Because Julian was winding a piece of tagliatelle around his fork, he didn’t see my shock.
“But probably not for much longer,” he added, looking up.
“I had no id—I’m so sorry,” I said.
I couldn’t believe how close we’d once been, and how little we knew of each other now. “Can I ask…” But then I stopped.
“I used to tell you everything, didn’t I?” Julian said. He gave a little one-shouldered shrug. “I see no reason to stop now. Sarah, my wife, was a ballet dancer. As you can probably imagine, it’s a beautiful but brutal business. She’d struggled for years with an eating disorder, but by the time we met she was healthy. We married five years ago on Mykonos, and not long after that she decided that she wanted to have a baby.”
“And you?” I asked.
He smiled. “I can’t pretend I was excited by the thought of wiping some squalling infant’s bottom, but I came around,” he said. “We tried for a long time, and after almost two years, she got pregnant. We were elated. But then she miscarried. When she got pregnant again, she miscarried again. And again.”
“You’re kidding,” I breathed, knowing that he wasn’t. “I’m so sorry.”
I’d been expecting a story of infidelity like mine, but this was a pain I couldn’t even imagine.
“She had five miscarriages in two years. The last one was at sixteen weeks; he had tiny little fingernails. He seemed… so perfect.” Julian took a glug of wine. “It just took too big of a toll on her—I think because she felt like somehow it was her fault. That she’d made her body incapable of carrying a child. She left town three months ago. I think she’s on a silent retreat in Sedona, but I honestly don’t know. And I don’t know if she’s coming back.”
I was at a loss for words. “That sounds so hard.”
“I won’t lie and say it isn’t.” He was quiet for a little while, and then he leaned forward and patted my hand. “But for you, my long-lost Annie, this is supposed to be a celebratory lunch. Let’s not talk about what’s gone wrong. Let’s think about what’s lucky instead. Like me logging into my old email account last night, which I almost never check, and seeing a message from you.”
That was luck. What would I have done if Julian hadn’t written back? Wandered around the plaza for hours or even days, hoping to run into him? I’d tried something like that once before.
“You’re doing a terrible job on your wine, by the way,” Julian added.
I knocked the whole glass back; I felt like I needed it. “Better?”
He laughed. “A little déclassé, maybe, but definitely more efficient.”
He refilled my flute to the very rim, and by the time dessert appeared, I was feeling slightly tipsy.
“Maybe we should go take a nap in the plaza,” I said, almost meaning it.
Julian raised an eyebrow at me. I assumed I was being déclassé again, until he borrowed a blanket from the hotel’s concierge on our way out of the restaurant.
In the wide green plaza, the sun was hot and the breeze deliciously cool. Near the duck pond, in the shade of a huge oak, Julian spread out the blanket.
We lay down, lightheaded with Champagne. I watched the leaves dance across the sky above us and talked about some of the things I wanted to see while I was there.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Julian said, interrupting. “The girl who got away.”
I turned to look at his strong profile. “That’s how you thought of me? That’s how I thought of you. You went away. I stayed.”
Julian was staring up at the clouds. “I used to think about you a lot. For years. I wondered what you were doing and where you were. I wanted to know if you were happy, and if you’d moved to New York like you’d said you were going to, and if you’d ever gotten back on a motorcycle.”
“I thought about you, too,” I said. “I wondered if you’d kept playing the guitar. And if you still wrote poetry. Or if you’d gotten too serious and respectable.” I nudged him lightly to let him know I was teasing.
He smiled. “No, I don’t write poetry. I should dust off my old guitar, though.” He paused. “It’s good to start things back up again sometimes,” he said quietly.
I decided not to think too hard on what he might mean by that. We were lying close to each other on a linen blanket on an August afternoon, full with good food and good wine. I could let that be enough for now.
Then Julian’s phone rang, and he looked at it and sighed. “I’m sorry, Anne, I have to run—I’m late for a meeting.”
Reluctantly we got up, and then we kissed, ever so quickly, on the lips.
“Lunch was wonderful,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Good-bye,” I called.
He stopped and turned around in a halo of sunlight. “Hello,” he said, grinning. And then he hurried away.
Chapter 26
THE PHONE woke me as the sun was just rising over the vineyard. I knew it was Pauline on the other end of the line, but for a few seconds all I heard was sobbing. “Bob Kline died last night,” she finally said.
I gasped, even though part of me had known what she was going to say. “But Kit said—”
“Everyone thought he had another year at least. But Annie, no one knows anything in the end, do they? The funeral’s at Grace Episcopal on Friday. Oh, poor, poor Kit.”
“Poor Bob,” I whispered.
I wondered if his kids had come home for the weekend for the birthday party—if he’d been able to see them once more before he died. And I wondered, too, if he’d finished his coffin, and could now be buried in it.
When Pauline and I hung up, I paced around the cottage. Maybe it was strange to mourn someone I’d met only once, but I couldn’t deny my sadness.
When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, Rilke had written in a letter to his wife, a line I’ve never forgotten. I’d been thinking about driving to Point Reyes National Seashore, and now, because of Bob, I would do it.
Maybe it would bring me comfort.
I could smell the ocean even before I saw it glimmering blue-gray in the distance. The briny air was so familiar that for a confusing split-second, I thought I was returning home instead of driving ever farther away from it.
My skin began to tingle, already anticipating the chilly shock of water.
Except for a woman and her dog in the distance, there was no one else on the beach. I took off my shoes and dug my toes into the cool sand.
The tide was coming in, and each wave slid closer to me than the last. Eventually, the water flowed over my feet and swirled around my ankles. I gritted my teeth and nearly yelped: it was so much colder than the Atlantic.
Rilke wrote that we should love life so much that we’d love death, too; death, after all, was just life’s other half. But I didn’t think I could ever love that kind of destruction. I doubted that Bob could, either—or my parents, for that matter, or anyone else who had to leave life’s party before they were ready.
When the breeze picked up and whipped my hair into my face, I remembered the gusty morning of Hurricane Claire. Strangely, it felt like a lifetime ago. As I stood there, rooted in the sand, my feet grew numb with cold, and eventually I began to cry. I told myself this was a good place to do it: once my warm, salty tears fell into the cold, salty ocean, no one would be able to tell them apart.
Then through bleary eyes I saw someone coming toward me on the sand—a tall figure, walking quickly and waving.
I squinted in the bright sunshine.
It was Julian.
Chapter 27
HE WAS wearing a dark suit and Italian loafers; he looked handsome and utterly out of place on the windswept beach.
“Julian?” I asked, incredulous—as if it could possibly be someone else.
“You’d said you might come out here today,” he explained. “And when you didn’t answer my texts.…” His voice trailed off.
I sniffled and tried to wipe my eyes discreetly. I hoped it wasn’t obvious that I’d been crying. “But why are you here?”
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since yesterday,” he said.
I didn’t know what to say to that. “But what—”