The Life Intended Read Online Free PDF Page A

and look into his eyes.
    “Thank you,” I say solemnly.
    “For what?” He smiles and kisses me on the forehead.
    “For loving me,” I tell him. “For making me feel special and for marrying me and for trying to understand me and for . . .” My voice trails off, because I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.
    Dan laughs. “Looks like someone’s had a little too much champagne,” he says. He helps me to my feet and I realize he’s right when I sway a little. “What do you say I take my beautiful bride home and put her to bed?”
    “But I’m not a bride yet,” I protest, surprised to hear mywords slurring together like they’re made of syrup. “But yeah, okay. Bed.”
    He laughs again, sweeps me into his arms, and after waving good night to our friends, he carries me home as I fall asleep against his solid chest.

Three
    T he next morning, as I blink into the sunlight, I have the dim sense that something’s off. There’s far too much light for our western-exposure bedroom. Dan put up blackout shades when he moved in six months ago, so mornings usually dawn in near pitch-blackness.
    Where am I? I squint, my head pounding from what is undoubtedly a massive champagne hangover. I sit up and look around, confused, as my eyes adjust and the room comes into focus. Indeed, this isn’t our apartment. The curtains on the windows are white and gauzy; the bed is a teak sleigh queen instead of a burnished black king, and the sheets and comforter are pale blue and soft instead of gray and sleek. The room is oddly familiar, but I can’t put a finger on why.
    Had Dan put me to bed at a friend’s apartment last night for some reason? I struggle to remember, but the last thing I recall is falling asleep in his arms just after leaving the restaurant.
    “Dan?” I call out tentatively.
    I hear footsteps in the hallway, then the sound of someone whistling softly. Again, I have a strange feeling of familiarity, but it only unsettles me. Dan never whistles. In fact, he’d told me onour first date that he considers his inability to whistle one of his greatest failures in life. It was the first time he’d made me laugh.
    “Babe?” I venture a bit more uncertainly.
    And then the person whistling rounds the corner into the bedroom, and my heart nearly stops, because it’s not Dan standing there at all.
    It’s Patrick.
    My husband, Patrick.
    Who died a dozen years ago.
    “Morning,” he says with a smile, and the sound of his sweetly familiar deep voice hits me like a punch to the gut. I was so sure I’d never hear it again. This is impossible.
    As I gape at him, I realize that he doesn’t quite look the way he used to. His dark hair is a little thinner around the temples, his laugh lines have deepened, and he’s more solid than he once was. It’s how I always imagined he might have looked if he’d lived to grow older with me. His eyes are just as brilliant and green and warm as I remember, though, and for a long moment, I forget to breathe.
    “What’s happening?” I finally whisper, but my voice barely makes a sound. I notice with a start that there’s a sort of haze filling the room, the kind of softening of the light that happens when the sun’s rays hit particles of dust in the air just the right way. Those gossamer moments have always made me think of fairy dust and wishes come true. I wonder if that’s what’s happening now, something magical and unreal.
    But as I stare at Patrick, something strange happens: my disorientation begins to fade. I look around and realize with a start that I knew somehow that there would be a slender Dyson vacuum cleaner propped haphazardly in the corner; I knew there would be a Word-of-the-Day calendar on the bedside table; I knew there would be a small cluster of yellow roses in a blue vase on the bureau.
    This is our old apartment, I’m startled to realize, the one on Chambers Street, the one we were living in when Patrick died. The furniture is mostly new, but I