The Night Mark(106)

“You really think I was brought back here to 2015 just to talk to my ex-husband on the phone?”

Pat took a long, deep drink of his wine and then set the glass on his knee. It didn’t shake.

“I told you. Ex-husbands are people, too.”

“He played golf with his buddies the day after I had my second miscarriage.”

“Well... I never said they were good people.”

“I don’t know,” Faye said. “Compared to Marshall, Hagen’s a saint. Low bar, right? But he did just what Carrick did—married a woman who was pregnant with someone else’s baby.”

“What do you think would have happened to you if you hadn’t married Hagen?”

“Honestly?” Faye said. “I think I might have killed myself. Maybe I should tell him that.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt.”

Faye kissed Pat on the cheek—they’d said all their goodbyes to each other in 1921—and left her half-finished glass of red wine on his coffee table. She got into her Prius and cranked up the air-conditioning as she drove out to Bride Island. She knew she wouldn’t find Carrick there. Or Dolly. Or her house or her porch or her garden. But she needed to be near the lighthouse if she was going to have this conversation. She felt naked in this time, stripped of herself, like she’d left most of Faye in 1921 and all that was here now was just fragments and pieces. If Hagen was the reason she kept coming back, there was nothing for it. She would have to call him.

But she didn’t have to like it.

Faye made the call.

“Faye? Jesus Christ, I’ve called you a million times.”

“I noticed,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you okay?” He sounded frantic.

“Of course I am.”

“Of course? You had an MRI a couple of days ago, and you say ‘of course,’ like of course you’re okay. I was afraid you’d passed out on the side of the road or something, gotten into a car wreck, I don’t know.”

“I didn’t. I was just staying with some friends and didn’t have my phone on me.”

“Keep it on you, okay?” The anger in his voice was a mask for his relief. He should have taken the mask off more often.

“I will. I promise,” she said, hoping that after today she’d never see her phone again.

“Good.”

“Good.”

Faye waited. Hagen would either give up and tell her goodbye or he’d start the third degree with her.

“Who are the friends you were with?” he finally asked. Third degree it was.

“Hagen.”

“Sorry. Sorry. I know. None of my business anymore.” Silence again. A long pause. Faye waited him out. “I hope you don’t mind, I put something in the mail for you.”

“What?” she asked.

“Your wedding album. Yours and Will’s. I found it when I cleaned out the guest room closet. I know you hid it from yourself after we moved into the new house.”

“I didn’t hide it from myself—I hid it from you.”

“From me? Why?”

“You hated when I talked about Will. I thought you’d...”

“You really thought I’d make you get rid of your wedding album? Seriously? You thought that of me?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Hagen said. “I swear to God I wouldn’t have done that.”

“I know that now. I just didn’t know it then. Sorry.”

“No, it’s all right. I know I always shut you down when you tried to talk about him. I shouldn’t have done that. We should have talked about him.”

“I think that would have helped us both,” she said.

“Looking at your wedding album brought everything back. You know in college, we joked that Will would make all his baseball money and I would take care of it for him so he wouldn’t go bankrupt like a lot of professional athletes do. It was just a joke, but when you two got married, he asked me to promise to take care of you if anything happened to him. I’d forgotten about that until I looked at your pictures. There’s a really good one of all three of us. I hope you don’t mind, but I...I made a copy of that one to keep.”

Faye lifted her hand to her forehead.

“No, I don’t mind,” she said. “Thank you for sending me the album.”

“You’re welcome.”

She hadn’t expected that Hagen would do that for her. She hadn’t expected the apology, either.

“He looks so young in the pictures. And he’s smiling like an idiot in every single one of them,” Hagen said. “It was really tough to look at them, but I couldn’t stop once I started.”

“I keep forgetting...” she said, and swallowed. “I keep forgetting he was your best friend. Grief can make people selfish. It made me very selfish.”

“Better selfish than bitter. That’s what it did to me,” Hagen said. “Bitter and stupid.”

“You are not stupid.”

“I was.” Hagen laughed. “I mean, I asked you to marry me.”

“Rude.”

He laughed again. “You know what I mean. I asked you to marry me a month after Will was killed. That was pretty dumb, and we’ve both paid for that mistake.” Hagen paused, and she knew he was wiping tears off his face. She knew that because she was doing the same thing. “The more I think about it, the more I wish I could go back and do everything different.”