The Matchmaker's Gift(36)

“I’ll give you some privacy,” Abby mumbled. “Thank you, Ms. Morgan.” Abby reached for the office door again, her mind buzzing with surprise and confusion. Before exiting, she turned to look at the couple once more. Evelyn’s head was on Michael’s chest and his arms were wrapped protectively around her. From the window behind them, the late morning sun illuminated them both with a rosy glow. They looked, Abby thought, like a Byzantine painting, encircled in a halo of gold. Abby forced herself to look away and to head in the direction of the hotel lobby. When she got outside, she stopped for a bit to catch her breath on the sidewalk.

She had witnessed an intimate, private moment, something not meant for her eyes: Michael and Evelyn, clinging to each other like two desperate lovers from a Hollywood movie. You didn’t have to be Abby’s grandmother to understand how deeply the two of them were connected.

Abby wished she hadn’t seen it. But even more, she wished that Evelyn hadn’t signed the document to begin the divorce. Grandma Sara’s voice was loud in her head. I see what I see, and I know what I know.

Abby had seen two people deeply in love. And she knew now, no matter what she’d been told, that Evelyn Morgan should not end her marriage.



* * *



Back at the office, Diane was seething. “Victor is going to give me a heart attack,” she complained. “I scheduled a meeting with his corporate lawyer for tomorrow. How did it go with Evelyn?”

Abby knew better than to mention what she had seen between the hotel maven and her poet husband. Diane had made it perfectly clear that Abby’s job was to facilitate their divorce. If Abby even hinted at a reconciliation, she wasn’t sure how much longer she would have her job.

“Evelyn was having problems with her vision,” Abby said. “She wanted me to read the summons to her.”

Diane put down her pen and frowned. “Maybe that’s why she seemed so off the other day. During her last divorce, she had terrible migraines.”

“Hopefully, she’s gone to see a doctor.”

“I’m sure she has. Evelyn takes excellent care of herself. She goes to a spa for three weeks every January—someplace in Switzerland where they charge God knows what. I’ve asked her to give me the name a dozen times, but she refuses to tell me what it’s called. All I know is that every February, she comes back looking ten years younger than when she left.”

Abby tried to chuckle along with Diane, but, in truth, she was worried about Evelyn’s health. She knew it wasn’t her place to interfere, but as the day went on, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she should try to do something to help.

When she got home that evening, she searched through her closet until she unearthed the purse she’d used for her grandmother’s funeral. There, in the bottom of the black leather bag, she found what she was looking for—the card from the doctor who’d treated her grandmother. Abby studied the small, printed rectangle: DR. JESSICA COOPER, OPHTHALMOLOGY. Maybe Dr. Cooper would have some ideas about what could be wrong with Evelyn’s eyesight. Abby left her number with the answering service and asked for the doctor to return her call.

Later, Abby sank onto her couch with a plate of leftover Chinese food and one of her grandmother’s journals. She was curious to see whether Sara had written anything else about the Pickle King’s daughter. But she could find no more references to Ida in the book and no more clippings about her tucked between the pages.

At around 9:15, her telephone rang, and Abby let the machine pick it up. “Hey there, it’s Will. It’s Friday night, so you’re probably out…”As Will’s friendly chatter filled the room, Abby swallowed her sesame chicken and groaned. Will was nice. He seemed to really like her. As Abby’s mother would say, she could do a lot worse. But when Abby thought about seeing him again, she knew he wasn’t someone she needed to be with. She struggled to envision a moment with Will where she would ever want to hold him the way she had seen Evelyn clinging to Michael Gilbert.

Abby had heard the stories of her grandmother’s first suitor, the man Sara’s family had expected her to marry. From what Abby had been told, he had been “nice,” too. Good-looking, smart, from a respectable family. But no matter how easy it would have been to marry him, Sara had always told Abby that it hadn’t felt right. “Nathan was a good man,” Grandma Sara used to say, “but he wasn’t my bashert, he wasn’t my soulmate.”

Every time Abby suffered through a breakup in high school or college, her grandmother brought up Nathan’s name. “So?” she would say, tilting her head. “What can I tell you? He wasn’t for you. Just like Nathan Weisman wasn’t for me.” Abby’s grandmother said it matter-of-factly, as if it shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

Abby used to wonder if Nathan was real or merely a story her grandmother invented to make Abby feel better about her own relationships. If Nathan was real, Abby realized now, he was probably mentioned in one of Sara’s journals. Perhaps Sara had written something about him that could help Abby figure out what to do about Will. What exactly did it mean if someone wasn’t for her? How could she know? What were the signs?

Abby flipped through the pages, searching for Nathan’s name, looking for the man that hadn’t measured up. She read through dozens of names and descriptions, until, finally, she found what she had been seeking. The year marked in ink was 1918, the name at the top of the page: Nathan Weisman. It was underlined not only once, but twice, and the ink was blurred, as if her grandmother’s fingers had traced the letters a hundred times. A ticket stub was tucked behind the page for something called “The 1918 War Show,” held at the Columbia University gym.