Save the Date(122)

“You miss so much,” she said simply. “And sometimes the harder you try to hang on to something, the less you can see that.” She tilted her head slightly to the side. “Did I ever tell you I almost kept the strip frozen in time?”

“What?” I just stared at her. I had thought I had known everything about Grant Central Station—but I’d never heard this before, not in a single interview or note in one of her collections.

She nodded. “It’s what my syndicate wanted me to do. They didn’t like the idea of everyone aging, kids eventually moving out of the house, going to college, Waffles dying. . . .” The real Waffles looked up at her when she said this, then plopped down at my feet, resting his head against my arch. It seemed like he was actually learning his name.

“So why didn’t you?” I couldn’t even get my head around the idea that we wouldn’t have grown up in the strip, parallel to life.

“Because,” she said, setting down her mug and looking at me, “it would have been cheating, in a way. You don’t get to freeze the picture when you want it. It would have been living in the past, and eventually, you just start doing the same jokes over and over again.”

I nodded slowly, clearing my throat around the lump that had suddenly formed in it. “So, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying,” she said, giving me a smile, “that you may not believe me—or like me—very much right now. But that eventually it is all going to be okay.” She reached into her pocket and slid two twenties across to me. “And that you should go pick up some donuts.”

*

Even though I’d drunk most of my coffee before changing into clothes I borrowed from Linnie’s side of the closet, I was still not feeling totally awake yet—which was maybe the reason that as I pulled out of the cul-de-sac and onto the main road, it took me a little longer than it should have to recognize the figure who was standing on the side of the road, shivering next to a suitcase and a leather duffel. It was Brooke. I unrolled the passenger-side window and leaned across the car’s console to talk to her.

“Hey,” I called. She looked up from her phone and blinked at me.

“Charlie? What are you doing out so early?”

“Breakfast run,” I said. “Um—what’s going on?” I asked, when she just glanced down at her phone again, apparently not in a hurry to explain what she was doing standing in the road with monogrammed luggage.

“I booked an early flight back to California,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I called a car, but apparently the driver’s lost. He’s about half an hour late at this point. I was just about to cancel it and see if I can get another. I have a flight to catch.”

“Are you going out of JFK?” I asked, thinking I could get her the number for the airport shuttle everyone in Stanwich used.

Brooke shook her head, folding her arms. “That little airport had the soonest flight,” she said, looking down at her phone again. “But at this point, I’m getting close to missing it.”

I hesitated for just a second longer before I leaned over and pushed the passenger-side door open. “I can give you a ride,” I said. “Hop in.”

Brooke just looked at me for a moment, like she was trying to decide if she should. Then she looked down at her phone, and maybe it was the time—or the utter lostness of her driver—that decided her. But either way, she nodded, and I shifted my car into park, and she loaded her bags into the back.

We drove in silence, and it was like I could feel it like a physical presence between us—the reason she was riding next to me in my car, the reason she’d been on the street with her luggage at all. I wasn’t sure if I should ask—pretend not to know—or if I should wait for her to tell me, but the longer we went without speaking, it was like the elephant in the car with us just seemed to get bigger.

Brooke seemed as put together as ever, in dark jeans and a blue and white striped top, her hair hanging sleek and straight. But underneath all that, I could see how tired she looked, how her face looked drawn in the early-morning light. I had just taken a breath when Brooke, still looking out the window, and not at me, finally spoke.

“Danny and I broke up.”

I glanced over at her, then back at the road, deciding that this early, with my coffee not fully kicking in, I didn’t have it in me to act surprised. “He told me.”

Brooke let out a short laugh and looked out the window. “I guess I should have figured.”

“I’m really sorry.”

“Are you?” she asked, giving me a direct, questioning look that felt like it was going right through me.

“Yeah, I am.”

Brooke nodded as she looked out the window, at the scenery flying past. It was early enough that there weren’t many people on the street—just the occasional dog walker or stroller-pushing parent. “I think,” she finally said, like she was choosing her words carefully, “I knew it wasn’t working out. But when he invited me to come this weekend, not only to meet his family, but to his sister’s wedding . . . I thought it meant more than it did. Like we were finally going to take the next steps. And I just wanted everything to be perfect. . . .”

I nodded, feeling like I understood this all too well. “Right,” I said softly.