“It’s a shame he lives on the other side of the world.”
“Yes, but it won’t be for much longer. He’s moving to the city for good in November. I feel guilty because I know I played a huge role in his decision, but selfishly I feel so grateful that he’ll be back in my life. I sometimes think that if he’d spent any time with Guy, he would have tried to talk me out of marrying him. Of course, I have no idea if I would I have listened.”
“Guy’s an awfully charming guy. Hell, after I met him, I gave a donation of a hundred bucks to the opera company, and I don’t really like opera.”
“But I’m the girl who wrote the book about choices, and I ended up making the world’s dumbest choice. I think one mistake on my part was never actually viewing marrying Guy as a decision that had to be made.”
“Why didn’t you?”
It’s a fairly blunt question, not one most people would go for in the situation, but I’m glad he did. It reflects a straightforwardness in Derek that I like. And it’s certainly a question I’ve been struggling to answer.
“For years after my parents’ deaths, I wasn’t open to any kind of deep romantic commitment. I told myself it was all about me throwing myself into my writing, but I think I was really afraid of being attached to someone, and at times I started to assume I’d never be with a man long-term. When I met Guy and fell in love with him so quickly, it felt almost magical, as if the gods had finally decided to release me from my grief. I saw it as a gift, not as something I needed to evaluate as right or wrong for me.”
“They say Guy got canned from the opera company.”
“Yeah, but from what I heard, that was based on his bad behavior in town. I’m not sure if they know about any of his past sins yet.”
“I wonder if anyone will ever know all that he was trying to hide.”
“I actually have a better idea on that. The divorce lawyer arranged for a private investigator to look into his past since it was essential for me to know as much as possible. He confirmed the issue in Dallas. And apparently the reason Guy arrived in Texas using his middle name was that he’d been let go from a start-up in Chicago for charging a bunch of personal expenses on his business credit card. That seems to be the extent of it. Unlike Sandra, Guy’s not a sociopath. He’s just your average-bear not-so-good guy, someone who likes to play close to the edge and take what he wants, even if he has no right to it. He clearly saw me as a nice meal ticket, but I still think part of him really loved me.”
What I don’t bring up, because what’s the point, are all the emails and calls from Guy in the past weeks, trying to convince me to take him back. Though I never responded, I read the notes and listened to the voicemails, and the phrase that popped in my mind was the same one that had first occurred to me that day in Congress Park: he’s slick. I finally had the divorce lawyer order him to stop.
Derek bobs the bottle cap a few times in his hand, his expression pensive.
“You know what I’ve never asked you? How did you find your way to the man in Dallas who ended up sharing everything?”
I tell him then about the hotel-room dreams, and how they always seemed to be sending me a message. Derek shakes his head, not in disbelief, it seems, but simply because the whole thing is so hard to fathom.
“That’s pretty amazing,” he says. “When I started teaching, I had those classic dreams about standing up in the front of the class and realizing I’d forgotten to prepare a single thing, but never anything like yours.”
“I know, it’s incredible what the subconscious is capable of. When the dreams first started and it was obvious they were related to the accident, I couldn’t understand why they only began after I was living in Saratoga. Dr. Greene thinks that moving here put me in regular proximity to Guy, and in a way I didn’t even recognize, I probably felt threatened. My subconscious became insistent on making me recall what Paul Dunham had said in the car that day.”
“That’s a pretty dazzling example of how the brain works.”
I nod in agreement. Of course, there’s still one detail I’m aching to know, something that seems forever out of reach. Why did the car go off the road? If only my dreams could tell me that.
I take another sip of water. The sunlight is intoxicating, and part of me doesn’t want this picnic to end, but when I glance at my watch, I see that it’s close to three. I need to be heading back to the hotel I’m staying at in Albany, near Tina’s office. Derek reads my mind.
“Is there any way I can entice you to stay around for dinner? We could eat north of here—or even at my place—so there’d be no chance of running into Guy.”
“Thanks, but I better not. I want to get an early start home in the morning. By the way, I’m so sorry I never had a chance to speak to your class.”