This isn't weird.

The One and Only

A few friendly clouds were kind enough to soften the blaze of the late afternoon sun, and while the temperature was still well within his personal parameters for too damn hot, the humidity had dipped, and the worst of the heat seemed to have broken over the course of their visit to the bookstore. It had cooled enough that when he reached the part of his route where the road changed from dusty gravel to pavement, Ben rolled his windows down for a spell to enjoy the rush of fresh air over his face. He'd gotten so used to the curious isolation of these rural roads, driving miles and miles without seeing another motorist, that when he glimpsed a single, distant car in his rearview mirror, it felt almost novel. How strange it would be returning to busy highways and crowded streets.

The anxiety of the previous night was all but forgotten. Intellectually, he was still aware that he had overstepped. It wasn't right for him to take away Millie's agency to share her past with him on her own terms. But what Walt had said to him in the kitchen was finally beginning to make sense. Just 'cause somethin' ain't the right thing to do don't mean it's the wrong thing to do.

Walt, Molly, and Eliza, and himself—as different as their individual circumstances might be, they were bound together by a fundamental commonality. They were the people Millie had left behind. She was the one who had forged this connection between them, and they deserved to connect. Maybe that was selfish, but it was also beautiful. It was callous, but it was also generous and welcoming and kind. It was terrifying and awkward and absurd. It was honest and authentic and vulnerable and occasionally a little bit silly. It was hers, but it was also theirs. It was so, so many things, and maybe not all of those things were right, but none of them were wrong.

And after all, wasn't Millie the one who had explained it to him first?

Just because something isn't bigger than a breadbox doesn't mean it's smaller than one.

The idea of absolute moral binaries had been sabotaging him for years. How many times had he chained himself to a moment, fixating on the supposedly inherent wrongness of what had or hadn't done? He'd spiraled and wallowed and ruminated and suffered over all the shoulds and shouldn't haves, and what did he have to show for it? Nothing but flimsy excuses to appropriate her pain and make it about himself, his guilt, his shame, his regret, just like Molly had said. None of it had ever made him a better person. That self-flagellation had served no one—not himself, and especially not Millie. He would have spared both of them so much heartache if he had just learned how to embrace the goddamn concept of -ish. Those hours wasted obsessing over good or bad could have been spent striving for better.

It seemed so clear now: There was nothing intrinsically good or bad about his choice to come here, and even if there had been, it had already happened, and nothing would ever change that, so it didn't fucking matter. What mattered was that he'd grown from it. He'd asked the right questions of the right people, and they taught so much more than he even knew there was to know, about so much more than just Millie. It didn't feel like he had forced himself into her world. It felt like her world had invited him graciously in, treated him as a welcome guest, and offered him a world class display of Southern hospitality. And that had made him a better person.

When his next turn sent him back down another stretch of gravel, he rolled the windows up and idly fiddled with the radio in search of a clear station. When he happened upon the final verse of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he smiled, imagining the way Millie would have drummed along on the dashboard and treated him to her best Paul McCartney impression, and for probably the first time, he really heard the lyrics.

—and he wants you all to sing along,

So let me introduce to you,