The Last September: A Novel

“We’ll wait,” he said.

I nodded, and at the same time wondered for what, exactly. What would it look like, when all this became permanent. Sarah rounded the corner with Lightfoot click-clacking beside her. I thought she was headed toward me, but instead she stopped at the side table next to the couch and opened the drawer.

“Sarah,” I said, more for Daniel’s sake than hers. If there was a verbal way to stop a toddler from doing something, I hadn’t yet discovered it.

“It’s okay,” Daniel said as Sarah found what she wanted—another small leather envelope. She held it over her head in triumph, then brought it over to me. I looked at Daniel, asking permission. He nodded.

This picture was different from the other I’d seen. Still by the water, but wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and holding a smiling blond toddler around Sarah’s age.

“That’s Eli,” Daniel said. He leaned forward, peering at the picture. “I used to look at her with him and think: that’s what she’ll be like with our children.”

“Charlie, too?” I said.

Daniel nodded. “Charlie, too,” he said, but I could tell from a note of apology in his voice, Eli had been her favorite.

My eyes lowered, back to the picture, but before I had a chance to examine it more closely, Sarah snatched the envelope back and returned it to its drawer. Then she toddled past the coffee table—priding herself, I noticed, in not touching it for balance—in search of more drawers.

As her chubby hand closed around the knob to the matching end table, Daniel said, “I’m afraid she’ll find one there, too. One for nearly every drawer. My own morbid scavenger hunt.”

“I don’t think it’s morbid,” I said, having very recently sent an email to my murdered husband. Charlie always kept a clean inbox, deleting email after he read it. Now mine would sit there unopened, forever.

Mrs. Duffy came into the room and told us dinner was ready. She scooped up Sarah and said, “I’ll bring this one outside so you can eat in peace.”

In the dining room, our meal was a grown-up version of the meal that Mrs. Duffy had fed Sarah—breaded chicken cutlets with wild rice and a salad of mixed field greens. When we sat down, Daniel continued the conversation about Sylvia.

“Ladd must have told you,” he said, “that’s how we met. My sister-in-law Rebecca and Charlie’s mother were good friends. The boys had a standing invitation to use this beach, and Sylvia used to bring them here to play with Ladd.”

I pictured it, Daniel—young uncle and gentleman—hosting the children and their pretty au pair. He would have stood back, not overtly interested, just watching her very carefully, sometimes offering to help with the boys.

“It turned out we were both at Harvard,” Daniel said. “I was going to business school. She was getting her PhD in English. Her dissertation was on The Faerie Queen.” He looked at me, waiting for a professional response, maybe even hoping I shared the same specialty.

“Nineteenth-century American poetry,” I said, pointing to myself, apologetic for the distance from Spenser. “Late nineteenth century.”

Daniel speared a piece of arugula, too polite to express disappointment. “It would have broken her heart, what happened to Eli. And now Charlie.”

Years ago, when Ladd told me that Daniel had paid for Eli’s hospitalization at McLean, I’d assumed this was the reason—his late wife’s attachment. Sitting across from him, now myself the beneficiary of his impulse to help, I thought there was something more to it. Most of us think of ourselves—our true selves—in terms of intention, the person we’re trying to be. Whereas everyone else sees the failure, the flailing, between the intention and the attempt, Daniel seemed wholly contained of these two spaces, with no bridge in between.

“I’m sorry,” I said, not sure if I was expressing sympathy for Sylvia’s death or her would-be broken heart.