Chapter 15

While Gabe chain-smoked, Elizabeth listened distractedly to the sound of the road sliding beneath them. She felt a dull headache swelling behind her eyes from the bright sunlight. Out the window the insipid landscape of eastern Arkansas swept by, endlessly flat fields where soybeans and cotton had been harvested and the dark soil turned over, and now lay exposed and barren as a vast lava flow. Gabe fiddled occasionally with the radio, trying to find something he liked, but mostly Elizabeth sensed it was just to cover the awkward silence that seemed to expand in the truck like an enormous balloon. Finally he mumbled a “damn it” and turned the radio off, and they continued on in this claustrophobic stillness for a while.

She tried to let the white noise of the highway lull her into a state of mental lassitude. But her mind kept returning to several troubling things. She thought of what her son had done—fed a bunch of poor people. It both surprised and relieved her, as well as made her proud of Luke. At his generosity, his compassion, even if he hardly showed the same sort of thoughtful feelings to his mother, and even if he had been generous with her money. She thought of all the times he had done similarly kind acts, often to complete strangers. With his father, he’d often helped out at the church. Collecting food and blankets for the poor. Going out to the Indian reservation in South Dakota. Dropping money in the cans of homeless people wherever he saw them. Then there was her conversation with Gabe and how he’d asked if she’d had an affair. How had he guessed it? Was there something stamped on her forehead, perhaps like the big red “A” carried around by Hester Prynne? Then she was embarrassed by how she’d tried to blame Zack for what had been her failing, her sin. Did she think that she could spin things in such a way that Zack was the guilty party simply because he wasn’t the man she had wanted? Or because she had grown bored with their marriage. It was like a thief blaming the owner of something the thief had stolen simply because she coveted it. Zack had always been a good husband, a good father, a good man, someone tender and generous and loyal—yes, loyal—and she had, for her own selfish reasons, cheated on him. There was no way she could get out of her guilt, save perhaps by owning it.

“About before,” she said after awhile, without looking over at Gabe. “I want to set the record straight. My husband’s a good man.”

“I don’t doubt he is.”

“No, I mean it. And he’s had a rough go of it, too. With what happened to our son. With everything we’ve been through in the past year. With me especially.”

Gabe looked over at her and gave her a mock salute. “Got it,” he said.

“I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me. I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. I just thought we were talking. You know, like friends.”

“But we’re not friends. We hardly know each other.”

“If you don’t want to get into your personal life, that’s fine by me. By the way, how’s the nose?”

She was hardly aware of the pain now except for when she wrinkled her nose to squint into the bright sunlight. “Not bad. Can I have a cigarette?”

“You know they sell these things,” he said.

He handed her the pack and the lighter. She took a cigarette, lit up, inhaled deeply, letting the smoke linger in her lungs for a moment. She felt some vague need to further explain things, to clarify what she meant, to present, if not quite the truth—whatever that was—at least a truer, or perhaps fairer, picture than the one she’d painted so far.

“I love my husband.”

“I believe you.”

“No, really. I do. It’s just that it’s complicated,” she explained. Ahead on the highway she saw small pockets of shimmery air rising in ghostly columns above the asphalt. They looked like schools of tiny silver-scaled fish, undulating and writhing. “It was complicated before our son died and it’s worse now.”

“I know something about that.”

She took a drag on her cigarette and stared out the window. Up ahead just off the highway, she saw another descanso. A plain white cross set above a steep gully. As they passed it she said, “Could you pull over?”

“Whatever you say.”

Gabe slowed the truck and angled it over to the side of the highway. They got out and walked back along the shoulder of the road toward the cross. It was about two feet high, the white paint faded to gray. It didn’t have any writing on it whatsoever and there was nothing on the ground around it. Just a stark cross marking the spot where someone had died, presumably having pitched over the edge and down into the stream some seventy feet below. Elizabeth could almost picture the car leaving the highway, flying over the edge of the gully, out into space for a moment. The person inside feeling that giddy, frightening sensation of weightlessness, momentarily throwing off the bounds of gravity and the demands of this mortal coil, becoming light as air.

“I don’t get it,” Gabe said. “Why would somebody go through the trouble of putting up a cross without writing anything on it.”

“Maybe they didn’t need to say anything. Maybe just putting it up was enough,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the cross. For some reason, she thought of that rainy day along the side of the road when she’d met George Doucette, how he’d spoken to her about “regrets.” In some ways that one word had prompted this entire journey.

“You were right before,” she said.

“About what?”

“I’m ashamed to admit it but yes, I did have an affair.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“What else?”

“What would you like to know?”

“How’d it happen?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “How does anything like that happen? You make a bad choice and then another one and another after that, and pretty soon you’re in up to your neck. I guess I was bored with my marriage. And you were right, I didn’t feel my husband appreciated me. I know that’s just an excuse, but that’s what I felt.”

She went ahead and told him about Peter, not all of it, just the merest outline of the affair: how they met, how it unfolded, how it had lasted over a year. The thing she didn’t tell him was that she was with Peter the night her son died. That part still seemed too intimate, too humiliating to share with someone she didn’t even know. Then again, except for George Doucette, she hadn’t told a soul any of this.

“How did it end?”

“I like to think I came to my senses and realized I loved my husband.”

“Did he forgive you?” Gabe asked.

She thought of lying but then decided she’d come this far with the truth. What did it matter?

“I never told him. I just couldn’t bring myself to confess what I’d done.”

“Why?”

“Mostly I didn’t want to hurt him. He’d been hurt enough with the loss of our son. If he found out that I’d been unfaithful, I don’t know what it would have done to him.”

“Did you ever think maybe it would’ve been better for him if you just told him the truth? For you, too. What do they say, the truth will set you free?”

“I’d thought of telling him. Many times. I just never found the courage to do it.”

Gabe ran a hand along the angle of his unshaven jaw.

“Did your son know?”

“About the affair? I don’t think so. Then again, there were times I suspected he knew something was up.” She hesitated for a moment before adding, “He called me the night he died. He said he had something he wanted to talk about. Something important.”

“What was it about?”

“That’s the million dollar question. I was at a conference in Washington. I was busy and didn’t take his call. I got it later on voicemail and when I finally called him back he didn’t answer. Then in the middle of the night, I got another call. It was the police from Marrizozo, New Mexico.”

“Jesus,” Gabe said, drawing his mouth into a tight grimace. “That’s awful.”

“It was. Is.”

“And you never found out what he wanted?”

“No. Sometimes I wonder if it had something to do with the affair. If he’d seen something. One of my emails or texts to Peter. Or some friend of a friend had seen us together and told Luke.”

They stood there for a few seconds, then Gabe said, “We should probably get going.”

“Wait.” Elizabeth searched pockets. She found only some coins, a used Chapstick, a pen she’d taken from the last motel. Then she reached back into her hair and took out the scrunchie. She knelt down and put it at the base of the cross.

“What the hell is that for?” Gabe asked.

“I guess you’re supposed to leave something at that these places. As a remembrance.”

Gabe reached into his back pocket and removed the filthy oil rag.

“This is all I got.”

“Leave it then.”

So he placed that next to Elizabeth’s scrunchie.

* * *

Just after sunset, they decided to stop for the night and pulled off the highway at a town whose name seemed to mock itself—New Hope. The place looked dismal, grim and pancake-flat, a two-stoplight farming town, with several enormous grain elevators near the railroad tracks and a main drag that was a couple of blocks long and ended abruptly in dun-colored prairie that stretched to the horizon. Elizabeth had Gabe stop at an ATM, where she withdrew some more cash. They found a Motel Six, and got two adjoining rooms on the second floor, reached by walking along an outside balcony. From up there, Elizabeth could see in the distance a large green water tower. In the growing twilight, with its enormous head and thin metal legs looking like tentacles, the tower resembled some War of the Worlds creature lumbering along the plains.

“Goodnight,” she said. Before she shut her door, though, she called to him, “Thanks, Gabe.”

“For what?”

“For agreeing to take me. And for listening.”

“No biggie. Goodnight.”

About a half hour later, she was brushing her teeth when she heard a knock.

“It’s me,” Gabe called through the door. She opened it to see him standing there, his face still damp and scrubbed pink from his having hastily shaved. He’d nicked himself along the angle of his jaw.

“Where did you get the razor?”

“Front office has complimentary guest packs.”

He wasn’t wearing his hat and his dark, thinning hair was slicked back over his skull. He had on the jacket with the name Stu stitched over the pocket.

“Listen, I’m going out to find a liquor store and grab a bite to eat. You need anything? Some food? Cigarettes, so you stop bumming me for one? Lipstick?”

“What would I need lipstick for?”

“I don’t know. Don’t women always need lipstick?” he said, grinning. “My Abby never went anywhere without lipstick. Said she didn’t feel dressed without lipstick.”

“Your Abby?”

“You know what I mean.”

“How about a pack of Merits Light,” Elizabeth replied. “Here, let me give you some money for your dinner.”

“I got it.”

“No. The deal was I’d pay your expenses. You’re on your own for booze though.”

“You want me to pick you up anything to drink?”

“I shouldn’t.”

She got her pocketbook and came back and handed him three crisp twenties, which he stuffed into his shirt pocket.

“You sure you’re not hungry?” he asked.

She thought about it and decided that she might be hungry later, and of course then she’d be out of luck.

“All right. But I’m tired of greasy food. How about a Cobb salad?”

He glanced over his shoulder, at the town behind him. “This doesn’t look like your Cobb salad sort of town, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I guess not. A sandwich then. Turkey, if they have it.”

While he was gone, she took a long, hot shower. The water felt delicious, and she let it massage the eye-strain headache she’d acquired from squinting into the sun all day. Afterwards, she lay down on the bed in her underwear. The mattress was lumpy and bowed toward the middle, and she couldn’t help but imagine all the lonely bodies it had held in its sterile embrace. Only then did she realize that along with her sunglasses, she’d forgotten her pillow back at Gabe’s place. Lying there looking up at the ceiling, she thought of the conversation she’d had with Gabe. About her affair. Why she’d cheated on her husband. She took out her phone and decided to call Zack.

“Hi. It’s me,” she said when he picked up.

“Oh,” he replied, surprise registering in his voice, almost as if he’d been expecting someone else. “Where are you now?”

“Arkansas.”

“I thought you’d be farther along.”

“It’s a big country,” she explained. A foolish comment, but she didn’t want to get into explaining to him why she hadn’t made better progress. No need to tell him any of that.

“I just got in,” he explained.

“Where were you?”

“I had a meeting at the church.” He paused, then added, “You know the candlelight vigil we’re planning for the green?”

“Yes.”

“We now have the whole state involved,” he explained, sounding proud.

“Wow.”

“For anyone who’s lost a child. We’re going to call it ‘An Evening of Remembrance.’ If it goes well, we plan on making it part of a national remembrance event. Having chapters all over the country. We’re talking about one night in January when everybody who’s lost a child gathers in their town square to light a candle and remember.”

“Boy,” she said, “you’re really going big time with this.”

Elizabeth tried to picture the entire town green of Garth’s Point filled with grieving parents, all holding candles in the night. Then she thought of all the roadside memorials she’d seen coming across the country, and the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands she hadn’t seen, and she tried to imagine a crowd that big, with all those parents and loved ones coming together and lighting candles, commiserating, offering up prayers. Such a concentration of sadness, such a critical mass of grief. You could probably see the light from all those candles from the moon, she thought.

“It’s amazing how many people have lost children just in Connecticut. Eighty-five last year alone.”

“That is amazing,” she said.

“And we thought we were all alone.”

She felt like saying she still felt alone, that even knowing about all the other parents who’d suffered similar losses didn’t lessen her own solitary grief. But instead she said, “You’ve really done a wonderful thing, Zack. I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks. By the way, I’m making your favorite tonight,” he offered. “Honey-glazed salmon with asparagus and hollandaise sauce.”

It struck her as odd that he would go through the trouble of making a big meal, just for himself. If the tables were turned, she’d have come home from work and grabbed a spoon and filled up on peanut butter right out of the jar. Then again, that was Zack. He liked his routines. They defined and reassured him. Besides, he’d always enjoyed cooking. Even in the weeks after Luke died, he still went through the trouble of making regular meals, though neither of them had much of an appetite. She should have told Gabe about that, too, how that was something else she admired about Zack. The care, the attention to detail with which he prepared a meal. Feeding loved ones, she realized, was a gesture of love. She could remember when they were first dating how he would have her over for dinner in his little apartment down in The Village and make her something special. She, on the other hand, was like her mother; she could hardly be bothered with cooking, and when she did she slapped it together. “Slambo Bango,” Luke used to joke about her cooking.

“Sounds wonderful,” she replied.

“Wish you were here to enjoy it with me.”

“I do, too, Zack,” she said.

“Don’t worry, I’ll make it again.”

“I’m sorry for leaving you like this.” She paused, then added, “For everything.”

“What everything?” Zack said.

“Just everything.”

“We can sort it out when you come back.” Then out of the blue, he added, “I love you.”

She thought of saying one of several things: “I love you, too.”; or “You deserve better than I can give you”; or, “Zack, I had an affair.” Something. Anything. She thought about what Gabe had said, about the truth setting people free. Maybe he was right. Maybe the truth would set them free. Free to get on with their lives. Zack deserved some happiness, she felt. Deserved a woman who would want to make him happy, who would appreciate him for who he was, not hold it against him for who he wasn’t. Not a woman so wrapped up in her own guilt, so enamored by grief. A woman less selfish than she. Tell him, she goaded herself. Go on and tell him. Yet she said nothing. Out of fear or selfishness or perhaps love—she wasn’t sure.

“Oh. Guess who I ran into today?” Zack said. “Roxanne Pierson.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. In the Stop and Shop. She said you’d called TJ.”

“I did, yes.”

“Why?”

“To ask whether she and Luke were seeing each other that summer.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because of what you said. Because I was curious.”

“And were they?”

She considered telling him what TJ had said to her, about their son ceasing to be interested in women, that perhaps he was gay. But then she thought, why do that to him? Why make him share her pain and confusion regarding their son, about who and what he was? About what he had not wanted to share with them? What difference could it possibly make now? “She told me they weren’t dating. That they were just friends.”

“Just friends, huh?” Zack said. “I always liked her. She was a good kid.”

“Yes, she was.”

“Do you remember how they used to come over and watch TV and hold hands on the couch?”

“Yes.”

“I could really see her with Luke. They were a good match.”

“Evidently not so good really,” Elizabeth offered flatly. “She’s getting married, Zack.”

“Really?” he said, trying to sound his usual upbeat self, but the disappointment managed to register in his voice. “To whom?”

“Somebody she met after Luke, I guess.”

An audible groan slipped out from somewhere deep in his chest: augh. He didn’t say anything for several seconds, then Elizabeth heard a noise that sounded as if he’d gotten something stuck in his throat and he was trying to clear it.

“Zack?”

“God, I miss him.”

“I know you do, sweetheart,” she tried to comfort. “I know.”

“I shouldn’t have agreed to his driving cross country.”

“Don’t blame yourself.”

“But if I’d sided with you, maybe . . .”

“Don’t do that, Zack. He was twenty-one. You were right—we really couldn’t have stopped him.”

“I didn’t have to make it so easy though.”

“It could’ve happened right here in town. Like with the Parsons boy. As you said, it was an accident.” Funny, how she’d fought so long and so hard against it being just an accident. For her, there had to have been some meaning, some significance in his death. The arrogance which said that for her child, death couldn’t simply be pointless. It had to have meaning, a reason, some greater purpose. “We couldn’t protect him against everything.”

“I know. But ever since you’ve been gone, I think about him all the time. I thought I’d gotten to a point where I could accept it. But now with you going out there, it’s like it just happened. Like the grief is just starting all over again.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes.” She heard him take a breath and exhale. “Why didn’t we talk more?”

“You mean, about Luke’s death?”

“That. You and me. Everything,” Zack replied.

The way he said everything suggested an expansive territory, their marriage as broad a topic as the country she’d just traversed.

“You’re right. We should’ve talked more,” Elizabeth said. “I’m sorry for that.”

“It’s my fault, too. I was just thinking about something the other day. Do you remember that time in Wales?”

“You mean when we lost him?”

“Yes. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time.” Zack’s voice was thin and pained, just this side of cracking again. “And it turned out he was just fascinated with that toy plane in the gift shop. The Spitfire. Speaking of which, I went into his room the other night and it wasn’t on the shelf.”

“I took it,” she replied.

“You took it?”

“Yes. I’m going to leave it out there. Where he died.”

“Really?”

“Ah huh.”

“That’s a good idea,” Zack said. “He’d like that.”

“I don’t know what he’d like. But it’s what I’m going to do.”

“Trust me. He’ll be looking down and smiling at you when you put that there.”

If only it was that easy, she thought. To Zack, Luke was still someplace where he could think and feel and react, where he was still very much the Luke they knew and loved, the one who confused and angered them, too. It was just that they couldn’t see him. To Zack it was as if their son were in another room that they temporarily couldn’t enter.

“I can’t really picture him anywhere, Zack.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not like you, I can’t really buy into all that heaven business. I wish I could. It would make things a whole lot easier. But on the other hand, I can’t bring myself to believe I’ll never see him again. Talk to him. Hear his voice.”

“Then just feel him in your heart, Elizabeth,” he offered.

His comment was like something you would tell a frightened child, like one of those things she used to tell Luke when he was scared to go to bed at night. She was going to say something but decided not to. The cynic in her didn’t want to permit herself the glittering but elusive hope of believing that Luke was somewhere, even if it were only in her heart. On the other hand she had to have something to hold onto. She couldn’t just admit that her son had vanished into thin air.

“I worry about you,” said Zack. “Driving all the way out there by yourself.”

“I’ll be all right. Really.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything were to happen to you.”

“Zack . . .”

“Yeah.”

She thought of telling him about the affair, coming clean. Just getting it all out for once. But she was interrupted by a loud rapping on the door.

“What’s that?” Zack asked.

“Oh, I ordered room service,” she lied.

“When you get back, think about coming to the candlelight vigil.”

“I will. I’ll think about it,” Elizabeth offered. “Everything will be all right, Zack.”

She didn’t know why she’d said that, whom she was trying to cheer up, herself or Zack, or what she meant by saying that everything would be all right. How could anything ever be all right again?

The knocking came again, louder.

“You’d better go ahead and answer that,” Zack said. “Just come home safely.”

“Goodnight, Zack.”

She quickly threw some clothes on and went to the door where she found Gabe standing there, holding a paper sack filled with food.

“They didn’t have turkey so I got you chicken salad,” he said.

He reached into the sack and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in butcher’s paper and a Diet Coke. “And I got you these,” he said, pulling from his jacket pocket a pair of sunglasses.

“Oh, thanks. Just what I needed.”

He handed her some change, a few crumpled bills, and was about to turn around and head back to his room. Elizabeth was exhausted and didn’t feel much like chatting, but she knew she wouldn’t fall asleep right away after her conversation with Zack, and she wondered if company would be better than staring at the ceiling or watching some dopey TV show.

“You want to have dinner together?” she asked.

He stared at her for a moment, then said, “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

He returned with a plastic motel cup filled with ice. Elizabeth lay on the bed with her back propped up with pillows, while he occupied the only other chair in the room, at a small desk facing the window. From the sack he took out his sandwich and a bag of fries, as well as a pint of Jack Daniels, which he cracked open and poured some into his cup.

“You want some? Oh, I forgot, you’re doing the wagon thing,” he said. “How’s that ride going anyway?”

“Bumpy. I was hitting the sauce a little too hard so I needed to slow down.”

Gabe glanced at her, then took a long guzzle, as if rubbing it in.

“Don’t we all. Your husband drink?”

“Occasionally. Why?”

“Stuart’s a teetotaler.”

“Stuart?” Elizabeth asked.

Gabe pointed at the name stitched on his jacket.

Elizabeth nodded, was about to take a bite of her sandwich, but she paused, looked back at Gabe. “He’s the one your wife ran off with?”

Gabe wiped his mouth with a napkin and offered up a guilty smile as if he’d been caught in some lie. “I told you he used to work for me.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me the two of them . . .”

Gabe shrugged. “He left the jacket behind.”

“Geez. Why do you wear it then?”

“Why not? It’s a perfectly good jacket. It seemed like I should get something back.”

“Do your girls like him?”

“From the little I can pry out of Jo, she likes him okay. Says he tries hard.”

He took a sip of his drink, winced, then downed the rest of it. “Stu and I went to school together. We weren’t buddies or anything but we knew each other. He was divorced, living down at the Fairmont in town. So I reached out a helping hand. I gave him a job, let him sleep in the back room of the garage. What do they say about no good deed going unpunished?”

“Yeah, right.”

“Stuart’s a douchebag and all, but he’s always been good to Jo. And Abby. I’m grateful to him for that.”

“That’s pretty magnanimous seeing as he stole your wife.”

“He didn’t steal her. It was more that I gave her to him.”

“How do you figure that?”

“What do they say in court—‘the whole truth and nothin’ but.’ I didn’t tell you the whole story earlier. Ever hear of Ewing’s sarcoma?”

“Sounds like some kind of cancer,” Elizabeth offered.

“Ah huh. A pretty rare bone cancer.”

Elizabeth thought of that drawing of his wife, the weariness in her eyes. “Your wife got sick?”

“No, not my wife. My daughter Kelly. She got it when she was a teenager.”

“Oh, my God!” Elizabeth gasped. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“It’s not something I like to talk about.”

Elizabeth thought then how he’d never really said much about his older daughter Kelly. How he’d mentioned that his younger one Jo lived with his ex, but he’d avoided saying anything about his other daughter. Elizabeth recalled, too, how when she’d said a person couldn’t imagine what it was like to lose a child, he had said he could.

“Is she . . . I mean . . .”

He shook his head. “She passed away six years ago.”

Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. “Geez, Gabe. I’m so sorry.”

“Abby never lost hope. She was a regular trooper through the whole thing. Going to the hospital. Doing research online. Finding the best doctors. Fighting for our kid.”

He took another sip of his drink and looked over his shoulder toward the window. Elizabeth couldn’t decide if he were looking out at the night or at his own reflection. He seemed suddenly tired, his eyes weary. It was the same look Elizabeth had noticed in the eyes of his wife in the sketch he’d done. She felt so shitty now for saying he couldn’t possibly have understood what she was going through. He wrapped up what he hadn’t eaten of his sandwich and tossed it into the waste basket under the table.

“The truth is, after our daughter got sick, it changed things between Abby and me. It just drained us. After she died, we didn’t have anything left.”

“It must’ve been awful.”

“I wasn’t always the best of husbands. Or fathers. I drank too much. That was my way of coping. And I was on the road a lot. I wasn’t always there for her. Emotionally or otherwise. She had to do most of the heavy lifting on her own.”

“You don’t have to talk about any of this if you don’t want to,” she said, reminding him of what he’d said to her earlier that day.

“Like you with your husband, I just wanted to set the record straight. It wasn’t all Abby’s fault.”

“And how did this Stuart figure in the picture?” Elizabeth asked.

“I hired him after Kelly got sick. I had my hands full and needed somebody to help out at the garage. He was a pretty fair mechanic. I let him stay in the room out in back of the garage until he could find something. Abby used to feel sorry for him, invite him over for dinner. Then when I’d be gone, out on the road, out at some bar, he used to keep her company. I guess they liked to play cards. That’s what they called it anyway. You know, when the cat’s away, the mice will play. But the plain truth is he was there for her and I wasn’t.”

“That’s decent of you to say.”

“Believe me, I wasn’t so decent when I first found out about them. Truth is, I wanted to take a blowtorch to the guy’s nuts. But then I realized that he was just giving her things I wasn’t. Long and short of it, he was what Abby needed.”

When he’d finished, he sat there for a moment staring down at a section of carpet. He removed his hat and ran his hand through his thinning hair.

“Well, that really put a damper on the evening.”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said again.

“So like I told you, I do know what you’re going through.”

Both were silent for a while. Then Elizabeth offered, “So that’s what I saw in your wife’s eyes. That terrible sadness.”

“I guess so.”

“You really are talented, Gabe.”

“You’re just being sweet.”

“No, it’s true.”

“Funny thing is Abby used to say the same thing. She was always supportive of me trying to make it as an artist. Before when you asked me what happened to my ‘art career,’” he explained, making finger quotes around the words, “I said it was on account of my getting married. Since I’m ’fessing up all of a sudden, the truth is I was too damn gutless.”

He downed the rest of his drink, tossed the cup in the garbage, and stood.

“Well, I should hit the road.” He headed for the door, but paused there, his back to her. He seemed to be debating something with himself.

“Gabe?” she said.

“You were right. I do still love Abby. Always did, always will. Christ, we were high school sweethearts. Goodnight.”

Elizabeth lay in bed for a long while, unable to sleep. She thought of all that Gabe had told her, about his child getting sick and how her death had affected his marriage. How he still loved his ex. Finally, around midnight she decided to call Zack.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

“That’s all right,” he replied, his voice groggy with sleep.

“Sorry. There’s something I needed to tell you, Zack.”

“Can’t it wait till you get home?”

“No, it can’t. You know how earlier you said we should have talked more.”

“Yes.”

“You’re right. We should have. There’s so much I should’ve said. To Luke. To you.”

“To me?”

“Yes. I should’ve told you I loved you, Zack.”

“I know you do.”

“But I should’ve told you. I don’t know why I didn’t. Sometimes life just gets away from us.”

“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”

“That, too.” She waited for a moment, working up the courage to say what she had to. “The night Luke died, I wasn’t alone.”

Her ear pressed against the cell phone was hot and throbbing, as if her eardrum would pop. Zack was silent on the other end.

“Did you hear what I said? I was with someone. Another man. I’m sorry.”

There, she thought. It was out. And yet it hardly felt like freedom. It was just more guilt, from having wronged someone she cared very much for.

“Zack?”

“I know,” he said.

“What?”

“I’ve known for a long time.”

Elizabeth had no idea how to respond to this. Everything she had planned on saying just dissolved into nothing, became moot and pointless. Finally, she said, “If you knew, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I don’t know. I guess because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Of losing you. Afraid, too, that if it were out in the open, I wouldn’t be able to forgive you.”

“Oh, Zack. I’m so sorry,” she cried.

She waited for him to say something else, to forgive or curse her, or say he was going to leave her. But instead, he surprised her by asking, “Is it over?”

“Yes. It’s been over for a long time.”

“Did you love him?”

“No, Zack. I never loved him. I love you,” she said. “Can you ever forgive me?”

Zack was silent for a long time. When he spoke again, he said only, “I don’t know. It’s asking a lot.”

“I understand.”

“Goodnight, Elizabeth.”

“Goodnight.”

Then he hung up and she was alone in the room.