Читать книгу The Year She Left - Kerry Kelly - Страница 4

It was September when Stuart found out she was gone. Or rather, that he was going. He’d come home one day to find that Emily had left him a note on the kitchen table of their condo. Her condo. She’d made the down-payment.

Emily hadn’t addressed him as “Dear”. She told him later that she felt he deserved better than a cliché. He’d thought it unfortunate that she didn’t think he deserved better than to be simultaneously dumped and evicted in a letter, especially after he found out that her decision to end things had actually been made months earlier. During a week he’d been out of town. On the day he was set to return. The day she had realized her engagement ring was missing.

She’d spent a whole day searching for it, starting with the obvious places; the nightstand, the soap dish and finally resorting to unhooking the bathroom drainpipe. But the ring was gone, and not even her prayers to St. Anthony were bringing it back.

It was a devastating loss; it was a beautiful ring, one sparkling kagrat riding high on a white-gold setting. Platinum was what you used to build missiles, she’d told him. She was vehemently opposed to warheads,and gold was more romantic anyway. Not gold-gold, though. It didn’t suit her skin tone.

But that was not really why she was so upset. She was upset because she could not remember when exactly the little band of metal, rock and promise had slipped off her finger. It was a colleague who had brought it to her attention, asking her if she took it off when she typed.

As she said, “No, I always have it on,” she realized she didn’t. Her initial reaction was more curiosity than tragedy, until she saw the horrified expression on the other woman’s face, a horror she then tried to mimic, rather unconvincingly.

She loved the ring. There was no reason she shouldn’t have, since she was the one who had picked it out, shortly after their third anniversary. They had moved from their apartment into the condo she’d selected for them as well. Stuart had been a doll about it, telling her she had better taste than he did anyway, which was true, and that it was her money they were using for the downpayment, which was also true. She’d thought it was very modern of him to say so, not to feel threatened by her financial advantage.

She’d wanted to be engaged before they moved in, but she’d also wanted Stuart to pay for the ring. Some traditions had to be upheld. It had taken him longer than expected to scrounge up the money. Stuart had never really taken to a career. He had a degree in English Literature and a burning desire to be an artist. His painting never resulted in saleable pieces, just an unwillingness to get tied into some nine-to-five career that would make it impossible for him to focus on his true calling. He actually made his money designing websites for the companies of more successful family members and acquaintances.

When he did finally present her with the ring, they were at their favourite restaurant. He handed it to her in an antique ring box, looking up at her from bended knee, as per the orders Emily had given her best friend to give to him. It was perfect.

Until that day in late May, she had barely taken it off. In the very beginning, she hadn’t wanted to wear it at night, since it tended to get caught in her expensive sheets and more expensively-styled hair, but he looked so wounded whenever he saw her slip it off that she’d started wearing it all of the time. Until…

She sat at her desk that day, trying to figure out when it had fallen off her hand. That morning, the evening before, the day before that? She had no idea.

As she tried to recall the last time she’d seen the ring, she had been a bit shocked to find that for all the months it had been a part of her, she couldn’t really picture it on her finger. Couldn’t quite remember what it would have looked like seeing it sitting there winking back at her.

She didn’t have much time to think about it. From the corner of her eye, she could see Laurel, her colleague, watching for a more suitable reaction with an air of expectation

Emily dropped to her knees behind her desk in a move designed both to hide her from view and to show a genuine feminine upset that the ring was missing. As she crawled around, aimlessly patting the carpet, the thought of asking Laurel when she’d last seen the ring briefly crossed her mind. She’d obviously been keeping tabs on it. But Emily was too afraid to risk further gaping from someone who was already staring down at her with all the judgment of an Olympian god. Emily could feel it even through the solid maple of the desktop.

The fury of a woman scorned was absolutely nothing to that of one overlooked, any single woman could tell you that. And here was a woman who had been handed the proof that she was worth loving tossing that proof around like it was nothing.

She then toyed with the idea of bursting into tears. She was going to be fodder for the lunch-time gossip anyway, so it would be best to be portrayed in a favourable light, but she wasn’t sure she could pull it off. Instead she stayed tucked under her desk, murmuring concerns and scratching at the pile of the rug until she heard the door click shut.

Grabbing her coat and keys, she headed for home. The hunt was on. She couldn’t have been long without it, she reasoned. Stuart had only been gone a week, and she must have had it on when he left.

He would have noticed its absence. He had a tendency to stare at it, mesmerized, twisting it to see the sparkle. “This is how much I love you,” he’d tell her, holding the hand up to better catch the light. It wasn’t as gross as it sounded. Not really, though it had always made her cringe to hear it. It was just that Stuart was not a wealthy guy. For this purchase, he’d really buckled down, taking every job he could get and funneling all of the money he could into what he called the “Promise Fund”. He’d given her everything the day he had proposed. The ring. A promise. His heart.

And she had gone and lost it. She’d shed it like a snakeskin and not even noticed. How could she tell him that? How could she ever explain it?

Once home, she began a panicked search of her condo. Their condo, she corrected herself. She was always having to correct herself. She started in the office, strewing papers and yanking on drawer handles. She did not find it.

In the bedroom, she checked in the sheets, then in the closet, kicking at shoes and digging through boxes she knew hadn’t been touched in years. She did not find it.

She went from room to room like that, shoving and lifting and praying and calling out for his ring, his love, like a lost pup. “Where are you? Where the fuck are you?”

She did not find it.

Hours later she sat, defeated, in a shirt smeared with drain sludge and with a handful of slivers, but without a ring. She was crying. She was crying because that was the day she finally admitted something that had been crawling around the back of her mind like an infection. That day was the day she told herself that it wasn’t his love that was lost. It was hers. And everything was over.

How long had she known this? Like the ring, she couldn’t pinpoint it. A few months? A year? The whole four years? No. Not that long. She had loved him once. She was sure that was true. She hoped to hell it was, but if she were honest, she knew that she hadn’t felt that way in quite some time.

Did she love him when he’d asked her to move in? She thought so. When she’d bought the condo and not had him co-sign the lease? Maybe not. When he’d proposed?

No, she hadn’t loved him when he’d proposed. But sitting in that restaurant with that gleaming silver box, she thought she ought to love him. It was what she’d asked for. And she’d seen how very much Stuart loved her. She just smiled, said yes and hoped he had enough love for both of them.

Sitting there that cool spring day, dirty and aching behind her eyes, she knew he didn’t. She never should have expected it. She’d been unfair, and she’d been wrong, and he would be coming home today, and she was going to have to tell him so.

Except she didn’t. He came in the door that day with dinner in a brown paper bag, grease-stained and smelling fantastic. He plunked it on the table with the pride of a caveman presenting a slain beast.

He found her sitting on the patio, slumped against the sliding glass door and covered in grime, and he asked her what was wrong. She told him she had lost the ring. He took in her tragic expression and red eyes, and before she could say anything else, he told her not to cry, that it was all right. He grabbed her hands and helped her to stand, bringing her inside to get cleaned up. He hugged her, grease and all, smelled her hair and told her that he’d missed her, and he told her he’d brought home cheap Chinese and a bottle of wine.

Emily had always been under the misguided impression that once you realized that the love you had is gone, that it may not have ever existed in the first place, you couldn’t possibly have a hankering for sweet and sour spareribs. Somehow some innate decency would stop you from sitting in silence across from the man who adores you, ingesting a plate full of fried rice and chicken balls.

She was dead wrong. You can do it. You can even enjoy it, and you can appreciate being cared for when you’ve had a hard day, and you can feel justified that you deserve a meal after rolling under all of the beds in your house. You can talk about his day and never once mention your absolute change of heart and the ultimate necessity of a parting of the ways.

Then you can hoist yourself up from the table, waddle over to the couch and realize you live with someone who doesn’t care if you unzip your fly in a decidedly unsexy “ate so much you nearly split your pants” kind of way.

You can lie there comfortably drinking beer and mocking the people on your reality show of choice and remember how funny your boyfriend is.

When he reaches for your leg, you can let him, and when he asks if you’re ready for bed, you can tell him that you are.

It turns out you can take the truth that your relationship is over and shove it so far down, you can ride out one month in this pleasant company, then another. One day, when your eye spies something sparkling near the baseboard in the kitchen, you can pick it up and slip it on the third finger of your left hand.

But once you are sure that you have fallen out of love, you can’t, and don’t let anyone tell you differently, fall back.

Emily found this out on a very sunny Labour Day, when Stuart was actually labouring, sitting in a deserted office building trying to fix a bug in the most recent site he’d designed. She, for her part, had hoped to spend the day straightening up her, their, office. She hardly ever went in there except to Google the occasional restaurant or medical symptom, always tripping over boxes of paper and canvases and other miscellaneous crap Stuart had accumulated. Emily had always viewed September as the true beginning of the year, a hangover from school days, she supposed. It always brought about a fit of cleaning.

Hours passed as she made her way through his boxes of tax receipts and invoices, methodically sorting and filing and collecting an impressive pile for the shredder.

Next was Stuart’s mess of a desk. Opening drawer after drawer, she plowed through until she opened the bottom drawer and saw something that made her stop sorting, even stop breathing for a moment.

It was a letter, sitting loosely atop a packet of other letters held together with one of her hair elastics, having been removed, presumably to be reread. They were letters she had written Stuart during a three-month period he’d been in Europe travelling with his mother. They’d been together just under a year at that time and had decided they’d stay together while he was gone. She picked up the page of loose leaf, feeling a bit like a thief, even though the words were hers. She started reading.

Dear Stuart,

Now what do I say? The first official letter. A LOVE letter at that. The pressure of it is crippling. But I will carry on because (gasp! Dare she say it?) I love you. I said it at the airport, and no, it wasn’t just because you did. I said it because I do. So there. I miss you desperately, and I’m sitting here in a coffee shop like a graduate student surrounded by people who have no relation to me, and you are miles and miles across the ocean. How can this be right? It’s like time running backwards or talking goats, completely unnatural. It’s amazing the things you can say in a letter, isn’t it? Things you’d never say to someone’s face. All the things you can’t say. The Victorians were totally on to something.

A drop hit the paper, telling Emily that she was crying as she read this sheet full of her loopy writing and sloppy sentiments. She hadn’t known he had kept these letters; she knew she hadn’t kept his. She continued reading.

I can still see your face, though, if I screw my eyes up tight. I thought for a second last night that I couldn’t, that you’d been pushed right out of my head by the minutes from meetings and my desire to remember to bring back the videos I rented. But you are, in fact, still safely in view of my mind’s eye… I just checked. Can you see me? Have you looked? Go ahead take a peek, I’ll wait.

She leaned back against the desk leg, wiping her eyes. God, she sounded so young and sure of herself. So sweet on him. She didn’t feel any of that now. She read on.

I’m sending this to Dublin. If you’re reading it, I’m assuming you have arrived safe and did not murder our Glyniss on the trip over from Scotland. Is it raining in Dublin? It’s the odds-on favourite weather, I hear. It’s cold and miserable here, I’m happy to report. It suits my mood. I could tell you that the angels are crying because we’re apart, but I can’t. And not just because it’s too corny. It’s not actually raining here at all. The sky is just grey and watery. No cherubic tears, angelic hay fever maybe. Hmmm, I guess that last bit wasn’t very romantic, was it? I’ll make it up to you. Just keep reading…

keep reading…

keep reading….

I’m not wearing panties. Hah! Said the girl who misses you more by the day.

Em

Emily folded the letter, unable to pick up the next one. Even as she looked into a drawer full of proof, she couldn’t remember loving Stuart that way. Like her ring when it was missing, she could not remember its brilliance.

Whatever she felt for him now, it could never be that. And if she was ever to have a hope of feeling that way again, she was going to have to tell him so.

But how? How do you tell a man who saved your love letters that you wanted to break his heart? The answer was in her hands. The things you can’t say, you write. That was why Stuart came home that evening to find a note waiting for him on the kitchen table.

There are only two kinds of letters that lovers send to one another, the love letter, and the Dear John. It is easy enough for even the most ineloquent writer to knock off a love letter. But the Dear John is another beast entirely.

A person should never have their heart broken that way. It’s cruel and cowardly. But if you are going to end things in this unchivalrous fashion, the letter should always be handwritten. Emily’s was.

It should not, however, be written on a lined yellow paper pad with a ballpoint pen, lest it be perceived from a distance as a shopping list. Which is, sadly, what happened to Stuart, leaving him quite unprepared for the shock of what he was about to read:

Stuart,

I want to tell you something. And I want to say it in a way that will make you understand how very much I have loved you. And why that has changed.

It’s not going to be easy. I don’t have a noble reason. I think you should know that.

You want to hear one, I guess. You want to hear that I don’t think I’m worthy of you, or that I’m trying to protect you, or that I’d been walking along the street one day and found my one and only soulmate and had to be with him.

But I can’t tell you any of those things.

You’ll want me to convince you that I don’t know it’s going to break your heart that I’ve left, or that I’m only going for a little while to see if I may come back.

But I can’t tell you any of those things either.

Maybe you’d even settle for me telling you that I’ve never really loved you, and it just took me three years to get around to telling you.

But I’m not sure that’s true. I did love you at some point, and I may still, just not in the right way.

I guess this is the point where I say I’m leaving you, though I guess you’ll be the one that’s going, and I’m sorry for that too. That looks awful, what I just wrote. Awful and true. I guess what I’m really saying is it’s over. I’m sorry to be a coward and say it on paper, but I couldn’t stand to see your face when you found out.

Love, (Again I’m sorry, it’s awful and true)

Emily

She had thought it kinder to end that way, to seal the poisoned epistle with love. That was bullshit, he thought.

Stuart was reeling, literally. He was holding on to a chair so that he wouldn’t fall over. He had just been gone a few hours. This couldn’t have come to her today. She’d had this lined up, ready, maybe for days.

He sat trying to process what he’d read, tipping the large double double he’d brought in for himself into his mouth in long burning gulps. Then he drank the one he’d brought for her, as the questions flooded his brain. She wanted to leave him? He had to go? She didn’t love him? She did?

He was devastated and confused. He had loved Emily for what seemed like forever. How could she leave him with all of these questions?

In fact, she hadn’t. He heard her before he saw her. She was hovering by the kitchen door. She’d been waiting for him to come home and read it, and she’d been there the whole time.

He felt sick, and after a mad dash for the bathroom, he was. Re-scalding his esophagus with the coffee he’d just drunk. It burned. Everything burned. Then, not knowing what else to do, he cried his goddamned eyes out.

He was in there for almost an hour, during which time Emily made a guilty walk across the kitchen to the bathroom door, running her nails softly up and down the wood grain, then asking if he couldn’t let her in. Asking if he was okay.

He was so not okay.

He might be in there still, the sorrow seemed so great, if she hadn’t then asked him not to do anything stupid, since her Ritalin pills were in the bathroom cupboard.

Kill himself? In the bathroom of their, her, fucking condo? With a bottle of Ritalin? He was so insulted that his indignation propelled him to his feet, out of the bathroom and through the front door.

It wasn’t indignation that made him call her a “stupid cunt” before slamming the door behind him, and it wasn’t the shock or the pain. He said it because as much as he loved her, and as much as he was going to miss her, Emily could be a really big cunt sometimes, and a stupid one too, the whole Ritalin-as-a-suicide device thing being a prime example, the letter being another. Who does that? Then waits around to see your reaction? You know who does that? A stupid cunt, that’s who. And now, as she had so clearly made it known, he had nothing to lose by telling her so. So he had.

On that day in September, the first day of the year that she left, everything had changed, and nothing had changed.

The fact that he loved her hadn’t changed. The fact that she didn’t love him hadn’t changed. Not that day anyway. He hadn’t lost his soul, or his manhood, or his need to keep breathing.

Not the fact that the girl he’d loved for so many years, and he did love her, was a bit controlling and a bit manipulative and had never thought that he could really make it as an artist. Or that she had always made fun of his mother and always been jealous of Elizabeth and never really tried to get close to her, even though Elizabeth was one of the few people in this world Stuart thought of as a friend.

Those were just the things that popped into his head unbidden on the ride down the elevator.

He loved her so much, his body was aching at the loss of her. But it did not make her perfect.

Still in shock, Stuart walked himself over to his local bar, a pub called appropriately enough, The Local, almost without thinking. He ordered a pint, hoping it would soothe his singed throat, and attempted to wrap his head around the fact that he was now heartbroken and homeless. Then he ordered another, because the first one had tasted good. Then another. Then he decided if he ordered a pitcher, he could cut his wait time between drinks. He sat there sipping and lost in thought, mulling things over until a heavy arm landed on his shoulder, and a slurred voice asked if “I can get a little of that.”

Stuart’s particular brand of misery did not demand company, especially from a greasy fat guy who’d probably been there all day, so he shrugged off the offending limb, trying to pretend he hadn’t heard the man. This produced a low rumbling growl from the fatty, who turned to the bartender, saying he was none too impressed with the “fuckin’ piece of shit too fuckin’ cheap to share his fuckin’ beer.”

Stuart sighed and pushed what was left in the pitcher down the bar before sliding off his stool and walking out the door. He didn’t want to give it up. Didn’t want to leave, having nowhere else to go. But he also didn’t want to get himself in a fight, or as he liked to call them, beatings.

Stuart was a big guy, tall and not overly thin, but he was not a tough guy. Blame it on being raised by an overly doting mother, but he just did not have a killer instinct. He could not fight at the best of times and certainly did not have it in him that night. Standing up, he could barely keep his knees from giving out. This was not due to the fear of an impending ass kicking, nor due to the fact that he’d had more to drink than was usual even for him. No. On top of being dumped, on top of forcing him to seek solace in a bar where ugly men said ugly things, Emily had given him a cold. He’d felt it slowly settling over him while he’d been at work that day. It that had lit upon her lightly the weekend before but was destined to take him down to hell and back. Typical.

Out on the street, he felt lost. He hadn’t been ready to face the world yet, and he had no idea how to go about it. Knowing he was not far from an area frequented by hookers, he had a wild notion that he should go find one. He could forget things for a while and have a place to lie down, but an increasing urge to vomit curbed the desire, and not only that—truth be told, Stuart had never actually attempted to pick up a hooker before. Not because he was in any way against it, but because of a fear that he might be rejected. And a fear of diseases.

He’d never told Emily about that. Never told anyone but Elizabeth. She’d laughed when he’d told her and said it wasn’t very rock and roll.

He wondered what things Emily had never told him, and it made him so tired, he sat right down on the pavement so he could have a rest.

From that vantage point, Stuart came to realize a few things. The first; that he was kind of drunk. The second; that he had given his heart to a woman, and while it was something that she made clear she didn’t want, she hadn’t been able to return it. It was still there, with her, beating quietly, unwanted, apologizing and trying not to cause offence. The third; he was, in fact, quite drunk and wouldn’t be getting up off the ground any time soon.

He was uncomfortable sitting there on the pavement littered with cigarette butts and the dark spots left by people’s gobs of spit. He was even more uncomfortable when he realized he was sitting across from the homeless guy he always meant to buy a coffee for but never had. He waved, got no response and felt like a dick for a minute before deciding it was better to feel sorry for himself than somebody else.

I’m going to end up just like him, Stuart thought, feeling cold and lonely and resentful of the sad looks happy people were shooting him on their way to more important things. They couldn’t see a difference between the two men taking up real estate on the sidewalk. In his self-pitying stupor, neither could Stuart.

“I could just die here tonight,” he mumbled to the twinkling stars, to Emily packing his things as he sat there, to himself. “I should just die.”

“The only way you’re going to die tonight is if I kick your ass for leaving a woman sitting alone at the bar for the past hour,” replied a voice somewhere overhead.

A woman’s face appeared to him. For a moment Stuart let himself believe that she might be an angel. His guardian angel, come to take him home. Wherever that was now.

But when he felt her stick an icy hand under his head, propping him up roughly against a building, Stuart knew who she was. He knew she wasn’t an angel, and he knew that she was pissed. He tried to tell her he was sorry he’d forgotten to meet her. He tried to tell her he had a cold, and he wanted to ask her if she could help him up, because the sidewalk was damp.

What he said was, “It was her condo, but it was MY ring, Liz, and she LOST it!”

Then Stuart started to cry.

“Aw, Jesus. She chucked you,” Elizabeth said as she grabbed his arm. “I knew she sounded weird on the phone. Bitchier than usual.” She watched in horror as he blew his nose on her scarf.

“Oh, fuck. You’re a mess. Okay, let’s get you home.” Stuart’s eyes welled up again as he choked out “Home?” Elizabeth sighed. “Well, my home then.”

“Can we go get a drink first?”

“Do you think you need one?” she asked him.

“Desperately,” he said in a voice so sad, she could easily kill over it.

“Okay, honey, one more drink. If you pass out, I’ll get to tell you all about my news without feeling like a total asshole.” She grabbed his shoulders and pointed him in the direction of her car.

* * *

Kate did not feel well as she stared at the huge empty spaces that now filled her apartment, but she comforted herself with the knowledge that she had done the right thing.

She wished of course that it had worked out with Scott. It would have been so much easier just to be together. One more thing to cross off life’s to-do list. Find a partner? Check.

She would have liked to have been able to hold on to the kind of man she could readily admit was a great catch. Considerate, employed, straight, good teeth. Even the last name was great. Archer. She would have been happy to be Katherine Archer. Katherine Mackenzie-Archer. Mrs. Archer, even.

But he seemed compelled to keep telling her stories that she’d heard before. A thousand times before. “One time in college, my buddies and I…” Took a road trip to B.C., chatted up a hot woman that ended up being a man, shaved a guy bald when he passed out on the couch.

She knew. She knew them all.

Then there was the way he was always grabbing the back of her neck when he drove, even though he knew she hated it when people touched her neck.

“I’m not grabbing it, I’m rubbing it,” he’d say, like he was the one who’d been offended. “…and I’m not people. I’m your man.”

Yes, that’s right. He referred to himself as “her man”. He did this all the time. In public. Alone it was worse, since he had the tendency to call himself “her big man”.

Not only awful, but woefully overstated.

Well, maybe that was unfair. He was fine, definitely not porn star material or anything, but fine. That was not a problem. The problems were much smaller, but they were lethal.

He was a guy who picked her birthday cards out at the drug store, the most recent monstrosity still up for viewing on the entertainment unit. It had an elephant on it, a pink one. What newly thirty-year-old woman wouldn’t be charmed to know her boyfriend looked across a sea of birthday cards, spied one with the biggest, ugliest animal in the world on the front, and said “Aha! Perfect!”?

He was a guy who took his socks off in the living room at the end of the day, then shoved them in his pocket.

And the socks…

Scott wore black ones that snaked up his leg to mid calf, where they were secured by the tightest band of elastic imaginable. It was amazing there was any blood left in his ankles. They were made out of some polyrayon-plastic blend. Kate could see them glisten when they caught the light. They shone like asphalt on a sunny day. At times, she’d been tempted to scream, “What did cotton ever do to you?” but he would have laughed about it. Scott laughed about everything.

He had no passion in him. Even as Kate had sat him down to tell him it was over, he’d just looked at her with a stupid smile on his face. It had stayed, even as she’d told him how miserable she was. How she’d rather be alone than be with him.

When she finished, she dissolved in a puddle of tears. No, not dissolved. Kate wasn’t a graceful crier. She didn’t have much practice at it, and she hated to cry. When she finished, she was red-eyed and snotty, jerking sporadically in her seat. He was still smiling, looking every bit like an indulgent parent.

He told her if she couldn’t be happy with him, she’d better do her best to be happy some other way, because that’s all he wanted for her. It was very wise and very kind, and while it should have made her feel like shit, all it did was mildly irritate her, because he’d said it in what she liked to call his “Obi Wan” voice.

Oh. He was a Star Wars fanatic too, even the new crappy ones.

So the whole time he was wishing her well, Kate found she’d become fixated on the wet spot his beer bottle was leaving on the coffee table. Her coffee table.

Scott couldn’t keep his beer in the fridge like normal people. He had to stockpile his beer in the freezer. Nice and frosty and dripping like hell, even the coasters couldn’t control it. When he remembered to use a coaster. Both times.

Kate couldn’t count the number of guests who’d had to take their beer with a spoon. It was so embarrassing. Or the number of times he’d forgotten they were in there, and they’d exploded all over the ManMeal frozen dinners he insisted on buying.

These were the things popping into her head as Scott offered up the best graduation speech ever. He hit all the key points; follow your path, spread your wings, if you love someone, set them free.

Even as she stood drowning in the nothingness, once stockpiled with electronic equipment and Storm Trooper figurines, Kate knew this decision had been the right one. It wasn’t a regret that made her feel ill. Her problem was, now that she’d made the big hard decision, how in the world was she going to make the next one?

Things had happened so quickly since they’d ended things. A talk on Friday night, another on Saturday morning, during which Scott had enquired whether the night he’d spent in the office/spare room had changed her mind. When she said it hadn’t, it took just three short car trips for him to remove all that was his from the apartment they were sharing. He’d graciously suggested that she should keep the apartment, since it was close to the subway line, and she had no car.

In the whirl, she had managed to avoid having to think beyond the break-up. But on this holiday Monday, with everything neatly and more or less equitably divided (she’d let him have the coffee table), she had nothing but time to think.

What was she supposed to do now that she was back on the market? Was she back on the market? How long was she supposed to stay in mourning? One month, three months. Oh God, was she going to be alone at Christmas?

Would it be bitchy to go out on the town? Was it all her fault? Which friends should she tell first? The whole thing had her thrown. She’d never broken up with someone before. How upset was she expected, entitled, to be here? At the moment, all she felt was a mild ache in her temple and a sense of relief.

The phone rang, and Megan’s number popped up on the call display. It sounded like salvation. Megan would know what to do. Megan would understand. She was Kate’s smart friend, the lawyer.

“You’d better be calling with a plan and a pocket full of money,” Kate said in lieu of hello, sounding almost giddy.

“What? Honey, how are you? Are you drunk?”

“No, I’m not drunk. But I’m single.”

“Holy shit. You did it? How are you?”

“I’m not very sorry that he left, and I’m not super-glad he’s gone, and I think I would like to be drunk. Oh, and how are you?”

“Not nearly as conflicted,” said Megan. “I’m on my way over, I guess, but the liquor store is closed today, so I’ll have to make a stop at my parents’ to raid the liquor cabinet, and I’ll have to stay for a coffee. I’ll be at least an hour. Are you okay till then?”

“Yeah. I think there’s still some frozen beer here to keep me company.”

“Lovely. Should we call your sister?”

Kate didn’t even have to think about it. “Hell, no. Not yet. I want people who are going to be nice to me this evening; people who actually liked me more than they liked Scottie. I’m guessing that boils down to about you.”

“Oh, Katie…hang in. I’ll be there soon.”

“I did the right thing here, huh, Meg?”

“I have no idea.”

“I didn’t love him.”

“Well then, at least you did him a favour.”

“I guess.”

“So what am I bringing over?”

“Wine. Red. A big bottle, if they’ve got it.”

“Jesus, Kate, I know that. What do think I am, an amateur?” Meg said. “But merlot, shiraz, what do you want.”

“Merlot.”

“’kay, I’ll be there soon.”

Kate listened as Megan hung up, keeping the phone to her ear until she heard the dial tone. Setting the receiver in its cradle, she realized she’d just made her first post-break-up decision, and it hadn’t been so hard. Smiling, she wandered into the kitchen, opening the drawer next to the sink to pull out a spoon before setting her sights on the freezer.