The Night Mark(3)

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not? Really?”

“I got this book yesterday, and it was written two years ago.”

Hagen plucked it out of her hands and read the title in as cold and cruel a voice as any man had ever read a book title.

“The Bride of Boston; A Jazz Age Mystery. Who the hell is the bride of Boston?”

“A girl who disappeared in 1921,” Faye said. “Vanished into thin air. But it has a happy ending.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s the happy ending?”

Faye smiled. “She was never seen again.”

Hagen threw the book across the room.

“Jesus Christ, Faye, what the hell is wrong with you? Women would kill to be in your place.”

She rolled onto her side and into the fetal position. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes onto the pillow. She willed them away, willed Hagen away, willed the world away. But they didn’t go away because her Will was gone.

Hagen must have seen he’d gone too far. He knelt by the bed so they could look each other eye to eye. As he reached out his hand she flinched, fearful he’d strike her even though he never had before.

“Faye.”

“Will never threw anything but baseballs,” she whispered to herself.

“You can’t live in the past. It’s not living. The past is dead,” he said, his hand on her face. It did nothing to comfort her.

“Everything I love is dead.”

“Don’t say that.” Hagen spoke through gritted teeth. He had such nice straight white teeth. “Don’t say stupid stuff like that. It’s melodrama.”

“I’m a melodrama queen.”

“I believe it. Do you think you’re the only person who has ever lost anybody? Everybody loses somebody eventually.”

“But not everybody loses Will.”

“I lost Will, too. Goddamn it, Faye, he’s dead. And I’m not and you’re not. You have a husband who loves you very much—”

This is the most you’ve talked to me in six months.

“You live in a mansion.”

I hate this house. It feels like a prison. Everything’s made of iron and it’s turning me to iron.

“We have all the money we could ever need or ever want.”

Your money, not mine.

“You don’t even have to work.”

“I miss working.” She said that out loud because Richard’s email had reminded her how much she missed working and how much she resented Hagen telling her she shouldn’t. “But you don’t want me to work. It makes you look bad in front of your boss because he’s a chauvinist.”

“He’s old-fashioned. That’s all.”

“And you say I live in the past.”

Hagen turned his back to her. Who could blame him? Why he hadn’t dropped her yet she didn’t know. Masochism maybe? Heroism? Maybe he wanted to save her. Maybe he was too embarrassed to admit he couldn’t.

And the truth was he had a point. She did live in the past. She hadn’t watched a movie made after 1950 in four years. Today she’d watched Casablanca while lying in their bed. They were all dead—Rick and Ilsa and Sam who never did play it again. A DVD of The Maltese Falcon sat on top of the television, waiting to be watched for the tenth or twelfth time; she couldn’t remember. Bogie was dead. Hammett was dead. And the Maltese Falcon never did get found, did it? People searched for it, fought for it, died for it, and in the end it was nothing but a hoax, lead where there should have been gold.

“Okay,” she said.

He narrowed his eyes at her.

“Okay, what?”

“I’ll stop living in the past.”

“You will?” He sounded skeptical, as if she’d agreed just to shut him up.

She climbed out of bed and walked to the closet. From the top shelf she pulled a battered silver suitcase—eighty dollars from Target—with a peeling Boston Red Sox sticker on the side. A relic from her old life. She’d carry it into the new one.

“Faye?”

“I’m going to New Hampshire to stay with Aunt Kate and Mom. Then we can file there.”

“File?”

“For divorce,” she said.

Hagen laughed.

“You’re filing for divorce. In New Hampshire.”

“New Hampshire—famous for maple syrup and quickie divorces. I need to see Mom anyway. Not that she’ll see me, you know. She doesn’t remember anything that happened after 1980. She thinks there are just the two Star Wars movies. I’m not going to tell her any different. I must get my living-in-the-past tendencies from her.”

“She has dementia. She has an excuse. You don’t.”

“You’re right. I don’t have an excuse to live in the past, so I won’t live in the past anymore. I will move on with my life and into the big bright future. I can’t wait to see what this beautiful world we live in has to offer me—can you?”

Her anger gave her a rush of energy like she hadn’t felt in years. She stuffed clothes and socks and shoes and underwear into the suitcase, haphazardly but with purpose. Hagen watched her with bemusement at first, a look that slowly turned to realization as she slipped on her jeans. She wasn’t kidding.