The Return(49)
We took a sip in tandem, taking in the view.
“I called the hospital, as you suggested,” I said. “About my grandfather.”
“And?”
“You were right—it was a critical first step.” I went on, filling her in. She listened carefully, her eyes never leaving my face.
“Where do you think he was going? If it wasn’t Easley?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you don’t think he went to see Helen?”
“Unless he’d undergone a radical change, I just can’t imagine him being interested in another woman. Not at his age, not so far away, and definitely not with the way he still spoke about my grandmother.”
“He told me about her once,” Natalie mused. “He said she used to hum to herself in the kitchen when she was cooking and that sometimes, even now, he imagined he could still hear it.”
“When did he tell you that?”
“Last year, maybe? It was at the farmers’ market and I can’t remember how the subject even came up, but I recall thinking about that story when I got home. I could tell he still loved her.”
“That’s what I mean,” I agreed. “He was a one-woman man.”
She took another sip. “Do you believe in that? One woman for one man, for all time? The whole soul mate thing?”
“I guess it’s possible for some couples—like them or maybe even my parents—but it’s probably more the exception than the rule. I think most people fall in love more than once in their life.”
“And yet you’re unsure whether you’ve ever been in love.”
“It’s not fair to paraphrase my earlier statements back to me.”
She laughed. “So what are you going to do about your grandfather?”
“I’m thinking about driving down to Easley on Tuesday. I want to find out where he was picked up and try to locate his truck. Maybe it’ll help me figure things out.”
“That’s a long way to travel without much to go on,” she pointed out.
“It should only take a couple of days.”
As I spoke, I saw her shiver. She set her wineglass on the railing and rubbed her arms. “Sorry. I think I’m getting a little cold. Do you have a bathroom where I can change?”
“The bathrooms are tiny, so feel free to use one of the bedrooms if you’d rather. Are you hungry yet? Do you want me to get the grill going?”
She nodded. “I’m getting hungry, so that would be great. Do you think I could have a little more wine before I go in?”
“Of course.”
In the kitchen, I poured her more wine—she stopped me at half a glass—watching as she retrieved her bag from the family room and disappeared into the bedroom. Uncertain what she wanted for dinner—aside from the tuna—I’d dumped a lot of different options into the grocery cart earlier. There was not only a salad and green bean amandine, but rice pilaf and coleslaw as well. Lest anyone get too impressed, the rice pilaf came in a box with easy-to-prepare directions, and the coleslaw had come from the deli section of the grocery store. Sandra had taught me how to prepare green beans with olive oil, garlic, and slivers of almonds. I set the water boiling on the stove for the rice, scooped the coleslaw into a glass bowl and, along with the green salad and a bottle of dressing, brought all that to the table outside. I started the grill, added salt and pepper to the steak, and poured the rice and seasoning into the pot. After mixing soy sauce and wasabi for a dipping sauce for her tuna, I tossed the steak on the grill and returned to the kitchen for the green beans.
The steak, rice, and beans cooked quickly; I covered them with foil and placed them in the oven to keep warm, but there was still no sign of Natalie. Her tuna would take only a minute or two to sear, so I didn’t bother starting it yet. Instead, I moved a speaker out onto the porch, then used my iPhone to play some favorite tunes of mine from the eighties. I took a seat in the rocker, sipped the wine I’d poured earlier, and watched the moon as it rose, glowing just above the trees. It was one of those beautiful crescent-shaped ones—waxing or waning, but I wasn’t sure which. At some point in the past year I had downloaded an app that told you everything about the constellations and where to find them in the night sky; it occurred to me that I could fire it up and then try to later impress Natalie with my knowledge of astronomy.
But I dismissed the idea. She’d see right through me, for starters. Strangely, the more she rolled her eyes, the more I felt like I could simply be myself. I liked that—hell, Natalie was pretty much the entire package as far as I could tell—but what did it matter? I was leaving, so it wasn’t as though we had a chance at any kind of lasting relationship. I’d head off on my journey, she’d continue on her way, all of which meant there was no reason to get carried away, right?
It was a familiar exercise for me. In high school, I’d kept an emotional distance from the girls I’d dated, and the same thing had happened in both college and medical school. With Sandra, it might have been different in the beginning, but toward the end, I could barely handle myself, let alone a relationship. While all of those women had their charms, it struck me that I was always thinking about the next phase of my life, one that didn’t include them. That might seem shallow and maybe it was, but I firmly believed that everyone should strive to be the best version of themselves that they can possibly be, a belief that sometimes required difficult choices. But Natalie had been wrong in thinking that it made me a player. I was more of a serial dater than a man on the prowl. Yoga Girl (Lisa? Elisa? Elise?) was the exception, not the rule.