The Lies That Bind(75)

“Aw, thank you,” I say.

“It’s true,” she says. “And I think we should design the whole wedding around that look.”

“You mean Jane Austen-y?” Scottie says.

“Yes. Exactly. What do you think, Cecily?”

“That could be really cool,” I say, picturing it.

“Yes,” Amy says, beaming. “It’ll be perfect.”

“Tell that to Mrs. Capell,” I say with a sigh.

“Oh, believe me, I intend to,” she says.

“You heard?” I say. “About our little announcement?”

“Yeah. Matthew told me,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Whatever to all that.”

    “Exactly!” Scottie says, giving Amy a high five. “God, I love this girl.”

“But seriously,” Amy says. “I’ll handle Mrs. Capell. She just needs to be reassured that we have time to plan a gorgeous wedding. I promise that’s her only concern here.”

“Thank you, Amy,” I say. “So much.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she says. “I’m really happy to help.”



* * *



—

Later that night, after the party is over, Scottie and I are back in my apartment all tucked into bed (one of us with a buzz). With the lights off, we debrief the party, including Amy. Scottie seems obsessed with her, gushing about how cool she is.

Part of me wants to remind him that I really don’t love hearing such over-the-top praise about Grant’s wife. But I stop myself both because it feels so wrong to express any sort of jealousy of a widow, even to my best friend, and because I really do like her. Bizarrely, I even find myself thinking of us as a team these days—a Thelma and Louise duo against the man who wronged us, even though only one of us realizes it.





Maybe it’s the Thelma and Louise imagery, but I awaken the next morning to the most intense, vivid dream. In it, Grant, Byron, Amy, and I are on a road trip out west somewhere with desert scenery. We are traveling in one of those big seventies-looking campers, the four of us playing cards, listening to loud rock music and singing at the top of our lungs, like a band on tour. Like one big, happy family.

At one point in the dream, though, I suddenly remember that I’m engaged to Matthew, and insist that we pull over at a rest stop so I can call him. He doesn’t answer, and I spend the next few scenes in planes, trains, and Greyhound buses, looking for him but never finding him.

In the final act, I am in a diner with Byron, who explains to me that Grant and Matthew know about each other, and neither wants anything to do with me. It’s a disaster, he says. They both hate me. As I start to cry, he reassures me that everything is going to be okay, that it’s just going to take some time. I can still see Byron’s eyes in the dream. How wise they are. How much they look like Grant’s.

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to interpret the overall meaning here. But I still want to analyze it with Scottie, if only so I can stop thinking about it sooner. I give him a nudge and ask if he’s awake.

“No,” he says. “I’m sound asleep.”

    I laugh and say, “Come on. Wake up. I need to talk to you. I had the craziest dream.”

He opens one eye, then closes it again. “I’m listening.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. I don’t listen through my eyelids.”

“I think I need to talk to Byron,” I say.

“Grant’s brother?”

“Yes.”

Now the second eye is open, too. “About what?”

“About Grant. About everything.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Kinda.”

“Why?” he says.

“Because,” I say, searching for the right words. “Because other than Amy, he’s the only potential path to understanding Grant…and once he’s gone…there is no path.”

Scottie stares at me. “And refresh my recollection, why do you have to understand Grant?”

“Because,” I say. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with no closure.”

“But he’s…gone….You can’t get much more closure than that.”

I shake my head, feeling frantic. “Death isn’t closure,” I say. “And it just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t add up.”

“I think it adds up,” Scottie says. “Grant was a womanizer. It all makes total sense.”

“But he loved me—I know he did. You can’t fake what we had.”

Scottie squints at me, like he’s really trying to understand what I’m saying. But he just can’t. Not fully, anyway. I guess that’s always the case when it comes to intimate relationships. There are some things that only the two people involved can ever really comprehend—and sometimes those things are elusive even to them.

“Okay,” Scottie says with a sigh. “So maybe he was a womanizer who fell in love. Maybe you really were the love of his life. But what difference does it make at this point?” He sighs and says, “God, Cecily. I thought you’d made progress with all of this. You seemed so happy in the dressing room when you tried on that dress….”