“You’ll see,” she whispers, in that signature breathless voice that made her so famous. A hush falls over the table. Even Tobias is looking at her as if drugged.
“And you?” Conrad asks Tobias. “You said it was different.”
“I said it, actually,” Audrey says.
“But it’s true?” Conrad asks.
“Yes,” Tobias says. “It is.”
“Why?”
Tobias looks at me. “I think I’m still between,” he says. “I’m hopeful this dinner might sort some of that out.”
“Is that common?” Conrad asks.
“I don’t know,” Tobias says. “I don’t think so.”
Again, I feel that spark of hope. He’s not gone. Not yet. In fact, his admission makes me feel closer than ever to bringing him back.
Next to me, Jessica doesn’t say anything. She’s looking down into her tea, and I see, in fact, that she’s crying.
“Jess,” I say. “What’s wrong?”
“You think she watches Douglas?” she asks me. “She didn’t…” She breaks off, and I am reminded, of course, of her mother. Of the cancer that came to claim her. Of the absence of her. At Jessica’s graduation. Wedding. The birth of her child. What wouldn’t she do to have one dinner with her? To get one night to tell her everything that happened and all the ways it was unfair? To sit in her presence and touch and gaze and mourn?
“Yes,” I say. “Of course.”
It’s this realization—that this dinner, whatever it may not be, is a stroke of luck, of fate, of fortune—that makes me turn to Robert.
“I tried to find you,” I tell him. His head snaps from Audrey to me faster than a falling water droplet. “I found out you were in California. I even got so far as your house, but I couldn’t bring myself to knock on the door.”
“When?” Robert asks.
“I was sixteen, maybe,” I say. “I borrowed Mom’s car, and she called me when I was sitting in the driveway. I don’t remember about what. When I was coming home or what I wanted for dinner. But as soon as I hung up with her, I turned around and left.”
Robert hangs his head and nods. “I understand.”
“It felt like a betrayal,” I say. “I’m sorry, I wish I would have gone inside.”
“Your mother?” Conrad asks.
I nod.
“She would want this for you,” Audrey says. She leans forward onto her elbows—something she hasn’t done all evening. “She might not know it now, but she would. The petty stuff…”
“This isn’t petty,” Jessica says a little defensively. “He left them. Jessica’s mother raised her.”
“I believe you told us she asked him to leave,” Conrad says.
“She didn’t have a choice,” Jessica fires back.
I have a flash of fierce love for Jessica, and I remember how much she loves my mom. How whenever my mom would send a care package to our apartment it was always for “the girls.” And when she would come to town the three of us would go to dinner. She still buys Jessica birthday presents every year. She knew Jessica’s mom was gone and took it upon herself to sneak in, however peripherally, wherever she could.
“Of course,” Audrey says, still sitting forward. “These things are not mutually exclusive. He did leave. And yet he’s here now. And Sabrina’s mother would want her to forgive him.”
“Oh,” Robert says. “I don’t—”
“You do,” Audrey says. “That’s why you’re here.”
I look at Conrad, who stares straight back at me. “Is she right?” he says.
I think about my father, about Tobias, sitting next to me. About all the ways the men in my life have not lived up to what I needed from them. But I told Tobias I wouldn’t stay with him. Wasn’t I responsible, too?
I look at Audrey. I see a strength there I’ve never seen before—not tonight, and not in all my years watching her onscreen. Her features, her voice, her body were always so birdlike, so delicate and complex in nature that the simplicity of power never seemed relevant. But now I see her seated here in all her regal glory, and she is big and bold—she takes up the whole room.
“Of course she’s right,” I say, still looking at her.
“Forgiveness,” Conrad repeats, like it’s a stone he’s turning over in his hands. “It’s more for the bestower than the bestowed.”
“First there’s something I have to tell you,” Robert says. “It might change your tone.”
“Go on,” Conrad says. “Time is wasting.”
“The story I told you? About the baby your mom lost?”
“Yes?”
“The miscarriage wasn’t from natural causes. Your mother was in a car accident.”
“Oh dear,” Conrad says. “Poor woman.”
Jessica winces next to me. I don’t have to hear the rest to know what’s coming.
“I was driving,” Robert says. He looks at me, and his eyes are full of pain. I think, briefly, of the promise of afterlife—freedom from suffering.
“I was drunk. We had gone to dinner in New Hope, and I was driving us back. I’d had too much wine. Your mother had asked to drive, but I told her I was fine—she was pregnant, you see. I didn’t want to tax her.” Robert holds his fist to his mouth. “We were going to name her Isabella.”
“Beautiful name,” Audrey says.
Robert gives her a small, sad smile.
“I did this,” Robert says. “I don’t expect your forgiveness. I don’t deserve it.”
I think of Jessica’s mom, Conrad’s wife. This strange opportunity I’ve been given.
“You do,” I say. In my lap, my hands shake. “We both do.”
EIGHTEEN
“ TOBIAS PROPOSED?!” I WAS ON THE phone with Jessica, on the train back into the city. Tobias was staying in Montauk for another five days to finish up the shoot. She’d screamed when I told her, and asked me to clarify three times. “Tell me everything.”
I was trying to think of the last time Jessica had seen Tobias. I didn’t know. Maybe in the winter, at their holiday party? She and Sumir had thrown one at their newly renovated house, and we’d gone. She’d paraded us around their home, calling out the need for improvements, as their friends, people named Grace and Steve and Jill, trailed behind. I had no idea where she’d met them. The grocery store? Where does one meet Connecticut friends before one has kids?
“And this,” Jessica had said, “will be Sumir’s office. Once I clear some clothes out of here.” We had arrived at a small room down the hall from the master bedroom suite. It had only one tiny window and a fan overhead.
“An office, huh?” Jill had said, and giggled. Jessica had stuck her hands on her hips and shook her head in a girlish way, a way meant for sorority girls and wives on television shows in the fifties. A baby, I remember thinking.
And one of the friends—let’s say it was Grace—asked about us. “Are you married?”
“No,” Jessica had answered for me, with a little too much heat. “They’re against marriage.”
“We are?” Tobias had said. He’d draped his arm over my shoulder and pulled me to his side.
“We’re definitely anti-divorce,” I had said.
“Right!” Tobias had exclaimed. “That’s the one.”
Jessica had rolled her eyes. “You’re children,” she had said. I didn’t understand then how much she had meant by that, but now, on the phone, I could hear her glee and something else, too—relief. I was finally doing the thing she wanted me to do. Maybe, just maybe, we’d end up back on the same side.
“We were out at the beach,” I told her. “We went for a walk in the morning. It was early, like seven A.M. He just got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.”
A man in a baseball hat next to me took out his earbud and gave me a pointed look before putting it back in. I lowered my voice.
“What did he say?” Jessica pressed. “I need you to be specific here.”
“He said he loves me and asked if I’d marry him,” I said. “It was simple.”
“Oh my god,” Jessica repeated, more than once. “Did you say yes?”
From anyone else it would have been a throwaway question—a joke, even. But from Jessica, I knew it wasn’t, at least not entirely. I paused. I could feel the curl of anger in my stomach. It was as if she had asked, Will you really go through with it? or Are you finally admitting you’re normal, you’re like everyone else?
“Of course I said yes.” I tried to keep my voice level.