And now you know.
“Why do they call it commencement?” Sean asked her, wise beyond his years. “It’s not really about the beginning. It’s the end.”
She told him what her own mother had told her when she left for college decades ago: “Because it’s easier to say good--bye if you focus on what lies ahead instead of what lies behind you.”
The irony, of course, is that Mom’s immediate future held the hardest good--bye of all. Noreen chose not to remind her son of that, and as she studies her own reflection, patting her wind--tousled hair into place, she wishes she hadn’t thought of it now.
On the sidewalk outside the coffee shop, Rowan buttons her coat in the drizzle, watching Rick do the same.
She wishes she’d never come here. She’s run out of things to say to him—-ran out after the first five minutes, which they spent speculating about who might have sent the package. But they stayed for another half hour, mostly sharing details about where their lives had led them since they’d left Westchester.
It turns out Rick and Vanessa moved away not long after Rowan and Jake did. He said Vanessa was tired of the long commute, so they moved to Hoboken, which was much closer to her office in the financial district. Like Rowan, and like her mother before her, he went back to work when his youngest started preschool.
“What do you do?”
“These days, I’m in administrative ser-vices.”
“Really? Where?”
“Trust me—-you never heard of it.”
She asked him if he had a card, and he said, “I gave you my cell number when we messaged on Facebook, if you need—-”
“I know, but I like something tangible.”
He searched his pockets and, then told her he didn’t have a business card on him. Maybe it was the truth; maybe not. Maybe he works in administrative ser-vices; maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he was evading her; maybe she’s just paranoid. Who the hell knows?
He didn’t talk much about the divorce, other than to say it was a long time coming and they stuck it out until the kids were more or less out on their own. And he hasn’t revisited Vanessa’s death at all.
She’s curious to know how it happened, but it’s not the kind of thing you come right out and ask. And he didn’t volunteer the information, though he’s spoken pretty freely about some things.
When she asked where in New Jersey he’s living now, he gave her the exact address in Weehawken, adding that it’s almost on the very spot where Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton famously dueled to the death. “You probably teach your students about that in social studies, right? Fourth grade?”
She was almost positive she hadn’t told him which grade she’s teaching.
A little later, he let it slip that he knows where Katie is going to college.
“Winters can be brutal that far upstate,” he commented when she mentioned her daughter in passing. “My kids didn’t have the grades to get into Cornell, but I thought maybe they’d like Ithaca College, so we drove up and looked. It was snowing like crazy, and that was in late April. They wouldn’t even get out of the car to take the tour. Liam wound up in Texas and Erin’s in California. They’re both at decent colleges but nothing like Cornell.”
Had she even told him where Katie goes to school? She was almost positive that she hadn’t.
To be fair, he’d admitted in his message last night that he’d found her on Facebook long before she found him.
But she never mentions her job there because the principal frowns on social networking. And Katie’s Facebook profile is privacy--protected, so even if he’d spotted her on Rowan’s friends list, he wouldn’t see anything more than her name and headshot.
Okay—-so what if he snooped around online to find out where she works, and where her kids go to college?