The One In My Heart

And I didn’t need any more uncertainties in my life.

It was the correct decision, but not a happy one. The restlessness in my heart…I almost wished I had pouring rain and miles of deserted country lanes.

So I made up a new fantasy.

Bennett hadn’t contacted me because he’d been called away all of a sudden by…Doctors Without Borders would be good here. That would easily put him on the opposite side of the globe from me. And when he arrived at his remote destination, while trying to get a new phone that worked locally, something would happen to his SIM card. So he couldn’t call me, because he’d lost my number.

But we weren’t destined to be parted forever. Instead, we’d run into each other at a most unexpected time and place. Perfect, I had a symposium in Munich next February. And he, on his way back from say, Tajikistan, would be staying at the exact same hotel.

I could already tell this was going to be a really, really good fantasy.





Chapter 3





ZELDA’S DEPRESSIVE EPISODE, MUCH TO my relief and gratitude, turned out to be relatively short. Her doctors arrived at a good new combination of meds, and life began to reapproach normal.

In the meanwhile, students returned to the university. I did most of my teaching in the fall, so I could concentrate on research the rest of the year. And teaching that many sections took up a huge amount of time, even without faculty meetings, my work with grad students, and the hours I needed to put in on my own papers.

Before I knew it, midterms were already over. One Friday afternoon Zelda and I went to the botanical garden to see the foliage, walking arm in arm on paths strewn with sweet gum and scarlet oak leaves.

Zelda had resumed working a while ago—she had accepted a commission to score a feature film, an exciting new venture after a successful career in songwriting and commercial music. We talked about her work and mine, and she told me that her therapist thought it would be fine for her to go on the Turquoise Coast walking trip that her English cousins had organized.

An older couple with a combined age well north of one hundred and fifty walked past us, hands held, nodding as they went. I gazed at them wistfully. I didn’t envy my friends their fresh new love affairs, but a faithful yet mellow companionship that came of a lifetime spent together? That never failed to make my heart pinch with longing.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” said Zelda. “I got an e-mail from the Somerset boy this morning.”

“What Somerset boy?”

“You know, the one who ditched us in Paris.”

I blinked. Was she talking about my Prince Charming?

One reason my alternate history had worked so well over the years was that the boy, who must now be a man in his early thirties, had simply disappeared. I never knew much about him to begin with, and I’d since remained happily ignorant.

Anonymity was key to Prince Charming’s success as a fantasy figure. It really wouldn’t be the same if the actual person was a divorced derivatives trader with a pending SEC investigation hanging over his head.

“How did he get hold of your e-mail address?”

“Oh, he’s on marvelous terms with Mrs. Asquith—used to spend a lot of time at her place when he was in England.”

I vaguely remembered now that my escort had been in England at the time, and was supposed to hop over to Paris for the weekend of the ball.

“And how does he know Mrs. Asquith?”

I’d never met Zelda’s godmother, but I couldn’t imagine her hanging out with American teenagers.

“His mother is English, and her aunt is a very close school friend of Mrs. Asquith’s.”

“Hmm,” I said.

Granted, I hadn’t had to lean on Prince Charming much lately—it had been all about Bennett and me in Munich. But I was loath to give up my workhorse of a fantasy. What if “the Somerset boy” had contacted Zelda to recruit her for a Ponzi scheme? That would totally limit Prince Charming’s future utility.

“Anyway,” said Zelda, “he e-mailed to apologize for ditching us all those years ago, and it was a very sincere apology.”

That I did not expect. “Why? I mean why now, after all these years?”

“I rang up his mother the moment I read his e-mail, and I told her, ‘I think the boy is finally ready to come home.’”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about. “From where?”

“Don’t you remember? His family disowned him after the ball.”

The Somerset boy could have set himself on fire in the days after the ball and I, completely preoccupied with Zelda, wouldn’t have known. “Not literally?”

“Literally. Wrote him out of their will. Cut off contact. Everything.”

I gaped. “Because he was a no-show?”