The Last September: A Novel

Daniel smiled. The polite, obligatory stance disappeared. He had dark blue eyes like Ladd, and his hair had grayed in a distinguished, silvery way. “I’m happy to hear it,” he said. “I hope you’ll get married here.”


At first I thought he meant Cape Cod, but as he gestured at the deck I realized he meant this spot, his house. It made me worry that I shouldn’t have said anything, upset the natural order of the announcement, without even consulting Ladd. My face felt a little hot, and I wished I hadn’t left my sunglasses on the dashboard of Ladd’s car. It was such a magnanimous offer, but saying “thank you” would feel like accepting. Which wasn’t exactly my place.

“Sylvia and I were married here,” Daniel said, graciously ignoring my silence. “I suppose Ladd’s told you about Sylvia?” I hesitated before nodding. “You remind me of her,” Daniel said.

Again, I wished for sunglasses. I searched my brain for a reply. Before I found one Daniel said, “Would you like to see a picture?”

He walked through the sliding glass door, which Ladd had left open. I thought he was going to bring the picture back to me, but he paused in the doorway long enough for me to realize I was meant to follow him. So I did, trying to remember a framed portrait hanging over a fireplace from my previous visits. Instead Daniel stopped by the main stairway and opened the single drawer of a small occasional table. We could hear Ladd’s voice as he talked on the phone, coming from the kitchen.

“Look,” Daniel said.

He handed me a small leather envelope. I opened it to see a head-and-shoulders picture of a young woman with hair dampened by the ocean. The blue sky stood behind her, and though I couldn’t tell whether she wore a bikini or a maillot, I could tell from the straps she was in her bathing suit. She was very fair and freckled, with narrow eyes the pale blue of a Siberian Husky’s. She had a strong jaw, and short blonde hair. She looked athletic and patrician. Apart from age and the geography of the moment, I couldn’t pinpoint anything the two of us had in common. Still, since he’d just compared us, it seemed wrong—self-congratulatory—to say that she was pretty. So instead I said, “She looks so young.”

“She was young. This was taken a few years before she got leukemia, before we were married. She was only twenty-eight when she died.”

“That’s terrible,” I said, as if hearing the story for the first time. “I’m so sorry.” Not able to bear the brief silence that followed, I added, “My father died of leukemia when I was five.” Actually my father had died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma. As the words left my mouth, I realized Ladd might have told Daniel this, and my face reddened over the small lie. It would be splitting hairs to correct myself now. Daniel reached out and took the picture from my hands. He studied it for a moment, then snapped the envelope shut and returned it to the drawer.

“I took all of the framed pictures away,” he said. “The first few years after she died they used to take me by surprise. I’d come around a corner finally feeling normal and then there she’d be, staring out at me from the top of the bookshelf. Now I keep pictures of her in drawers around my houses, so I can look at them when I want to. I thought of this one when I saw you standing out there on the deck. She was very sweet, Sylvia. And very smart. Layered. Always thinking.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

Daniel nodded, staring over my head toward some unknowable point. There was a sadness there that made me like him even more; it made me want to reach out and pat him on the shoulder, though of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t have used the word sweet to describe him, but everything else he’d just said about Sylvia also applied to him. And I supposed there was a sweetness, too. A kindness. The sort of man who stepped in and helped when help was needed. When he brought his eyes back to mine, I blinked and looked away.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, polite, excusing me from the need to comfort him.