He drums his fingers on the table and confirms, “Yeah. I know them.”
She starts to ask how but stops herself, surmising that the connection involves his wife. She does not want to go down that road, fearing that he will respond awkwardly, breaking the rhythm of their tentative friendship, indicating that there might be something less than pure about it. She wants to believe that a true friendship is possible, one extending beyond Charlie’s stay in the hospital. It has been a long time since she has forged a genuine bond with another—so long that she had just about given up on the notion. Jason consistently blames her for not trying harder, but she believes that it isn’t really a question of effort. It is more a matter of being a single, working mother caught in no-man’s-land—or more aptly, no-woman’s-land. She would never fit in with the stay-at-home mothers populating Wellesley, nor does she have time to bond with the childless attorneys at her firm. And for the most part, this has all been fine with her, just as she has learned to accept the rift with Laurel and her old high school friends. Everyday life kept her distracted from dwelling on these matters, on what was missing from her life. Yet glimpsing it now—the feeling of true companionship, the exhilarating tension between the familiar and the unknown—fills her with such intense longing that she has to catch her breath.
Fortunately, Nick appears oblivious to all of this and instead smirks at her, as if they’ve just shared an inside joke. Then he continues his rant, saying, “And even if I didn’t know them, I know their type.”
“And what type is that?” she asks, leaning forward in her chair, yearning for confirmation that he gets it, that they are like-minded in their observations of others and the circumspect way they view the world.
“Oh, let’s see,” he says, rubbing his jaw. “Superficial. Artificial. Sheep. They’re more worried about how they come across to others than who they really are. They exhaust themselves in their pursuit of things that don’t matter.”
“Exactly,” she says, smiling at how perfectly he has captured her sense about Romy and April. Then she blurts out exactly what’s on her mind. “I think they’re worried I’m going to sue,” she says. “Especially if they know I’m a lawyer.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure they’ve done a thorough background check on you.”
“Yeah?” she says.
“What else do they have to do with their time?” he says, looking into her eyes.
“So you know the whole story?” she asks, staring back at him. “You know how . . . it happened?”
“Yes,” he says, nodding. “I do.”
She knows he is not talking about the basic information he gathered as a surgeon, the facts he needed the night Charlie was admitted. He is talking about the negligent backdrop, the rumors that she is sure are swirling out there in her elite community.
Sure enough, he says, “Boston can be a small town, you know?”
She nods, feeling a swell of pure affection for his honesty. His utter lack of bullshit.
“So are you?” he asks.
“Am I what?”
“Going to sue?”
She shakes her head as Tony returns with their wine and bruschetta, quickly leaving them again, seeming to sense that their conversation is a serious, private one. They clink glasses and make eye contact as they take their first sip, but offer no glib words.
Instead Nick lowers his glass and says, “You know, I might if I were you. They deserve it. What kind of a moron lets little kids play around a fire like that?”
“Believe me. I know. And I’ve considered it,” she says, clenching her teeth and doing her best to suppress that toxic wave of anger that she allowed to surface this morning. “But. . . that wouldn’t help Charlie. It wouldn’t change anything.”
“I know,” he says, and they both take another long sip of wine.
“And besides.” She pauses. “That’s not my style.”
“I know that, too,” he says, as if they’ve been friends for a very long time. Then he gives her a full-wattage grin that, combined with the wine on her empty stomach, makes her dizzy.
His eyes still on her, he points toward the plate of bruschetta and says, “Go for it.”
She smiles back at him, then transfers two slices of toasted bread to her plate, grateful for the distraction, hoping that he can’t tell the effect he has on her.
“I think,” she says, passing the plate back to Nick and continuing her earlier train of thought, “that the whole single-motherhood thing isn’t helping my case with them.”