“Are you going to keep talking about this, Harper? Because I can let you out any place along here.” He gave me a look, his expression veiled.
“Okay, fine. Sorry.” I looked straight ahead. The road stretched to the horizon, and the fields beside us seemed endless. Not a heck of a lot of scenery, apparently. I glanced at the dashboard. Super. We were doing forty. The speed limit was seventy-five.
Being a native New Yorker, Nick had always relied on public transportation. He got his license only his senior year of college, something I’d often teased him about when we were together. Back then, on the rare occasions when he did get behind the wheel, he was your basic novice…hands at ten and two, eyes fixed on the road, puttering along at the speed of a limping snail. I could see things hadn’t changed.
“Want me to drive?” I offered.
“Nope.”
“The speed limit’s a wee bit higher than you’re going.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“This car is wasted on you.”
“Shut up, Harper.” He reached forward and turned on the radio. Country music, expected here in the land of cowboys. The singer’s woman had left him for another man. Not exactly groundbreaking material.
“I brought my iPod,” I informed my driver.
“I brought mine too,” he said. “But let’s listen to the local station and drink in the scenery, shall we, dearest ex-wife?”
“Oh, of course. So how’s life been, Nicky-bear?”
“Very good, thanks.”
“You’re a successful architect?”
“Yes.”
“What type of buildings do you design?” I couldn’t seem to stop the interrogation, but crotch. We were stuck in the car together. What else were we supposed to do? Relive our happy times?
“We make corporate buildings, mostly.”
“Skyscrapers?”
“Not so much. The biggest building we’ve done is eight stories. We’ve done some boutique hotels, two museum wings. But someday, a skyscraper. The firm is still relatively new.”
“Do you ever do houses?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Once in a great while. The real prestige comes from the bigger stuff.”
And prestige was what Nick had always wanted. Maybe to show his father that he was somebody, maybe because he just wanted to be the best. We hadn’t been together long enough for me to find out.
“Good for you,” I said.
“And I’m sure you’re a big success as well,” he said, an edge to his voice. “So many divorces, so little time.”
“Speaking of,” I said, suppressing a surge of irritation. Flipping open my phone, I was happy to see I had a signal. I hit Tommy’s number. He picked up on the first ring.
“Tommy, how are you?” I asked.
“Oh, Harper. Hi. Um…not that good. I’m really sad.” He certainly sounded sad. Sadder even than the current singer, whose dog had just been run over by the wayward wife as she stole his John Deere. Was there no Carrie Underwood out here? No Lady Antebellum?
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I just can’t stop thinking about Meggie. How happy we were. How do things get so off track, Harper? She loved me once.”
Which means absolutely zilch, I thought, glancing at Nick. “Well, I’m not sure.”
“I just keep thinking there’s something I could do to get our old life back. I don’t want a divorce. Christ, it’s such a…failure.”
“I don’t think so, buddy. Sometimes, divorce is just the act that will rectify a mistake.” Nick snorted. I ignored him. Sort of. “After all, marriage means different things to different people. You didn’t go off shtupping the FedEx man, did you? No.” I gave Nick a rather smug look. See? This divorce is a good thing. “You, Tom, wanted something different. Fidelity. Friendship. Love. You wanted to spend time with your spouse.” Another pointed look at my ex. “You put the marriage first, and Meggie clearly didn’t. Am I right?”
“I guess,” Tommy admitted.
“Right. And as much as I’d like to console you and tell you things will all work out and you’ll live happily ever after, I wouldn’t be a good friend if I did. If she doesn’t want counseling, and she won’t take your phone calls, and she’s sleeping with another man…I’d say she wants out. I’m really sorry, Tommy. It’s going to take some time for your heart to catch on to what your head already knows.”
Nick rolled his eyes. Coco sneezed, then rested her head on my knee.
I spent a couple of more minutes murmuring sympathetically to my heartbroken paralegal before losing signal. Sighing, I closed my phone.
“Was that fun for you?” Nick asked. I noted he was gripping the steering wheel rather tightly, though we still hadn’t broken the forty-three-mile-an-hour barrier.
“No, Nick. Not at all. Tommy’s my friend, and I don’t like seeing him miserable.” He didn’t answer. “Why? What advice would you give to a guy whose brand-new wife was sleeping with someone else?”
As soon as the words left my mouth, my face grew hot, and my stomach lurched. Nick didn’t say a word. Didn’t turn his head, either. A new song was playing on the radio, something about dead soldiers, in case the mood wasn’t bad enough.
Coco whined, then head-butted my hand. “Um, Nick, Coco needs a rest stop.”
He took his foot off the gas, clicked on the turn signal (so quaint…we never bothered with that in Massachusetts) and slowly, slowly pulled onto the shoulder, as if we were in heavy traffic on Storrow Drive, rather than out in the wilderness with only a very occasional truck for company. When the car stopped, I clipped the leash to Coco’s collar and started to get out, then hesitated.
“I never cheated on you, Nick,” I said abruptly, and to my surprise, a lump came to my throat.
He took off his sunglasses and rubbed his forehead, then looked at me. “No, I guess not.” For a brief second, something flashed in my chest. He believed me? Then he added, “Not technically, anyway.”
My jaw clenched. “Not technically, not in any way.”
“That’s debatable.”
“Okay. Would love to discuss, can’t. My dog has to pee.” I got out of the car and set Coco down.
It didn’t serve to be mad at Nick. He wasn’t a forgiving person…well, not where I was concerned. I’d screwed up, sure. But so had he. I’d admitted my wrongdoing. He never would. Hence our divorce. All facts, all in the past. Still, I guessed my blood pressure was in the DefCon Four range at the moment.
Damn it. Accepting Nick’s offer of a ride was a huge mistake. I’d be better off fighting grizzlies and shivering in a tent. I walked Coco down the road a bit, as she liked a little privacy, being a girl and all. There was nothing out here, not as far as the eye could see. The Rockies of Glacier had melted into the western horizon. No town was in sight, no buildings, no other vehicles. Just Coco, Nick and me.
I looked back at my ex, and my heart softened unexpectedly. He’d given my sister a job when she needed one, stood beside his dubiously employed brother, probably supported Christopher’s efforts at inventing, made sure his neglectful father was near him. And here he was on his much-anticipated road trip, his irritating ex-wife, whom he loved and hated, as a passenger.
At the moment, he was leaning against the car, studying the map as the wind ruffled his hair. I’d always loved his hair. And his hands. Also, his neck. His neck was a thing of great beauty, and I loved it when we lay in bed, postnooky, cuddling, my face against that warm, sweet place—
Okay! Enough of that. I walked back to the car, Coco trotting briskly along beside me. “Where do you think we’ll stop for the night?” I asked. It was already midafternoon.
“I’m not sure,” Nick said. “I want to see the world’s largest penguin statue.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not kidding,” he said, grinning. “See? Right here.”
I leaned in closer. That was a mistake. There was his neck, smooth and tanned and practically edible. Feeling a bit like a vampire resisting the urge, I cleared my throat. “I love maps,” I said a bit too loudly.
“Me, too,” he said, glancing at me. “All those places you’ve never been.”
“All that mystery,” I said. “The GPS is great, but it’s not the same.”
“My thoughts exactly.” His mouth pulled up, my girl parts coiled. I looked away, adjusted the Yankees cap.
“Did you ever do this before?” Nick asked quietly. “Drive across country?”
“No,” I said.
“Ironic, don’t you think?” He looked up from the map, his eyes steady.
“Very.” My heart knocked against my ribs.
He stared back a minute longer, then folded the map. “Okay. Off we go. Penguin statue, here we come.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NICK AND I WERE GOING to drive across country for our honeymoon. Fly to California, drive back. Neither of us had traveled much. But we were going to do it the summer after our first anniversary, as Nick needed to accrue enough vacation time. And of course, we didn’t make it to our first anniversary.
Our wedding was…well, you’ve been to weddings. They’re all the same, more or less. It was very nice.
That’s a lie. It was horrible. I was wallowing in doubt, first of all, a chorus of What the hell are we doing? ringing under my constant self-assurances. It’s okay. He loves you. He’s great. What the hell are we doing? We’re too young. It’s okay. He loves you. Why am I not in law school? Why am I following a man? It’s okay. He loves you. It’ll work. What the hell am I doing?
When I said yes to Nick there on the Brooklyn Bridge, I hadn’t envisioned a quick wedding. Figured I’d go to law school at Georgetown, where I’d been accepted, then…eventually…get married. I had no problem with a long-distance relationship; Nick and I had been long-distance my entire senior year, and we were doing fine. But he pushed. Why live apart when we could live together? If I could get into Georgetown, then Columbia or NYU would be a piece of cake. We loved each other. We were great together. We should get married. No reason to wait.
Nick could be very convincing. And relentless. And of course, I did love him.
So, the first day of summer, having been out of college for a month, I was about to get married and sweating blood at the thought. All morning long, as we set up chairs and put flower arrangements on the tables in my father’s yard, I waited for Nick to suddenly realize we were idiots to play this high-stakes game of grown-up. I waited for the courage to call things off. For my father to tell me this was a mistake.
I waited, too, for my mother.
See, she’d followed a man, too. My mother, a California girl, had come to Martha’s Vineyard at age twenty-one with some friends, met my father—seven years older, tanned and manly. Legend had it that my mother had been doing a modeling gig in Boston. She and her pals had decided to pop out to the island, and Dad was fixing the roof on the cottage one of the friends rented. He was tall, handsome, quiet—the best of the blue-collar clichés. Mom invited him to a beach party. When her friends left the following week, she decided to stay. A month later, she was pregnant and voila…our family.
As of my wedding day, my mother had been gone for more than eight years. In all that time, I’d received four postcards, all of them in the first year and a half of her desertion. They were all similar…Florida is hot and muggy, lots of orange trees and huge bugs. Hope you’re keeping up the good grades! The second one came from Arizona. Sure is hot here! You should see the way people water their lawns! Don’t they know they live in the desert? The third from St. Louis (Clydesdales, the arch, a baseball game), the fourth from Colorado (bluegrass festival, Rocky Mountains, thin air). None of the postcards had a return address. She signed them all Linda…not Mom.
I guess I hated her, except I missed her so much.
I had no real reason to expect her to show up. And yet, our engagement announcement had run in the paper. Martha’s Vineyard had a small year-round community; if she’d stayed in touch with anyone, she would’ve heard that her only child was getting married. So it wasn’t impossible that she’d come—it was just extremely, extraordinarily unlikely, and yet every time I heard the ferry’s blast, my heart rate tripled.
She didn’t come. That made more sense than her appearing, but it was crushing nonetheless. I don’t know what I would’ve done if she had. Still, in the back of my mind, a little scenario played in which my mother, gone these many years, would come home at last, and in all the excitement and happiness (because it was a fantasy, after all), my wedding would be postponed indefinitely.
Then I’d look over at Nick and see his smile, and shame would blast me in a hot wave, because I did love him so. But as much as I wanted that to be a good feeling, it wasn’t. It was simply terrifying, as if I’d been walking innocently along one day, and a yawning pit opened in front of me. Ever since he’d knelt down on the Brooklyn Bridge, I’d been scrambling back from a crumbling edge, trying to save myself from whatever lurked in that dark hole, quite sure it was nothing good.
Yet the appointed hour arrived, and there I was, putting on a white sheath dress and painful shoes, my hair worn down for once because I knew Nick loved it that way. BeverLee tried hard to be a good mother of the bride, hitting my hair with Jhirmack every time she walked past, fussing over my flowers, my dress. If my mother had been here—if she’d never left—we’d have gotten matching manicures, as we did when I was little. She’d have worn a pale blue silk dress, not the orange polyester that Bev had chosen. She’d have told me that marrying young was the best choice she’d ever made, and she could tell that Nick and I would be just like her and Dad.