirit for anyone to rightfully hurt her.

Laurel had paused for the few moments he had been thinking. Now, she continued, forgetting to whom she was telling this story. "He was funny, sometimes really off-the-wall goofy, sweet, caring, sensitive, romantic, tenderhearted, and talented. He could sing, and his voice was the most gorgeous there ever was; he played guitar and piano, as well. He was also a writer, and a good one. He mostly wrote songs, and some poetry, too. I’ll never forget though, the one time I asked him to send me a photo of himself and he sent me a baby picture taken when he was three." Ike had to laugh in spite of himself; this guy sounded like a winner. The kind of guy Laurel deserved.

"He was really great and really close with his family, and they were all wonderful people. He had six younger siblings, three brothers and three sisters. He was a great listener, and one of those voice-of-reason types. Academically, he was really smart, someone to be proud of. He mostly taught himself, because he and his brothers and sisters were home-schooled, and their parents needed to concentrate on the younger ones, plus take care of the two littlest kids." She paused to take a deep breath. "Sorry if I’m rambling."

Isaac took her apology as permission to break his vow of silence. "No, it’s okay. Keep going." Inside, he began to wonder; Laurel’s mystery man sounded like his own personality.

"His eyes, they were beautiful. A combination of brown and green streaks that up close you could see, but from farther away they just looked brown. From certain distances in between, they looked hazel, though. When you could see that hazel shade, it was the most gorgeous thing in the world, especially when he was trying to express something with his eyes. His were the most expressive eyes I have ever seen…" Laurel stopped when she saw Isaac’s expression. She decided to sum up her little nostalgia session quickly.

"He was wonderful, and he really had a way with words. Sometimes, in the middle of a letter when he was talking about something entirely different, he would say the sweetest things, just at random. He never called often, but he’d send letters frequently, through her, that friend. That was just one thing among many. I should have recognized the truth sooner; I wasted nearly a year of my life, and just about all of my heart, on this guy, and he wasn’t — he wasn’t—" The sobs that overcame her were detracting from Laurel’s ability to speak.

Gently, Isaac reached up and pulled Laurel’s hands away from her face, which she was hiding. "You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to. I’m sorry I made you go through the pain of saying as much as you have. I’m sorry I pushed you to tell me. Please forgive me."

Sniffling, she pulled her hands out of his grasp and ignored him. "He wasn’t real. That girl I mentioned earlier, she’d — she’d made him up. Somewhere in my heart, I knew that all along. But I ignored it. I let myself believe he was real. I really loved him, more deeply than I have ever loved anyone before or since then. That’s why I’m afraid to get close to anyone again. I know it sounds really illogical and irrational, but I’m afraid that the minute I let myself care about anyone, he’ll disappear, or have been a dream the whole time. It hurt too bad, I — I can’t go through that kind of pain again. I don’t know that I would survive it…"

Isaac sat in contemplation for a few minutes. The silence in the room was deafening to Laurel; he could see the pain and anxiety for his response written all over her face. Slowly letting out the deep breath he hadn’t realized he was holding since the last time he’d spoken, he whispered timidly, "May I ask you one more thing? I promise it will be the last question I ask you."

Laurel seemed unable to look him in the eye. "What is it?" She stared past him to the piano, whose keys were no longer warm from her touch, as they had been minutes ago.

Isaac fought to make and keep eye contact with Laurel before speaking. Finally, he placed his hand along her cheek to keep her from turning her face away. He wiped away a rogue tear with a stroke of his thumb. "Well, it’s just that this guy you’re talking about sounds really familiar. In fact, he sounds a lot like me."

Laurel closed her eyes and bowed her head in shame. He knew. She deeply regretted ever having said a word to him. Why had she agreed? She knew that this was not the man she had loved. He had not been real; the man before her now was real. And not the same person. She had no idea how he would react.

Isaac saw her chin trembling, and felt a wave of apprehension wash over him. He had upset her, the one thing he had least wanted to happen. Whenever Laurel became upset, she shut him out entirely and ran away. He couldn’t stand to have that happen again. He couldn’t lose her. But he needed to confirm the suspicion that was clouding his mind.

Before he could speak, Laurel interrupted, talking as though she were nearly delusional. "Before I realized that he wasn’t real, when things were not going too good between him and me, I found this one song that described exactly how I felt about him." She got up from the couch and sat down at the piano again, and played a few chords in different keys before determining the one she wanted.

Laurel’s voice was stronger this time, and Isaac sat captivated. The song was one he didn’t recognize: "I am here to tell you we can never meet again / Simple really, isn’t it. A word or two, and then, / A lifetime of not knowing where or how, or why or when / You think of me, or speak of me, or wonder what befell / The someone you once loved so long ago so well…" The song had originally been a duet, Isaac surmised, as Laurel continued into the second verse, a few notes higher than the first had been: "Never wonder what I feel as living shuffles by / You don’t have to ask me and I need not reply / Every moment of my life from now until I die / I will think or dream of you and fail to understand / How a perfect love can be confounded out of hand…"

The chorus of the song seemed perfect to him; it described so much of what he felt for Laurel. He was only given a few sweet days with her, but Isaac wanted to take her in his arms and hold on to her forever. "Is it written in the stars? Are we paying for some crime? / Is that all that we are good for, just a stretch of mortal time? / Is this God’s experiment in which we have no say, / In which we’re given Paradise, but only for a day…"

Meanwhile, it was the next few lines of the song that held the most meaning for Laurel. She hoped that her voice would not betray her emotions as she sang, both of them wincing for different reasons at her words: "Nothing can be altered, there is nothing to decide / No escape, no change of heart, no anyplace to hide / You are all I’ll ever want, but this I am denied / Sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I wish I’d never learned / What it is to be in love and have that love returned…" Laurel was singing to a man who never was; yet part of her was seeing that the false persona was not so different from the genuine article.

As she returned to the chorus, Isaac began to hum along, creating a harmony part that Laurel thought fit better than the one that had been originally written. But then, she was singing in a key lower than had been written for the female part.

"Is it written in the stars? Are we paying for some crime? / Is that all that we are good for, just a stretch of mortal time? / Is this God’s experiment in which we have no say, / In which we’re given Paradise, but only for a day…" Once again to Laurel’s surprise, she was joined on the final chorus with the harmony that Isaac had just created while she had sung the previous one. After playing the last few bars of the accompaniment, she turned to face him. "You really like to do that, don’t you? Join in on the last chorus of a song that someone else is singing, I mean." Secretly, she had reveled in the experience of their voices blending and complementing one another.

She’s softening up to me. With that thought, Isaac, still sitting backward on the piano bench, leaned back against the piano and looked into the face of his angel. "I can’t help but want to be part of the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. But you’re stalling. Please, let me ask that question."

Laurel’s expression returned what it had been before. She cast her eyes downward, blinking them frequently to stop the tears of shame burning her eyes and threatening to spill down her cheeks, and fidgeted her hands in her lap. This time, she also began to chew on her violently trembling lower lip.

"Laurel, please look at me." When she refused to comply, he lifted her chin with his hand and stared gently but persistently into her face, his heart broken by what he saw there. Still, he had to ask, had to know.

"This — this nonexistent person you were talking about… he — he was me, wasn’t he? That girl you told me about was impersonating me, wasn’t she?"