“How’re things with your family?” Meghan snaps back.
“Okay, off-limits topics. I get it.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been badgered by Carol over it; I’m a little fragile.”
Rosie laughs. “I don’t think so. You’re about the least fragile person I know.” She signals for their exit. “The answer is, I haven’t broken through their radio silence yet.”
“And I haven’t talked to him in a week and a half. We didn’t leave it very comfortably.”
Rosie doesn’t say anything, but Meghan feels Rosie’s hand on her own.
Meghan rides in with Don the next morning, having spent the night with Carol and Don at their home in Fairfield. Shark likes the backseat of Don’s Mercedes-Benz, stretching out on the leather seat like a pasha. Over dinner last night, she and Carol filled Don in on the good work being done at the Homestead, and the sidebar of Susannah Day’s extraordinary diary.
Don gives Meghan a side glance. “So, how was it? ’Fessing up to being nice?”
“I won’t lie. It feels pretty good.”
“Dare I say a relief?”
“You might. It is a weight lifted, for sure. I had no idea being so guarded with a secret could be so wearing.”
“How’d she take it?”
“Kind of pissed initially. But she’s not the kind of person to stay that way, and she’s so happy. Don, she’s really in a good place.”
Don spends most of the rest of the drive into the city on the phone, while Meghan’s thoughts drift. Thinking about Rosie, Meghan feels very relaxed, maybe for the first time since she put Rosie’s name into consideration by the Advocacy. It’s true what they say about the weight of a lie. Not a lie per se, but a withholding. An omission. It’s like being released. She extricates her phone from her bag, sends off a quick text to Rosie: It was great to see you. Hope to see you again soon. xxoo. She’s never done that before, add those little letters x and o like some kind of schoolgirl. Next she’ll be drawing hearts over her i’s. In an instant, her phone chimes. xo to you.
Meghan is unaccountably pleased. It’s good to have a friend. At least one that she hasn’t alienated. She was rude to Rosie about Marley but was forgiven. She was pretty cold to Marley, but she doesn’t expect to be forgiven about that. Another ding. Will call tonight to talk about the M situation. From what she’s been told, it’s always good to have someone to talk to about hard topics. Not so much a shoulder to cry on as a fresh perspective. Fresher certainly than Carol’s. Rosie doesn’t know firsthand how sweet Marley can be.
Her phone chimes again, but this time it isn’t Rosie. It’s Marley. It’s like she’s conjured him with her thoughts. Meghan doesn’t open the text, just sits with the phone in her lap, staring down at the screen. They’ve entered the city and Don is waiting his turn to drive into the parking garage. Shark sits up and pushes his nose over the seat, pokes her cheek with it. She reaches back to pet him. The dog, being an equal-opportunity lover, bumps Don’s cheek, as well. Meghan sees Don’s smile. Sometimes the best part of your day is getting dog kisses.
The parking garage leads right into their building, and as they pass into the atrium-style lobby, Shark’s tail begins to wag with a vigor that can only mean he sees someone he loves. He softly woofs as he spots his pal Spike and her person, Marley.
Suddenly, Don is six strides ahead of Meghan. “Hey, Marley, nice to see you.” He shakes the other man’s hand and then fairly leaps aboard an open elevator.
Meghan wonders if Marley is going to block her way to the rank of elevators and then wonders at her own cowardice. This from a woman who performed sweeps of potentially booby-trapped buildings or ones harboring snipers.
Spike has her own agenda, and she and Shark are quickly nose-to-nose, and other important areas, tails whipping from side to side. Spike breaks off from Shark long enough to greet Meghan. Because of their history, because of their former relationship, Meghan has no compunction against petting this working therapy dog. She runs her hand through the curly topknot on the dog’s head. Spike meets her eye like an equal and Meghan has a fleeting moment of whimsy that the dog is asking her to please give Marley another chance. Meghan shakes the impression off. In the next moment, Shark and Spike have flopped down on the cool, shiny floor of the lobby, directly in front of her wheels. Evidently, it won’t be Marley blocking her way.
“Hi.”
“Hi yourself.” Marley snaps his fingers and Spike goes to his side. “Got a minute?”
She could plead an important meeting. She could say no. She is looking up at Marley, and he seems taller than ever. She gestures toward a bench. She doesn’t want to be forced to have a conversation with her head tilted—a position of vulnerability.
Marley sits on the edge of the bench and she pulls her chair up to be beside him. She doesn’t want to be facing him. It’s easier to talk if she doesn’t have to look at him, at his eyes. Marley very gently, very respectfully takes her hand in his, her more damaged hand. “When I first came home from Iraq, I pretended that everything was fine, normal. That I was fine, normal. I wasn’t. So I turned, like so many of us do, to drugs. They helped on the surface, making it easier for me to deny what had happened. No, that’s not right. They were supposed to help me to deny that what had happened had affected me. But, of course, they were false gods. I wasn’t any stronger for taking them. The images and the fear and the nightmares were only blunted, not faced, not cured. And then I got Spike, and some of that I was able to put away. Not the fear, but the drugs. Not the nightmares. But the consolation of having this dog with me has helped. I am coping. Understand? Coping. That’s all we get, you and I. The ability to cope. We aren’t ever going to be perfect.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I think that you can cope with life going on. You have. And unless you really don’t have feelings for me, I think that you can cope very well with having me be a real part of your whole life, not just a compartmentalized section of it.”
Meghan is aware that Shark’s fairly climbing into her lap, a sure sign that she isn’t coping.
“The question I’m asking, Meghan, is, are you happier with me outside of your life, or in it with you?”
It’s been only ten or twelve days, but despite the distraction of going to Gloucester, these have been the emptiest of days for Meghan. Even having Rosie fully back as a friend has been bittersweet, because all she could think of was that she didn’t have Marley.
“Stay with me. Be in my life fully.” Meghan puts her good hand over Marley’s.
Shark eases himself off Meghan’s lap, shakes, and flops down at her feet. Spike, already at Marley’s feet, drops her head on Shark’s rump and sighs.
“Marley, I’m not sure I can do more than just be a friend.”
“Then I won’t ask you for anything more.”
But in the next moment, he’s kissing her, and it feels awfully good. “But you can always ask me for more.”