Two from the Heart(25)

“This is a little crazy,” he whispered into my neck. “I don’t know what this means.”

“I don’t know either,” I said. “But that doesn’t matter.”

Then I kissed him again, harder, more insistent. We didn’t have to know what we wanted from each other, because our bodies knew. They remembered everything.

Afterward, lying next to me, Julian said, “I think you should stick around for a while.”

“Like until your wife gets back to town?” I asked. I was trying to be lighthearted, but it came out wrong.

He sucked in his breath.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

He ran his hands through his tousled hair. “It’s not unfair, Anne. I’m not divorced; I haven’t filed any papers. I’ve just been waiting. But not for Sarah to come back to me. It’s more like I’ve been waiting for some kind of sign, some reason to act. And maybe that’s you.”

I pulled the sheet up to my chin. “I don’t want to be the reason for anyone’s divorce.”

“Not the reason,” Julian said. “The… encouragement.”

I took a deep breath. “You know, there’s something I never told you,” I said. “After my mom died, I went to Cambridge. With Karen. We skipped school one day and drove there.”

“To see me?” Julian asked.

I nodded. I hadn’t thought of this trip in years, but now the memory had come rushing back. “I couldn’t call you back then. I couldn’t write you. But I wanted to see you. So the two of us wandered around Harvard Yard for hours. It was spring, and the lilacs were blooming, and everything was lush and beautiful. We were so excited at first! Then we got bored because you didn’t appear, and then, another hour or two later, we decided that we were completely crazy. Harvard has thousands of students—why in the world did we ever think we’d see you?”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were coming,” Julian said.

“But the crazy thing was, we did see you. We were getting ready to leave and suddenly there you were, in front of the library, with your backpack over your arm and your ratty Bob Dylan T-shirt under your Ralph Lauren button-down. You looked so at home, and so happy, in a place I could never get into—or pay for if I did. I think that’s when I realized that you and I weren’t meant to be. That we didn’t belong together.”

Julian frowned ever so slightly. “I don’t understand,” he said.

I tried to explain. “Take me and Karen,” I said. “We were so unlike each other that I used to think we were basically two different species,” I said. “But animals of two different species can be friends. Like a gazelle and a tortoise, for example—no problem. There are entire books about cross-species buddies. But animals of two different species can’t mate.”

Julian reached for my hand. “Anne, I hate to say it, but you’re still not making sense.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s confusing to me, too, and probably the animal metaphors aren’t helping. But I think the point is that for a little while, our two different worlds overlapped. And when they did, we had something wonderful. And this, right now, is wonderful. But it isn’t real, Julian. This is memory. This is us paying a visit to our old selves before we figure out who our new ones are.”

“I don’t know that I agree with you,” he said quietly.

I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s okay. You don’t have to,” I said.

He took a long, slow breath. “So what are we going to do now?” he asked.

“Let’s take that nap we didn’t take yesterday,” I said. I turned toward him and put my arm across his warm stomach. “I could use the sleep. I have a really long drive ahead of me.”





Chapter 29


FUELED BY coffee, doughnuts, and a giant bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, I made the twenty-six-hour drive to Bonner Springs in two days. It had been hard to say good-bye to Julian, but I knew it was the right thing to do. He belonged to my past, and my future—whatever it was—lay somewhere else.

I could certainly wait to start worrying about it until after Bob Kline’s funeral.

Pauline and I drove to the church together. She sat stony-faced in the passenger seat. “I did all my crying last night,” she said. But I could see tears glittering in the corner of her eye.

The small church was nearly overflowing with people. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows, and fragrant lilies spilled out of tall vases in the sanctuary. Everything looked so beautiful, it almost seemed like a celebration—except for the fact that there, front and center, was the coffin I’d watched Bob make, white rose petals scattered across the lid.

When it came time for the eulogy, Kit Adams couldn’t speak; she shook her head mutely, tears streaming down her face, until a man rose and carefully helped her down from the pulpit. Then he took her place and stood there silently for a moment, looking out at all of us, a faint, sad smile on his lips.

He was tall, with dark hair that had obviously been cut for the occasion. He wore a dark suit but no tie. He was tan, like someone who worked outside, and he gripped the sides of the pulpit with strong, calloused hands. I felt a flicker of recognition when his eyes met mine, because I saw again Bob’s intense, dark-eyed gaze.