The Husband Hour(64)

Stephanie caught up to them.

“Mom, are you okay with Ethan? Neil and I are thinking about going for a walk by ourselves.”

Beth narrowed her eyes, but there wasn’t too much she could say with Ethan right there.

“I think you should stay with us. Especially since Lauren might want to take a walk with Neil at some point.”

“Lauren has no interest in ‘taking a walk’ with anyone,” Stephanie said, playing along with the code. “I won’t be home too late.” She bent down and kissed Ethan. “See you later, buddy. Stay close to Gran.”



The tide of people all walked north. Every year, the crowd of teenagers, couples, and parents with young children made Lauren wistful for the things she didn’t believe she’d ever experience. A widow in a crowd of families, she felt she would never stand next to a man with their child on his shoulders.

They reached the boardwalk. She wondered if she would find her mother and sister but realized quickly it was a needle-in-a-haystack scenario.

They reached the beach side of the boardwalk and she staked out a spot.

“We’ll have a good view from here,” she said.

He smiled at her. He seemed about to say something but then stopped himself.

“What?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Well, you were obviously about to tell me something.”

He looked her in the eye, and she had an unfamiliar and uncomfortable feeling. It was like she had an urge to lean into him. Instead, she took a step back.

“I probably have no right to say this,” he said. “But I just feel bad that you live out here all by yourself, so cut off from the world. I mean, you’re an intelligent young woman with your whole life ahead of you.”

“I’m not cut off from the world.”

“Lauren, you’re a ghost. I couldn’t find you for years. You don’t exist on social media. You don’t keep in touch with anyone from high school or college.”

Lauren leaned on the metal railing and looked out at the ocean. “So how did you find me?”

The question had been eating at her since the day he’d shown up at the restaurant, but she’d been afraid to ask—afraid that someone she knew had betrayed her.

“I was at a lecture where a bioengineer from the Cam Lab at Stanford spoke. He’d developed a special mouth guard that helped track the force of injury in football players. The Polaris Foundation was listed in the program.”

She looked at him. “I purposefully didn’t use Rory’s name in the foundation to keep it under the radar. How did you make the connection?”

“It was a hunch. I’d just been watching interviews with his mother. She showed me photos of the dog.”

Polaris. Rory had loved that dog. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, what can I say? You’re good.”

“Tell me about the foundation,” he said.

“I knew he suffered after those hits to the head. I searched the Internet for answers that his team doctors weren’t giving me. I joined forums on concussions and sports. But when he was alive, no one we knew was talking about it in a real way. He just wanted to play. He just wanted to be great.” She sighed. “I give money to research, but I don’t know. Sometimes it feels worse to do too little too late than to do nothing at all.”

“It’s not too little too late. It means something,” Matt said.

She shrugged, unconvinced.

“You’re lucky that you love what you do,” she said. “I used to want to be a journalist. I remember how exciting it was to chase a story, to feel like you were about to put all the pieces together.”

“Do you ever think of getting back into it?”

She shook her head. “Not really.” The truth was, she missed it. But somehow, leaving behind her life with Rory had turned into leaving behind her life in general. And she had no idea how to find her way back to it.

“Well, documentary film is journalism,” he said. “And you’re helping me.”

She nodded, and their eyes locked. He reached for her hand. The touch lasted just a few seconds before she pulled away. But it was enough to set her heart racing, so much so that when the first firework flared seconds later, she barely noticed it.



It had been an impulse to reach for her hand. As soon as Matt saw the surprised look on her face, felt the quickness of her pulling away, he regretted it. He considered saying he was sorry but thought that would make a big deal out of it. Better to just move on. Mercifully, the fireworks started as if on cue.

Lauren stared at the sky with childlike wonder. It surprised him how happy it made him to see her smiling, enjoying herself.

After the fireworks peaked, a dizzying climax of sparks and booms that made it impossible to talk or think beyond the sensory overload in the sky, Lauren said, “I used to hate the fireworks. Stephanie would always tease me.”

“I’m surprised more kids don’t get freaked out. It’s loud. In New York, we’re farther away from the action, so it’s less intense. It’s really immediate here.”

The tide of people began walking back to the streets, streaming off the boardwalk in all directions. She looked at her phone. “I should get going.”

“It’s still early,” Matt said. It wasn’t that early, actually. He just wasn’t ready to say good-bye; he gave himself a pass for having that feeling, rationalizing that it was for the film. The more she talked to him off camera, the more she would be comfortable talking to him on camera. Still, he couldn’t think of one logical way to prolong the evening.