“You’re very right. Do you all know ‘Hold On’?”

“Yes. Boys and Girls is one of my favorite albums.” Ezra turned to Tuesday. “You know it?”

She nodded.

“Count us in then, beauty.” One corner of his mouth hitched up and she ducked her head.

Tuesday started the drumbeat and then Ezra followed with those first guitar notes and her father’s bass line came in as her mother started singing.

Her niece and nephews danced around and her brothers teased her a little when their mother wasn’t looking. They’d got out of the jam session and she’d never hear the end of that.

But it was fun, playing music with Ezra and Paddy and her parents, too. The drum parts were easy enough for her to play and not sound too terrible. Her mother had a great singing voice and she loved being the center of attention. Ezra and Paddy both flirted with her just right and Tuesday loved them both for it.

By the time they’d finished the song she’d been glad they’d done it. Her mother was glowing and because she was, her father was mellow.

They managed to escape just before midnight after hugs and promises to be back for breakfast in the morning before they headed back home to Hood River.

* * *

“WHAT WAS HE LIKE?” Ezra asked from his place next to her in bed. She knew he meant Eric.

“He was tall and lean. Easygoing. Everyone liked him. He had absolutely no rhythm and hated fried food. Who hates fried food?” She laughed.

“Did you know you loved him right away?”

“I’ve thought about this a lot. So much that to be totally honest I’m not entirely sure at this point if I’m remembering right. I liked what I saw and things were very intense very fast. All of college was like that. There was so much happening all the time.”

“But you married him right after graduation so you must have been in love by that point.”

“Yes, absolutely. We had our bumps and fits and starts, but we had a future, a direction. We shared the same values. Had similar goals.”

“Why are you changing your name then?”

She sucked in a breath. “Well, it all started when I found out about his affair just a few months out from our wedding.”

She told him about finding the letter and confronting Eric about it. About the affair and getting past it.

“So like a month before the wedding I said I wanted a new start and a new name. I’d been planning on keeping Easton, but I suggested we combine our names and make a new one. Eastwood was born and it has fit me a long time.”

“Not anymore?”

“Back when I took on Eastwood as a name, I did it for a new start. A clean slate. Taking good energy and using it to start on the next leg of my journey. I feel like it’s the same right now. I’m not Eric’s wife anymore. I’m choosing to close a door on an important chapter in my life that is closed. Taking Easton again feels like a new coat of paint in some ways.”

“All right. That makes sense.”

“What brought that on?”

“A picture of you two on the wall at your parents’ house. You were a beautiful bride.”

“Thanks. I totally was.”

They both laughed.

“I’m sorry he cheated on you.”

“Me, too. But he was twenty years old when that happened. Fourteen years ago now. He stuck his dick in someone else and that sucked. But he didn’t love her. I could tell from the letter and then how he reacted. At that time I could get past something that had happened two years before and that as much as I could parcel out, had never happened again. If he’d have felt something for her things would have been different.”

“You never regretted giving him a second chance?”

“The morning of the day he died I’d slept at the hospice. He’d been increasingly weak. They’d given up by that point. We knew it was coming. I remember it felt like trying to hold water in my palm. His life ran out between my fingers and there was nothing I could do. He was weak and refusing to eat but since they’d shifted to more of a comfort-the-end-of-life reaction instead of working to cure, they hadn’t pushed. So he was weak and I had to accept he was dying when five months before that we’d talked about trying to get pregnant. And I looked at him in the bed, a shell of the healthy, vibrant man he was. He turned to me and he said I had been the best memory of his life and that being married to me was something that carried him past the pain to accept death. He’d had me, and love, while he was alive and he’d take the memory of that into whatever was next.

“No matter what, that moment, knowing I’d given him some comfort at the very end means I’ll never regret that second chance. Because if it made him less afraid to let go and discard a body that brought him only pain, it was worth it. That’s what love is, Ezra.” She said the last bit through tears as the memories hit her again. But it was different with the telling this time. It hurt less and she believed it when she said to Ezra that she didn’t regret that second chance.

“People make mistakes. They can be stupid and thoughtless and yet you can love them anyway. Because being human means making mistakes. And being in love means maybe sometimes you can forgive something utterly unforgivable.”

He pulled her close. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

She hugged him. “It’s okay. I can look back and not have any regrets. If you get sick and don’t go to the doctor, though, prepare for a full-stage freak-out. I am hard-core serious about that. Also, if you fucked some rando, I’d burn your house to the ground. After I made sure your animals were safe, of course. Just so you understand where you and I are.”