Not Perfect(83)

Tabitha nodded. “Yes,” she said firmly, deciding a nod wasn’t enough to express how important that was.

“And Fern’s leg?”

“Also okay,” Tabitha said. “Thankfully.”

“I’m glad,” Toby said.

“Well, now you know,” she said. “I’m sorry it didn’t work out better—between us, I mean.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? There must be more,” Toby said gently.

“There is, so much more,” Tabitha said. “I hesitate to tell you this because you are going to think I’m making an excuse, but you know my husband took off, right? Well, some things were paid for—school, the apartment—but so much wasn’t. His checks stopped being deposited, the insurance was cut off—I was desperate.”

“Yikes,” Toby said in such a way that Tabitha thought she really had to get out of there. All this was doing was making her like him more, and there was no scenario in which she could imagine this working out.

“There’s even more,” Tabitha said solemnly. “But I think I’ll leave it at that. At least this way you can remember me with a little fondness. Though probably not.”

“What?” he said. “Where are you going?”

“Home, to my kids,” she said. “And by the way, our time at the hotel did not push me away. Not one bit. If anything, it is just making all of this so much harder.”

“How did you figure it out?” Toby asked. She could tell he was stalling, trying to keep her there.

“What?”

“That Nora is my mother.”

“The picture,” Tabitha said. “Of the Uranus birthday.”

Toby nodded.

“I just want you to know that I’ll never do it again,” Tabitha said as she backed away. “And one day I will pay it all back—all of it.”

“I’m not worried about that now,” he said, and she thought he must be as crazy as the rest of them. How could he not be worried about it? “Please, come inside.”

She shook her head. At this rate, she was going to end up confessing everything, and then not only would he spend the rest of time thinking she was a thief but also a murderer.

“I can’t,” she said. “And this really has nothing to do with you. Please know that.” She turned and walked quickly away from him, leaving him sitting on the sidewalk.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Stuart Brewer looked out the window of his Hampton Inn hotel room and wondered what it would be like to start swimming across Lake Superior and never look back. How long would it take him to panic? Would that time ever come, or could he just keep going, to the deepest part of the deepest lake, and fade away?

He knew now that he had been going through the motions, not feeling anything, for years. He was barely present. He worked, had dinner, came home. He did that over and over again for so long. And then a few years ago, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and he went searching for Abigail. How was it that he could be two completely different people, one warm and fun loving with Abigail, at least that’s what he remembered, and another cold and impersonal with Tabitha? He didn’t want to do it anymore.

He thought Tabitha would have called him on it so long before—really, she never truly pushed him on why he chose to start his own firm to work specifically with the miners, or why he had to go to the Upper Peninsula so often. It took a long time, but he finally found her. It was the lucky shirt, he was sure of it. The old Michigan T-shirt she had given him so long ago that he always kept. He started packing it for all his trips, but that day he decided to actually wear it. That was the day he ran into her in Marquette. It was a crazy, crazy moment, when years and years of feeling came to the surface, and he burst. That’s what it felt like. He was walking into a coffee shop and she was walking out. It almost seemed like she was going to walk by, away from him, and he gently grabbed her wrist, feeling a jolt the likes of which he hadn’t known in years. She had stopped then and smiled at him. He convinced her to go to a park nearby, and that’s where she finally told him everything. Suddenly the big mystery of his life was solved. He learned about her cancer, and that the reason she had called off the wedding was because she had been diagnosed just days before with a bad prognosis. She had not wanted that to be their new married life. She didn’t want to drag him down into a sick life with a sick house and a sick bed. Those were her words, exactly. Instead, she had decided to set him free. How could she not have known that setting him free, as she called it, was forcing him into a life of unhappiness? How could she not have known that? Eventually she had beaten it, she told him, and she had been in remission for years, but it had come back, and she was in and out of the hospital again. Yes, she told him without his having to ask, she had thought about calling him so many times, but by then he was married with a baby on the way. How many times could she rearrange his life, stop it midstream? She knew that she had made a terrible mistake letting him go; that the years they could have had together would have been worth anything. If she could go back in time, she would make a different choice, but there was no going back.

Even then, even after not talking for years and years, even after marrying another woman and having two children with her, being in Abigail’s presence and hearing her voice was the best, most comforting thing he could ever imagine. And the saddest. It made him feel full and empty at the same time. It made him feel like he had everything and nothing in those few minutes they were together. She begged him to forgive her for what she had done, for what she had kept from him, for what she had taken from him, from them. But she had to go to an appointment. He wanted to go with her. “No,” she had said, but she was glad to have that all out in the open. She thought that would help somehow.