No, I wanted to shout. He couldn’t come. He’s busy. And no, I can’t tell you what he’s busy with, but it’s eating me alive. Instead, I plastered on a smile and did what I’d learned to do the last few months. “He’s busy with some things.” I waved a hand airily, like Sanders’s goings-on were all so ordinary lately. When they were anything but. “Appointments . . . you know.” Then I patted her hand. “Enough about me, love. I’m a boring old woman. Tell me all about you. Your life, what you’ve been up to. I want to hear everything.”
I did my best to listen intently, only occasionally sneaking a peek at my phone, as we caught up on the highlights of the last eighteen years. There were highs and lows—awards she’d won in journalism, meeting her husband then losing him to an early and not unexpected death. I also took my turn, sharing what my boys were up to—their families, their jobs, their lives.
“And Sanders?” Her question was gentle, but firm. She wanted to know how he was. Which was understandable.
“Great,” I said, but something hitched in my voice.
“Is everything okay?” Annalise reached out a hand, resting it on top of mine.
“Yes,” I said quickly. My answer was both a lie and the truth.
“Are you sure?” I said nothing. “Becky,” she said in a soft voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”
My eyes squeezed closed, pained. I had to keep it together. Had to keep it inside. But, my God, carrying this—all these details—was a terrible burden. When I opened my eyes, I wiped a finger under my lashes, erasing the threat of tears. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually like this.”
“Is it Sanders?”
I sighed heavily, admitting the barest truth. “I’m trying to keep it all together. I really am.”
“Are you guys okay? Is he sick? Is that the appointment?”
“Oh, no. He’s fit as can be. Well, he has that bad back. But he’s all good otherwise. It’s just . . .”
“You’re not separating, are you? Divorcing?” she asked. Even when she was younger, she’d never been one to tiptoe around a tough situation. And I wanted to talk. Oh, how I wanted to tell her—tell someone—everything.
Instead, I shook my head. “I wouldn’t let him out of my grasp. Same for him,” I said, adding a light laugh. “It’s just been a tense few months.”
She offered a soft smile. “I’m here if you want to talk. Or if you just want me to listen. After all, I’m leaving soon. Your secrets would be tucked safely away in my luggage on the return trip home,” she said playfully.
The clawing desire rose up inside me to tell her how our lives had changed irrevocably since that day my husband was caught speeding.
“Ever since the investigation . . .” I began, but then I trailed off. “I shouldn’t say anything. I can’t say anything.”
She squeezed my hand. “I understand.”
But did she? Did anyone? Would anyone understand when they knew? When the truth came out.
She reached for the sugar, poured some into her coffee, and shifted gears. “So . . . is the big cruise still happening after Sanders retires?”
“I hope so.” The cruise was our goal. If we made it there, we’d be in the clear. Blessedly in the clear. “Fingers crossed it doesn’t get put off.”
Every night I made that wish, for a thousand reasons.
And for one big reason.
11
Annalise
Something was off.
But I had no idea what.
I could speculate though.
As we talked more about little things, the wheels in my head started to turn, and I wondered what would defer Sanders’s retirement, and why was Becky so tense from the investigation. What on earth would they have to be worried about from an inquiry into an incident that had occurred eighteen years ago? Sanders was Thomas’s best friend back then. They’d worked together.
The wheels picked up speed. Did Sanders know something? Was he talking to the cops?
My heart squeezed.
Oh.
The appointment.
Was it regarding the case? Did Sanders have something to hide? Did Becky? As the possibilities took shape, I cycled back eighteen years ago to a night when I’d slipped into the house late, lips bee-stung and bruised, hair a wild tumble, heart racing from being with Michael. Becky had been reading, waiting up for me, and we’d talked briefly in the living room.
“So, young Michael Paige-Prince. You sure do like him. Is it serious?”
I had nodded with a grin I couldn’t contain. “How do you say it? I am crazy for him.”
“Yes. And I can see why. He’s smart, kind, a handsome young man.”
“He is,” I had echoed, feeling dreamy, the way I’d always felt when I thought of the boy I was falling in love with.
Becky had smiled. “He gets his good looks from his father.”
At age sixteen, I’d barely registered the comment.
Now, years later, I lingered on the remark. He gets his good looks from his father. Surely that was nothing, right? There had been no secret affair between Becky and Thomas, no long-simmering desire? It was just a comment, wasn’t it?
I quieted my skeptical side, telling myself that Becky’s remarks from years ago couldn’t possibly have anything to do with her odd behavior today.
As I said my goodbye at the end of the meal and slid into the back seat of the Uber waiting to whisk me to my shoot, I replayed last night.
The bar, the kiss, Michael’s hands. His mouth, his teeth, his tongue.
I’d see him this afternoon. The first man I’d ever loved, back when I hardly knew what that butterfly feeling was in my chest—flutters, wings, and all.
First love was like that. Enchanting and light, stitched from an endless thread of hopes and dreams. It made you feel invincible and hungry for more all at once. I’d wanted to be with Michael so much when I returned to France. I’d tried so hard to fight the distance through letters. We’d attempted to stay together through the end of high school and into college.
But just like proximity breeds closeness, distance kills it. Too many days apart, weeks alone, and years gone by. Eventually, our love became unsustainable. Stretched too far, it collapsed under the weight.
We drifted apart after the first year of college. Even then, I’d clung to the distant possibility that someday, somehow we’d meet again. Hope powered me even in the years when we no longer were in touch. Then all I had were memories. The fondest ones to be sure, but I’d had to move on. He’d moved on too.
I graduated from The American University in Paris, fully fluent in English. The first thing I did was reach out to him. I sent him a letter, saying hello, letting him know I was as free as I could be. An adult, able to make all my own choices. But it was returned to me—no forwarding address. That seemed a sign, that perhaps we were only meant to have been young lovers, high school sweethearts. Besides, I knew he’d gone into the Army, that he owed years to his country, and that was that. I moved forward, hunted for jobs across Europe, and eventually landed the gig of my dreams as a photojournalist. There I met Julien, a rival photographer who I fell in love with and married. I knew my time with him would be short-lived—he had a lethal arrhythmia, a genetic condition that meant he could die of cardiac arrest at any moment. The odds were not in our favor. They never had been. We were married eight years when Julien died in exactly the way doctors predicted he would, and in the two years since, I’d mostly been consumed with work and the simple daily acts that had guided me out of my grief. That’s also when I made the change in my career to fashion photography. My heart had been too heavy for the weight of current affairs.