November 6 was Dabney’s birthday. She was forty-nine.
He asked her what she wanted to do to celebrate, and she said that she wanted to order Cuban sandwiches from Foods for Here and There, and she wanted to watch Love Story with Clen and Agnes.
“No cake?” he said. Dabney liked proper pomp and circumstance when it came to birthdays: cake, candles, cards, and presents. That had been true when she was a teenager, and he’d assumed it still was.
Dabney shook her head. Just the sandwiches and the movie, she said.
He said, “Don’t you think Love Story might be too…maudlin?”
“It’s my favorite movie,” she said. “I’d like to see it one more time.”
Agnes arrived at his cottage, looking very, very sad. She and Clen had decided that afternoon to call hospice. They would let Dabney enjoy her birthday, and then hospice would come every day for as long as they were needed.
Dabney would not live to see fifty.
Before the sandwiches and the movie, Clen decided to give Dabney her surprise. She held it in her lap and turned it over, admiring the plaid wrapping paper in navy blue, Nantucket red, and Kelly green.
“I love this wrapping paper,” she said. “I wish every present I’d ever gotten had been wrapped in this paper.”
A good start, he thought. Agnes had picked out the paper.
Dabney touched the present some more, fingering its edges. Taking her time with the last present she would likely ever open.
“I think it’s a book!” she said.
“Open it, Mommy,” Agnes said.
Dabney opened it. The cover of the book was pink, a dusty-rose blush. And in black letters on the front it said, THE MATCHMAKER: DABNEY KIMBALL BEECH.
“Oh,” Dabney said.
She turned to the first page. Couple #1: Ginger (née O’Brien) and Phil Bruschelli, Married twenty-nine years. Ginger: It would have been presumptuous of me to call myself Dabney’s best friend, because even in 1981, freshman year, Dabney was the most popular girl in the school.
And so on and so on—through Tammy Block and Flynn Sheehan, and Dr. Donegal, and the Levinsons, and Genevieve and Brian Lefebvre, and the failed story of Nina Mobley. Clen had managed to collect nineteen of the forty-two stories. He had done the interviews, and had edited each story to make it readable.
Dabney paged through the book, laughing and cooing, and saying, Yes, yes, I remember that! When she looked up at Clen, her eyes were shining with tears.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she said. “This is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever given me.”
“You have brought so much love into the world, Mommy,” Agnes said.
Clen said, “I thought it was important. Agnes will keep it. Her children will read it. And their children. They will know you through those stories.”
Dabney blinked. Tears dropped onto the pages. “Thank you,” she whispered.