“Actually, that’s Jane’s bailiwick, not mine,” Liz said. “I did mention it to Georgie, though.” Liz wanted to inquire after Georgie’s health, but the enmity between herself and Darcy prevented her. She was grateful when Jane reappeared, and a minute later, so did Chip.
“I hope my manners won’t seem lacking if I suggest that just Jane and I go for a little stroll,” he said. “Jane, would you consider it?”
Jane flushed radiantly. She glanced at Liz. “Are we expected anywhere else tonight?” Which, Liz knew, her sister was fully aware they were not.
“Nope,” Liz said.
Turning back toward Chip, Jane said, “Then I’d love to.”
Liz and Chip embraced once more, and Jane somberly thanked Darcy for the meal (again Liz envied the way Jane was compelled to show Darcy neither phony friendliness nor conspicuous derision). Jane and Chip had scarcely left the table when Liz asked, “Is he trying to get back together with her?”
“That’s for him to answer,” Darcy said.
Liz rolled her eyes. “You put way too much stock in discretion.”
He smiled thinly. “Or maybe you put too little.”
A silence arose, a silence in which neither of them looked elsewhere or fiddled with their phones; he seemed to be scrutinizing her. If she wasn’t careful, Liz felt, she might blurt out, How could you have picked Caroline Bingley over me?
Surely, surely, he had to say something. But no. He said nothing at all, and when Liz could withstand it no longer, she said, “I guess you’ll be getting up at the crack of dawn, huh?”
“A car is coming to my hotel at four.”
“In that case, you shouldn’t even go to sleep. You should go on a bender.”
“I imagine my patients tomorrow would prefer I didn’t.”
Did he understand that she had, under the guise of a joke, been putting out a feeler about if he’d like to get an after-dinner drink? She scooted back from the table and reached for her coat. “Then I’ll let you get your rest.” She pulled her purse onto one shoulder. “Take care, Darcy.” It was borderline rude, she knew, not to wait for him and leave the restaurant together; it was borderline cold to wave with false jauntiness rather than exchanging either an Ohio hug or a New York kiss on the cheek. But he was welcome to complain about her manners to Caroline—what did it matter at this point? And anyway, when the tears burst over Liz’s eyelids and streamed down her cheeks, she wanted to be away from him, alone on the sidewalk in the cool night.
LIZ HAD FALLEN asleep on the couch in her living room while waiting for Jane. Thus the lights were on, and the novel Liz had been reading had dropped to the floor, when Jane knocked. Liz was still only partially alert as she opened the apartment door, saying, “I really had no idea Chip would be there. You believe me, right?”
Jane rested one hand atop her belly. “Lizzy, he proposed.”
“What? Are you serious?”
Jane nodded.
“Holy shit,” Liz said. “What did you say?”
Jane was practically whispering. “I said yes.”
“Oh my God!” Liz embraced her sister. “This is insane. Start at the beginning.”
“Let me get some water. Want any?”
“No thanks.” Liz glanced at her watch and saw that it was three-thirty. “Did you guys have sex?” she asked.
Jane moved from the sink in Liz’s galley kitchen to the living room. As gracefully as was possible for a woman twenty-four weeks pregnant, she perched on the arm of the couch, to which Liz had returned. Jane’s expression was both bashful and joyous. She said, “I was worried he’d be”—she waved a hand over her midsection—“freaked out. And I think it was strange for him at first, but then it was really nice.”
“Was this before or after he’d proposed?”
“After. Lizzy, I know you think he acted flaky, but I was ambivalent, too. The situation was so confusing, and now we both know what we want.”
“I take it he didn’t have a ring?”