We were quiet as we circled the stone building, heading toward the area where cars were parked haphazardly among the trees. I recognized his old Ford and the sight of it nearly put tears in my eyes. How many hours I’d spent in that car!
He opened the door for me and I got in and rolled down the window. He did the same on his side and the evening breeze and sound of cicadas filled the car. He didn’t say a word and I knew he was waiting for me to begin.
I leaned my back against the door and looked at him. Really looked. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt I’d never seen before, but everything else about him was familiar. Familiar and beautiful.
“Did you know I was here?” I asked. “In Hickory?”
“I had no idea where you were,” he said. “Gina refused to tell me anything.”
“I made her promise.”
“That letter you left me…” He shook his head. “My Tess? Marrying someone else? Cutting me out of her life without a word of explanation? I thought it was impossible. And of course, you left me no way to get in touch with you. I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.” He looked out his side window into the woods. “When I finally got to Baltimore after your mother died, and I walked into your house and saw your engagement ring on that letter … I couldn’t believe it. Neither could my parents. It was such a shock. Such a slap in the face to all three of us.”
I winced. “I know,” I murmured. “I hated hurting all of you.”
“I was sure Gina knew who the man was and where you were, but she told me to forget you. Just move on. And once my mother accepted the fact that you were gone, she said the same thing. ‘Tess isn’t the girl we all thought she was,’ she told me. But how was I supposed to forget about you?” he asked. “It was impossible. Then Gina stopped returning my calls, and I finally realized you’d shut me out of your life for good and I had no choice but to accept it and move on.”
“I’m so sorry, Vincent.” My heart skittered in my chest as I listened to him, imagining how he’d felt.
“I was worried about you at first,” he said. “That behavior … it just wasn’t like you. And then I got angry.” He gripped the bottom of the steering wheel. He looked at me. “I’m still angry,” he said.
“Of course you are. Probably not nearly as angry as I am at myself.”
“I thought our relationship was strong enough to survive me being gone for those few months. I was so busy and maybe I took you for granted when I became a lazy letter writer.”
“That wasn’t it,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault in any way.”
“Was it my talk about possibly moving to Chicago someday? I knew you didn’t want that, and—”
“No, of course not.” I reached over to touch his hand, but quickly pulled my fingers away. I had no right to touch him. “And anyhow, you ended up back in Baltimore,” I said. “Gina told me.”
“I like Chicago, but my mother got sick and I knew I had to stay close to home.”
“Mimi was sick?”
“She still is. It’s her heart. It’s slowly giving out on her. She’s a little weaker every day.”
“Oh, Vincent.” I wished I could wrap my arms around him. Comfort him. I kept my hands locked in my lap. “What about Pop?” I asked. “How is he?”
“Afraid of losing Mom,” he said, shaking his head. “They’ve become little old people. Seems like it happened overnight.” He turned to face me. “So, are you going to tell me what happened, Tess?” he asked. “Why are you here? Who did you marry?”
I bit my lip to stop its trembling. “I’m so ashamed,” I said. He reached out his hand. Touched my lip with the tip of his finger. He might as well have been touching my breasts for the current of electricity it sent through me. He drew his hand away as though he suddenly remembered his anger, not his love.
“Tell me,” he demanded.
I knotted my hands again in my lap. “I was upset with you being gone so long,” I said. “I realize now I was being childish, but I was so used to having you close by and you seemed much more interested in your work than in me, and I was … I was being a big baby.” I twisted my rings around and around on my finger. “Gina suggested we go to Washington one weekend and we did. We stayed in her aunt’s tourist home. Two men were staying there and we all went out to dinner together.” I watched his face. His expression was impassive and unreadable. “It wasn’t like a date,” I said. “We went out as acquaintances. I didn’t feel as though I was cheating on you, doing that. But at dinner, I drank too much.”
“You? When have you ever had too much to drink?”
“That night I did. Martinis. Too many. And when we got back to the tourist home…” I pressed my hands together so hard they hurt. “I don’t even remember how it happened, actually,” I said, “but Henry—that’s his name—ended up in my room.”
Vincent frowned. “Did he rape you?”
I shook my head. “I’m so ashamed,” I said again.
“You willingly had relations with this man? This Henry?”
“Yes.”
“Good Lord, Tess. I thought you were going to tell me he was so charming that you instantly fell in love with him. Not that you slept with him within hours of meeting him.”
“I know. It was as though some other girl had taken over my mind and body.”
“Gina was a terrible influence on you.”
“Don’t blame Gina. She slept alone. I made my own poor decisions that night.”
“So you started seeing him and he swept you off your feet and—”
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t see him again,” I said. “I was mortified by what happened and felt so undeserving of you. So guilty. And then … here’s the terrible part, Vincent. I discovered I was pregnant.”
He caught his breath. “You have a child?”
I shook my head. I felt overwhelmed by the whole story. “When I realized I was pregnant by another man, I knew you and I were finished. I decided the only thing I could do would be to move away. I’d tell people I had a husband overseas. I’d start fresh. I didn’t know where I was going to go but I knew I needed money. And I knew Henry had money—he owns a furniture factory here in Hickory. So I came down here to ask him for money. Instead, he asked me to marry him. I know it sounds crazy. We didn’t know each other, but he wanted to take responsibility for the baby. To give him a name. And so I felt like saying yes was the best thing I could do for the baby. But a few months later…” I pressed my fists against my belly, feeling the loss all over again. “The baby came too early,” I said. My voice broke. “It was terrible.” I wouldn’t tell him about the accident. About Lucy. It was too much to go into just then. This was enough. “I loved my baby,” I said. “He was all I had, and then he was gone and I was trapped, married to a man I don’t love. I’m still trapped.”
We were both quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was soft. “You made one mistake,” he said. “You slept with someone else. I can hardly believe the Tess I knew would do that, but you did. But then you compounded it with a thousand other mistakes instead of just coming to me. Telling me what you did. Why didn’t you do that, Tess? Didn’t you trust me to forgive you?”
“How could you forgive me when I couldn’t forgive myself?” I asked. “I ruined myself that night in Washington. I ruined myself for you. I knew you didn’t believe in premarital sex and—”
“I think you had me on a pedestal,” he interrupted me. “I’m nearly twenty-eight years old, and I decided long ago that I didn’t want the life of a priest,” he said. “Do you think I’ve been celibate all my adult life?”
I was shocked. “You … while we were together?”
He shook his head. “No, of course not. But there were a couple of girls before you and I were serious. And one since you and I … since you left.” His new girlfriend. The nurse Gina had told me about.
“But,” I said, “you and I never…” I let my sentence trail off.
“I knew your feelings about sex before marriage and respected them,” he said. “I was willing to wait because it was so important to you. Or so I thought.”
“I wish I’d known that about you,” I said. “Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so … dirty.” I thought we’d known everything there was to know about each other but obviously that wasn’t the case. “Gina said you’re involved with someone now,” I said, fighting the jealousy rising up in my chest. “Is it very serious?” The thought of him being with someone else, loving someone else, was excruciating.
“I’m not seeing her any longer,” he said. “It was … casual.”
“If I had come to you last fall,” I said. “If I’d confessed what I’d done … how would you have reacted?”
“I would have been very upset, that’s true,” he said. “Though probably not as upset as I am right now. I’m angry at you for”—he shook his head—“for everything. For leaving the way you did, without a word. For not trusting me and our relationship.”
“I didn’t want you to know. I felt like I didn’t deserve you.”
“You’re human. You made a human mistake. I would have forgiven you. I loved you.”
I noticed the past tense. I still love you, I thought.
“So,” he said. “This Henry. What is he like?”
Images flashed through my mind: Henry, early that afternoon, sitting on Jilly’s bed, making her giggle. Henry, staying out all night with flimsy excuses as to where he’d been and what he’d been doing. Henry, holding me in his arms as I cried over our lost son. Hiding money in the armoire. Berating Reverend Sam for no good reason. “For the most part,” I said, “he’s a good man, but I don’t think I can ever love him. We … there’s no closeness there. No emotional closeness. No physical closeness.”
He raised his eyebrows, and I shook my head.
“It’s strange, Vincent. There was that one time in Washington, when we’d both had too much to drink. And when we got married, he never seemed attracted to me and I realized he only married me for the sake of the baby. And when I lost the baby, I thought we could get divorced, but he refused. Then I thought we could have our marriage voided, since we’d … there’d been no consummation, at least not since we’d been married. I asked him and he got angry about it. And that night he … suddenly there was. Consummation. As though he wanted to lock me into our marriage. But there’s been no … no closeness since.” My cheeks burned. “It’s as though he both wants and doesn’t want to be married to me.”
“And what do you want?” His jaw was tight. I knew that tense, angry look. I’d missed every one of his expressions, even this one.
“I want my old life back,” I said. “I’d give anything to turn back the calendar. To be back with you the way we were. Looking forward to our wedding and our future together. I know I ruined it all. I’m so sorry.”
He sighed. “Are we going to be able to work together?” he asked. “Will our past get in the way?”
“We can’t let it,” I said. “The work here is too important.”
“I don’t ever want to meet your husband,” he said with a flare to his nostrils. “I’d knock his block off. He took advantage of you. What kind of scum picks up a girl in Washington and sleeps with her that same night?”
“What kind of girl does the same thing?” I gave my head a weary shake. “He’s no more to blame for that night than I am,” I said. “He did the honorable thing by marrying me, though I know he doesn’t love me.”
“Do you love him?
I shook my head. “I love you,” I said, before I could stop myself.
He looked away from me. “A little too late for that, isn’t it,” he said, and I winced, wishing I’d kept my feelings to myself.
“Can you take me home now?” I asked. If I didn’t get home soon, Henry would be full of questions.
He turned the key in the ignition without another word. It had grown dark and I guided him out of the site, through the woods and onto the main road. I hated for him to see where I lived. I didn’t want him to think that I’d been attracted to Henry for his money.
“Where are you staying?” I asked as we neared my neighborhood.
“The Hotel Hickory,” he said. “Strange environment,” he added. “Eighty nurses, an epidemiologist, and me.”
I nodded, trying to imagine how different the hotel must feel right now from when I’d stayed there with Henry.
I told him where to turn, and when he pulled up in front of the house in all its grandeur, the front porch lights warm and welcoming, he simply looked at me with a shake of his head.
“I’m sorry you’re not happy, Tess,” he said. “Truly, I am.”