“Well,” he said, unsure of the best response, “you look great.” She did actually. Miriam had always been pretty.
“That’s because I am not the injured party,” she said. “Nicholas is faring less well, from what I hear.”
Nicholas Donahue was a professor at Oxford and a well-known theoretician, his research focusing primarily on contemporary British composers. He was one of the few musicologists who truly understood the mechanics of being a musician, perhaps because he was, in fact, a decent pianist in his own right. Gavin had gotten to know him over the years and liked him. Nicholas knew an endless number of funny and often scandalous facts about dead musicians, making him great fun to have a glass of whiskey with.
“I’ll give him a call,” Gavin said.
“As long as you don’t tell him you saw me. He’ll put two and two together and know I wasn’t here alone, and I don’t want to cause additional pain.”
“Ah,” said Gavin, “I see.”
She looked off to the side, somewhat shamed. “Nicholas found out I was having an affair, and that was that. I should have been honest about it from the start, but I was too much of a coward. The truth is I didn’t want my children thinking poorly of me.”
Surprised she would share something so personal, Gavin made a conscious effort to be nonjudgmental. “You and Nicholas seemed happy.”
“We weren’t well suited at all,” she said. “He’s so academic, and I never understood his humor. I was too dumb for him.”
“No, I’m sure he didn’t think that.”
“But I did.”
Gavin felt a pang of guilt, knowing that he, too, had had that thought: that Nicholas was brilliant and fascinating, while Miriam was not a particularly deep thinker. There was probably sexism at work in that opinion.
“The man I’m with now is an obscenely rich New Yorker, and the only thing he reads is Businessweek, and everything feels very right. What about you? Are you still with that young thing we met when we saw you out in California? A life coach, wasn’t she?”
Gavin was glad to set Miriam straight: “That ‘thing’ is a well-respected psychologist who turned thirty-eight last week, published a successful self-help book, and yes, Juliette and I are very much together.” He held up his left hand and showed her his wedding band.
Miriam’s mouth dropped open. “Gavin,” she said, “I didn’t think you were the marrying type.”
“Why is that?” he asked, half hoping she would accuse him of being a playboy when, in fact, he’d had very few meaningless affairs. Just as well since they’d always left him feeling unsettled.
“I didn’t think you were one to make sacrifices for someone else.”
“We have a four-year-old.”
Miriam’s eyes opened wide. “I’m shocked.”
“Do you want to see a picture?” He clicked on his home screen where a photo of his darling, curly-headed child appeared.
Miriam took the phone and smiled. “Cute,” she said. “Name?”
“Daniel. Danny, actually.”
“It must be tough keeping up with him,” she said, and then she smiled, adding, “at our age.”
“Juliette’s an incredible woman and an amazing mother,” he said. “We’re a good team.” Miriam was right, though; Danny was exhausting. Juliette often used the word discovery when explaining his behavior. “He’s in a period of discovery regarding temporal restrictions,” she would say when he fought bedtime. “He’s discovering his voice,” she would say when he screamed. “He’s discovering his power,” she would say when he hit another child at preschool.
Miriam returned his phone and showed her own home screen: a picture of three good-looking twenty-somethings, smiling on a beach. “The most noble thing Nicholas ever did,” she said, “was not to tell our kids why we split up. They found out anyway, of course. It’s impossible to keep anything a secret this day and age.”
Gavin didn’t like the sound of that. “It is?”
“Technology,” she said with a look of warning. “I was careless with my text messages.” She took the sunglasses perched on the top of her head and tossed them in her bag. “The timing was probably for the best, though, since Nicholas just started working on a new book. He’s spending the whole summer at a house in the Berkshires, doing research for his next tome. I’m glad I don’t have to be by his side through that nightmare.”
“I don’t follow—”
“Watching him write a book was torture. He talks to himself and gets obsessed with the subject matter, working day and night, and—worst of all—he used to ask me to read his chapters, and honestly, I wanted to light myself on fire the whole time I was pretending to read.”
Gavin was about to laugh, given that Nicholas would probably win a Pulitzer someday, but he could see by her expression that she was completely serious.
“What’s his new book about?” he asked.
“Some kind of biography. Oh,” she said, sitting up. “Wait, who was that woman you played music with after college—what was her name? Brenda? Britney? You were in that trio together.”
“Bridget,” Gavin said. He sipped his iced tea, trying to mask his discomfort at hearing that particular name. “Why… why would Nicholas write a book about Bridget?”
“No, not about Bridget, silly. He’s writing a book about her father.”
* * *
After Miriam left, Gavin picked at his salad. He had a concert that night; he couldn’t afford to get distracted by thoughts of Bridget Stratton. He finished his tea and decided to take an Uber back to his hotel to do some of the mindfulness exercises Juliette recommended.
Sitting in the backseat as the SUV headed up Sixth Avenue, passing the red brick Jefferson Market Library, he saw him. Older, yes, but there was no mistaking his friend, who was walking right by the car. Astonished, Gavin rolled down the window. “Will,” he shouted. He turned to the driver. “Could you stop the car for a second?”
The driver turned down the music. “Sorry?”
“Could you pull over? To the left?”
Gavin leaned out the window. “Will,” he called again. Will was headed in the opposite direction of the traffic with a big dog on a leash, headphones over his ears. Gavin tried not to resent his full head of hair. Will was moving quickly and suddenly disappeared in the crowd.
Gavin felt like he’d been rejected, which might or might not have been paranoia. It was possible Will despised him, but he tried to dismiss that idea. Besides, if he wanted to see Will so badly, he could text him the next time he was coming to town, not accost him on a sidewalk. But he never had texted him, in all the times he’d come to the city. Will had never texted him either.
He rolled the window back up, wondering if he’d ever be as comfortable in his own skin as Will had always seemed in his.
4
Driving into the courtyard of Edward’s estate, Bridget saw that Edward’s grass was freshly cut, as usual, in a manicured crosshatch pattern and the indigenous landscaping was impeccably groomed. There was no trace of the storm that had blown through the night before other than a slight dampness to the steep slate roof and the copper flashing. The house had the look of a fortress. Will called it “the Castle,” and for good reason. Mother Nature didn’t stand a chance here.