“We did, a long, long time ago for a few weeks.”
“So even you had doubts?”
“Doubts?” he repeated. “No. I never doubted that I wanted to be with her. Not since the moment she agreed to have dinner with me. Those few weeks were the worst of my life. I was miserable without her. I know it’s cliché, but I felt incomplete, and not until we got back together did I feel whole again.”
Goose bumps sprang over my body at his words.
Whole.
“You’re what I need, David. Make me whole again.”
He continued before the meaning could sink in. “We separated because it felt necessary at the time, but I would’ve died before I let her get away.”
I looked away and held a tissue to the corner of my eye.
“Now, now. That doesn’t mean it’s not normal to have doubts about your partner. It’s not common to be so sure. Dav and I were different. We had an exceptional love.”
He drew me back to him. I had declared to Lucy that I didn’t believe in soulmates, but contrary evidence held me in its arms. Did I have any doubt that Mack and Davena were meant to be? Or even Lucy and Andrew for that matter?
What if I’ve been wrong all along? What if there is such a thing as soulmates, and what if . . . ?
David recalled something unidentifiable in me that I’d been missing since my parents’ divorce. His embrace, his scent, his adoration felt natural, effortless. When I was away from him I was cold and empty and longing for something more.
Why then is it so wrong?
I’d been trying to rationalize away my fears about making a home with Bill. But the image he’d painted for me was different than what I’d seen in the Oak Park house. He had seen us, children, a warm and open home. And what had I seen?David.
It was true, I thought. I’d done a terrible thing. I’d led Bill to believe that he could trust in us.
Was there a wrong way to fall in love? I couldn’t remember when or how it had happened with Bill. Gretchen had called him safe. He couldn’t hurt me because I wouldn’t let him close enough for that. He couldn’t hurt me because he wouldn’t, and I had known that from the start.
Bill didn’t deserve to be loved with my hands on the wheel, controlling the direction we took. Even though he couldn’t understand the depth of it, I was hurting him—I had been even before I’d met David. And the way David opened and closed to me, as though he was fighting himself, I saw that I was hurting him as well.
Things could not continue as they were.
There was only one option. The idea of losing David constricted around my heart like a snake. When he returned, I would have to end things for good. I’d taken a vow, and even if David thought he wanted more from me, it wasn’t mine to give. And not only that, but he, as a lifelong bachelor, couldn’t understand what more meant.
I wanted to tell David everything. Every feeling I’d experienced since the moment I’d met him—what it had meant to make love with him and for us to become one. But saying those things to him was even worse than my physical betrayal, and so I had to bury it.
Mack never once asked what it was I had done because to him, it didn’t matter. He loved me regardless. “Come now,” he said into my hair. “Let me make you some tea, and we can catch up.”
The three of us spent the morning remembering Davena. The despair I’d been holding in over her death flowed from me finally. Mack told us about her foundation, and how he’d been coping by pouring himself into it. We talked about work, and he congratulated me on my promotion, assuring me that Davena would have been proud.
On the walk back to the car, Bill was quiet. My time with Mack had been cathartic in many ways. And though I knew what I had to do, I felt no clarity from my decision.
As the silence dragged uncomfortably between us, I chewed my cheek.
“You never cry like that with me,” he said finally, squinting ahead.
I swallowed, unsure of how to respond. But he didn’t look like he wanted me to. On the way home, I sought the words to comfort him but came up short. I didn’t know how exactly I would proceed, only that something had to give.
Back at home, as we finished dressing for the masquerade ball, Bill raised his eyebrows at me in the bedroom. “Wow.”
I looked down at the ivory floor-length ball gown that billowed out from a tight corset. My breasts were trussed up, and I had pinned half of my hair back and curled the rest into soft, golden-brown waves. “I hope that’s a good ‘wow.’”
“It is. I like it.” He straightened his tie in the mirror on the back of our door and smoothed back a few stray pieces of his hair. “That’s from the costume shop?” he asked. “How much was it?”
I brushed my hand over the fabric of the skirt with a pang of disappointment. I wanted him to like it enough to make the cost irrelevant. “It’s a special occasion, babe,” I said.
