The One In My Heart

Which had been a dick move, but hardly an offense of that stature.

“Oh, no, there were loads of things going on at the same time. He was absolutely impossible. And there were whispers of a most unsuitable older woman. Now, where was I? Oh, the e-mail. When I mentioned the e-mail, Frances said she hoped to God I was right. The boy came back in grand style, bought an apartment on Park Avenue and all that. In the beginning she was on pins and needles waiting for him to get in touch. But now she’s wondering whether he didn’t plant himself in the middle of Manhattan to rub his success in their faces.”

My head spun with this overload of information. But at least there was no indictment. So maybe all was not lost.

“Frances would probably have taken the initiative to get in touch with him, if it were just her. But the real rupture was between the boy and his father. And she took her husband’s side in the matter, so…”

Zelda sighed. “Families can be so complicated.”


LATE THAT NIGHT I LAY in bed, still unable to process the fact that “the Somerset boy” lived on Park Avenue, not even a mile away.

Too close for comfort.

But thinking about Park Avenue also made me remember Bennett’s “ambition” for becoming a Park Avenue trophy husband—and that never failed to bring a smile to my face.

Followed by a pang of melancholy.

The more I played back our encounter, the more improbable it seemed. How was it that I’d felt so comfortable with him, when he had seen me in a state of absolute vulnerability? One would think, given how adamant I was about keeping my pains and fears locked down and out of sight, that I’d want to get away from him as soon as possible.

And yet I’d done the exact opposite.

I snuggled more deeply under the covers and allowed myself to escape to Munich. The real-life me was scheduled to present a paper at the symposium. After my talk, the fantasy me would head out to Munich’s famed Englischer Garten, warmly bundled, for a nice, long walk to unwind.

It would start to snow; the garden would be silent and lovely. And then, when I returned to the hotel, who should get in the elevator with me but the man I couldn’t stop thinking about.

In some iterations of this fantasy, we could barely wait until we were in his room to rip off each other’s clothes. But tonight I went for the ultradeluxe version, in which we shared coffee, dinner, after-dinner drinks, and even a few minutes outdoors on the hotel’s observation deck, as that very romantic snow continued to fall, enveloping us in one of nature’s most perfect crystalline forms.

I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the night we met, said the fictional version of Bennett, pulling me toward him, a dusting of fresh snow on the shoulders of his coat.

I should believe that when I haven’t heard from you for six months? I’d retort.

Yes, you should, he’d reply, looking into my eyes, because it’s true.

And then he would kiss me at last.


EARLY IN DECEMBER, I TAUGHT my last class for the semester.

I ended the lecture fifteen minutes early, so the students could fill out evaluation forms, which my grad student would collect. But as I left the classroom, a student named Keeley followed me out.

“Dr. Canterbury, excuse me, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Savitha and I have a bet. I say this is you.”

I knew exactly what I’d see even before she held out her phone toward me—she wasn’t the first student to have stumbled across my “princess” photo, which had turned into a bit of an Internet meme. The last time a student asked me this question, the dress had been Photoshopped to a tutu pink, with a caption that read, Someday my prince will come. This time the couture gown had been swapped out altogether in favor of an Elvish robe. My hand was held out toward none other than Aragorn. And between us were the words, Someday my king will return.

I laughed. “No,” I told Keeley, “it’s not me. But can you send me the image? My stepmom is a huge Tolkien fan and she’ll love this.”

Back at home, as soon as I’d sat down on the living room couch, Zelda poked in her head and said, “I had lunch with the Somerset boy today.”

“What? Just like that?”

“He rang. I asked him if he’d like to meet in person instead. He told me to name the time and the place.”

Zelda flitted into the kitchen and came back with cups of tea and a plate of cheese crisps for us. “And guess what we talked about at lunch?”

“His intentions toward his parents?”

“No, he was quite guarded about that. We talked about you, mostly.”

The idea of my gloriously anonymous Prince Charming not only acquiring a definite identity but holding a conversation about me…What the hell was going on?

“He knows all about you,” Zelda went on. “Well, everything that can be Googled, in any case: the genius grant, your patents—and even that conference in Germany you’re going to in February.”