What We Leave Behind Read Online Free PDF

my senior prom, she’d already been asked by some tennis player, Rory Seligman. And then the worst happened. Her father got a job in Washington, DC, and they were moving east.”
    “And she moved? Just like that? Were you devastated?”
    “I was very sad. Particularly because I never got to tell her I was madly in love with her.” He had to stop and take a breath because I think all the talking had exhausted him. The lids of his eyes fell forward, his breathing following in a rapid succession of inhaling and exhaling. Shoot, I hoped I hadn’t killed him, but the monitor was blipping, indicating his heart was in motion.
    “Did you ever see her again?” I asked with anticipation.  It didn’t matter that Adam Levy looked spent and about to collapse before my eyes, I had to hear the rest. “What happened to her?”
    A voice from behind me resounded, “He married her,” and I turned to see Jonas Levy standing there in the doorway. I wasn’t sure how long he had been there or how much of our conversation he had heard, but he brought his finger to his lips, telling me without words that his father was falling asleep.
    “He married her?” I whispered, enjoying the intimacy of the tale, the peek into his family’s history.
    “Rachel Kaplan is my mother,” he said, entering the room, closing the space between us. Then he asked, “Why are you in here?”
    “I don’t know. Friendly conversation, didn’t you tell me I should try it sometime?”
    When I saw that he didn’t find that funny, we retreated into our individual corners and watched as his father fell into a comfortable snooze.
    “My father loved her a lot. I mean, he still does. I don’t know how she’s going to live without him.” His tone was hushed and sad, and I had to move in closer to hear his whispers.
    “They must really be in love,” I said aloud.
    “Yeah, they are. It’s pretty cool to see your parents like that.”
    I said, “Are you going to tell me what happened? If she moved back east, how did they end up together?”
    Maybe it was the man on a train syndrome, how when you’re sitting next to someone you don’t know, you spill your truths in a safe, finite passage of time, knowing you will never see the person again. Whatever it was, it didn’t take Jonas long to tell me what I wanted to hear.
    “She left for DC and he was devastated. They wrote each other every week, and then one day the letters stopped. Dad became frantic and called her parents, and they assured him everything was okay, that Mom had met someone and was consumed by her new friend.”
    Dad was miserable and depressed, berating himself for never telling her how he felt and hating Mom for ignoring him, when a letter came. It was her handwriting, he knew. He said he could recognize that scrawl anywhere, but the letter this time was different. He said he was too afraid to read it, didn’t want to hear about her latest love, so he stuck it in a drawer while he prepared himself.”
    I was riveted, caught up in the details, the strife, the heartache, and the impatience of uncertainty. “When he finally read it, he thought he was ready for what she had to say. Mom had written to tell him that she’d fallen in love with a boy with hair the color of night and eyes the color of the sea. She couldn’t live without him; her life wasn’t complete without him in it.”
    “You know this by heart,” I interrupted. “Are we just a wee bit romantic?”
    His eyes searched the ceiling in annoyance, tossing away that description of himself like one might a Frisbee. “Do you want me to finish?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it was more my obsession than his.
    “Dad’s heart was broken, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be angry when his best friend sounded so happy.”
    “That’s a mensch, right?” I asked. “I’ve heard about people like that.”
    He was getting really annoyed.
    “I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “Finish.”
    “She said she wasn’t sure