The Husband Hour(41)

She brushed past Stephanie, ignoring her mother’s protests.

Outside, the sun was not close to setting. Lauren wished for a blanket of darkness for her run to the boardwalk. She didn’t know what was worse: her mother’s not-so-subtle attempt to fix her up or the fact that it was understandable. She was twenty-nine years old, a widow for four years. She was the one who was abnormal, not the people who expected her to someday have a life again.

The problem was, from the time she was fifteen, she’d known she was meant to be with Rory, and only Rory. Even while they were broken up, she knew it. During their first split, when he was a freshman at Harvard and she still had a year left in high school, everyone told her to hook up with other guys, that it was the only way to get over him. But Lauren knew better; she knew that to spend time with any other boy would make the loss of Rory Kincaid only that much more unbearable. No one could compare.

The boardwalk was too crowded for a good run. She stopped and rested on the rail facing the beach. She leaned over, and the heart pendant of her necklace clanged against the metal. Lauren wrapped it in her hand, closing her eyes.

She could see the Kincaid family living room, the house on Conway crowded with guests, a towering Christmas tree in the center of it all.

“Come with me for a sec,” Rory said, taking her by the hand.

“Where are we going?” she asked after he pulled their coats from the closet.

“I want to give you your gift in private,” he said.

“Oh. Well, should I get yours? It’s under the tree.” She tried not to think about the card. She’d agonized about how to sign it. Love, Lauren seemed to say too much. But she felt that and more and so she wrote it.

“You can give it to me after,” he said, leading her to the garage.

“Did you get me a car?” she joked.

“This is the only place without a million people. I didn’t want my family to see us going upstairs. They’d get the wrong idea.”

The cold garage smelled of rubber and gasoline. She stumbled over a rake, and he caught her. “Careful,” he said. “Here—sit on this.” He opened two lawn chairs and brushed off the dried leaves. They sat hidden behind his mother’s Buick, the single lightbulb in the ceiling bathing everything in yellow.

Rory pulled a small box out of his coat pocket. It was robin’s-egg blue and tied with a white ribbon.

“Oh my God,” she said. “What did you do?” He handed it to her with the shyest smile she’d ever seen on his face. Hands shaking, she untied the ribbon and lifted the lid to find the iconic silver Tiffany Open Heart necklace.

She’d signed her card exactly right after all.

Now, as much as Lauren longed for the pure happiness she’d had as a teenager, she also felt sorry for that clueless fifteen-year-old self. It was human nature to open yourself up to love, to seek it and give it. But losing it was so painful. She’d read once that the opposite of love wasn’t hate, it was indifference. She’d told that to Rory, and he’d said that love, like energy, “can neither be created nor destroyed.” It was a conversation under the stars, sitting on a metal bench in Narberth Park.

Another lesson about love happened in that park, a lesson about its flip side.

It was August, the summer before her senior year. He would be leaving soon for Boston. Every minute felt delicate and precious. They planned to drive to the shore for a night at the Green Gable. She picked him up that morning, car windows down, sunroof open, “Hollaback Girl” playing on the radio.

It was only after she parked the car that she noticed his text. Today’s not going to work.

She hurried up the sidewalk to his house. Rory was standing out front watering the lawn with Emerson, who was visiting for two weeks.

“Oh—hey,” he said when he spotted her. “Didn’t you get my text?”

She looked at her phone. “Yeah. Like, two seconds ago. Hi, Emerson.” Emerson gave her a distracted wave.

“What’s going on?” she said.

Rory seemed stressed. She touched his arm. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” he said, annoyed.

“What is it, then?”

He glanced back at the house. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Her stomach knotted, but she followed him to the park. They found a shady spot on the bleachers near the basketball court. Even under the trees, the metal was hot, and she slid forward so her bare legs weren’t touching it. Rory stared into the distance, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees.

“Rory, you’re scaring me,” she said.

He looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was there. “Sorry. I don’t mean to upset you. But I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I’m leaving in a week, and you know I won’t be back until Thanksgiving.”

Lauren clutched the edge of the bench. “I know. But I’ll come see you. We’ve talked through all of this.”

Rory shook his head. “I feel like we’re not being realistic about this whole thing.”

What? “Is this coming from you? Or from Emerson?”

He finally turned to her. “Come on, Lauren. I mean, yes, Emerson went to West Point. He knows what it’s like to be in an environment where you’re challenged every day, where you have to keep your self-motivation sharp. I can’t have distractions right now. Between hockey and academics, I won’t have time for a long-distance relationship.”