The Drifter(66)

Then Betsy knows how the story ends. Ginny feels pressure on her chest, a hot sear of pain, a tearing sound coming from deep inside.

This isn’t real, she thinks, as she stares at the blank, white expanse of her ceiling. This can’t be real.

And the room around her starts to fade into what feels like a dream, and Betsy is falling backward.

NO MATTER HOW many scenarios she imagined, Ginny was still gone when she came back to reality. And nothing would bring her back.

WHAT IF MCRAE knew that Betsy was the one who walked in on him? Betsy had had to leave, to get as far away from that place as possible, to become Elizabeth, someone else entirely. After all of those years, even when she didn’t know who he was, he haunted her, behind bars and a death sentence.

“I could have . . . ,” she said, trailing off. She straightened up, scanned the room to remember exactly where she was, to remember who she was talking to, forgetting that she was talking out loud at all. She rubbed her eyes. She heard a faint vibrating sound from across the room.

“Ah, it’s me, my pager.” Ian unclipped his beeper from his back pocket. “Hold tight.”

He checked the number and then scanned the address list in his phone.

“Hey, Ian,” said Betsy.

“Ian?” He laughed. “Who the hell is Ian?”

“Um, I forgot. I’m supposed to see a movie tonight. With a friend. You’ve got to go.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve got to go. I was on my way anyway.” He folded up his box of treasures, slid it into his backpack, and skulked toward the door.

“You alright?” he asked, stopping a moment to look back at Betsy.

“Yeah,” she croaked a little, her throat suddenly dry. “I’m alright.”

And then he was off into the still-warm night.

She kicked off her Birkenstocks, shuffled to the bedroom, and spread herself out on top of the cool, percale sheets, the AC’s vents pointed directly at her face, where she would stay, motionless, until morning.





CHAPTER 17


THE BACHELORETTE


August 15, 1997

Five days on, two days off, two weeks’ vacation, summer Fridays on the jitney, cardio classes after work, wine-soaked dinners with big groups of acquaintances who haggled over the check, and lazy, queasy hungover mornings—time slid by whether Betsy noticed it or not. Before Betsy realized it, she had been promoted to Senior Cataloguer in the Prints and Multiples department. She had been employed for over six years. And she and Gavin were getting married. Betsy was amazed by how quickly time passed once you accepted your fate and succumbed to a steady rotation of work days and weekends, the almost imperceptible ebb and flow of daily life, as lethargic and uneventful as the tide in the flat waters of the Gulf Coast.

She watched the clock perched on the rickety side table next to the bed burn through the minutes. Its orange-red numbers glowed in the murky dark hotel room. It was 2:45. Betsy, after abandoning hope of sleep, started to sift through the schedule of events in her head. At 11:00 a.m., a small group of friends and family would gather on the lawn at the Gideon Putnam hotel in Saratoga Springs. A string quartet would play “Motion Picture Soundtrack” by Radiohead as she walked down the aisle. By 11:12 a.m., they would be married.

They chose the location both for the New Deal–era park, full of graceful brick archways and shady woods that surrounded it, and for the opportunity to wear big hats and bet on the ponies at the track nearby with twenty of their bourbon-thirsty friends. Her dress, an oyster satin column that hit just below the knee, hung on the back of the door next to Gavin’s gray suit. Her flowers, a tiny cluster of lilies of the valley, would be delivered in just a few hours. When she stood in the grass at the rehearsal that afternoon, long fingers of sun reached through the clouds to warm Betsy’s shoulders through the thin silk of her sleeves. The smell of damp grass, mixed with the mint in her julep and the gardenia in her hair, was such a dizzying combination of so many good things that it made her want to close her eyes to block out everything else and concentrate on the scents alone. She wanted to lock down the memory in a place where her other senses couldn’t reach. But behind her eyelids, despite the warmth on her skin and the fragrant air and the excitement of the day, all she could see was what was missing: Ginny, and even Caroline, and she felt a shot of loneliness and regret that took her breath away.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Gavin, who narrowed his eyes to peer at her more closely, no doubt wondering what she was thinking, as always. Some say the secret to a lasting relationship is a continual element of mystery. Close the bathroom door. Never reveal all of your secrets. Keep them guessing. If that was true, she and Gavin were in it for the long haul. Even though Betsy felt so raw and exposed all of the time, she was beginning to realize that everyone else—including her future husband—perceived her as something of a closed book. Gavin reached out to touch her elbow and Betsy shuddered.

“You OK?” He mouthed the words to her, trying not to interrupt the chatty local clergy that the hotel hired to marry them. Betsy forced a smile and offered a tense little nod.

“Totally fine,” she whispered. “Jitters, no big deal.”

At the rehearsal dinner, Betsy shifted uncomfortably in her seat when Teddy raised a glass to the happy couple, alluding to the way the two of them met, how he knew them both separately but could hardly remember a time when they weren’t a unit, and how tragedy brought them together but they weren’t going to dwell on sadness that day. Jay, Gavin’s brother who was struggling through business school in Atlanta, was six beers into the evening when he stood up to offer what Betsy thought would be a fairly uninspired toast. And it was, for a while.