CHAPTER 15

The next morning Thea drove to the Hannaford in York to stock up on a few basics—deodorant, toothpaste, milk, and coffee. Alice had suggested that maybe if she bought a better brand of coffee she might make a better cup of coffee. It was worth a try.

Red plastic basket over her right arm, Thea joined the line at one of the express checkout stations. The woman in front of her was positively ancient and moved with a slowness that was very close to stillness. The cashier, a teenage boy with one of those huge earplugs in his left earlobe, seemed to know or at least to recognize her, and chatted amiably while with trembling fingers the woman extricated coins from her cracked leather purse.

While she waited patiently, Thea scanned the impulse purchases—candy, horoscope scrolls, and of course magazines. Cooking, health and exercise, fashion, gossip ... The glossy at the end of the row caught her attention. Rather, the words printed along the right side of the cover did: “Reuniting with an Old Flame—Is It Worth It?”

Thea reached for the magazine and then let her hand fall. How much real, sound advice could you get from an article in a magazine that featured makeup tips, the latest fad diets, and a feature on a gaggle of sisters staggeringly popular for nothing more than being public? To waste money on something so ephemeral and ...

The ancient woman in front of her finally moved off and Thea tossed the magazine onto the counter, along with her other purchases. Five minutes later, she was sitting behind the wheel of her car in the parking lot, rapidly scanning the article.

Phrases, sentences leapt out at her. “An early relationship that the parents had belittled or in some ways actively hindered.” “A split that had occurred for largely situational reasons.” Being separated by three thousand miles could count as a “situation,” Thea decided. And certainly her own parents hadn’t been supportive of her dating Hugh.

Her eyes darted to the final few paragraphs of the article. If the two people now reunited had been each other’s first loves, if their relationship had been criticized and cut short, the writer told her, then their chances of romantic success the second time around were close to eighty percent.

Thea’s heart began to race. If this article could be believed, then she and Hugh stood a very good chance of making it again as a couple. They wouldn’t part in a few days, Hugh for New York and Thea to rot away in her rented apartment. She thought about their conversation at dinner the night before, how she had sensed that there were so many important things being left unsaid. Well, maybe not on Hugh’s part, but certainly on hers. But if Hugh really didn’t have anything to say to her, anything like, “Thea, I love you,” then ... then, she was imagining a future that existed only in her own fantasies.

Thea looked down at the glossy cover of the magazine, at its bright purple and pink lettering, sensational headlines, and ridiculously airbrushed model. The article could all be lies, she thought, the studies faked, the results a joke perpetrated by the sneering editors on an unsuspecting, gullible, magazine-reading public. There would most likely be no future with Hugh, no romantic reunion, certainly no marriage, and the sooner she accepted that strong possibility, the better.

Thea tossed the magazine into the backseat of the car and started the engine. Her therapist, she thought, would be proud. How Alice would judge her determination to reject the hope of love, she decided, she would rather not know.