I feel a righteous anger begin to burn in me. It ignites, straight out of my core.
“Do you want some kind of trophy or something? Congratulations, you figured out how to be friends with someone with a heart condition! I’ll throw you a parade. How brave of you to confess that.” I can also feel the venom rising in me. It feels vicious, poisonous. I want to eject it all.
Hugo looks agitated. “Fuck, Daph, will you just listen to me?”
“What?” I say. I can hear myself snarl. “Why are you doing this? What do you want? We’re taking awalk, Hugo.”
And then he stops. It’s as if the whole world hovers. I can feel the stillness around us—the crest of a wave right before it curls and tumbles.
“You want to know what I want?” he says. He moves closer to me—so close I can feel his body—all of the tiny atoms vibrating to make Hugo, Hugo. “I want to take you home right now. I want to not let you sleep a single fucking wink tonight. I want to holdyou and touch you and make up for five years of not doing either. And then I want to wake up with you and take you to breakfast, and I want to talk about where we should live and how we’re going to fit all your shit there—Yeah, Daph, I want that. I want you. For as long as it lasts. Fifty years or five or fifteen fucking minutes.”
My feet are rooted to the ground. My hands have gone entirely numb. From somewhere in the distance, I hear the call of a bird overhead.
“But you know what I want more than anything?” Hugo continues. “More than I even want you?”
The world seems to turn on its axis—I feel like we’re all falling, hurtling toward an unexplored edge. I do not know how I could possibly answer. I do not know how I’ll ever be able to speak again.
“I want the truth. I want the truth for you. For you, and for Jake, and for me, honestly. However inconvenient that shit is.”
“You want the truth?” I say. I can feel the fire in me—building in my abdomen, making its way up my throat and out my mouth, now. Everything he feels so free to say. Everything I have to hold. “The truth isn’t just inconvenient, Hugo. Do you know what the truth is? It’s a death sentence when you’re twenty years old. It’s never being able to run a mile. It’s never being able to carry a baby. It’s being with the man I’m supposed to marry but knowing I’m hurting him by even agreeing to it.That’syour precious truth, Hugo. You don’t get to stand here and say that the truth is the same for me as it is for you. To confess all of this and—what? Expect it to matter? My life has limitations you couldn’t possibly know about. You don’t get it. You never will.”
“Bullshit,” Hugo says. And then he reaches forward and pulls me in, puts his arms on my shoulders and holds them there. I can feel the warmth of his palms, the steadfast grip of his fingers. I can feel myself rage up against him. “That’s not the truth; that’s your story about it. And they aren’t the same thing.”
My muscles contract. Everything shrinking inward, tighter, closer.
I look at him, defiant. “How the hell would you know?”
“Because,” Hugo says. His eyes look into mine—solid black pools. They look like rocks in the water—landing, skipping the surface. “I wrote Jake’s note.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Three things happen in rapid succession. The first is that my cell phone rings. The second is that Hugo releases his hold on my shoulders, freeing me to wobble, lose my balance, grab for my phone, and then drop Murphy’s leash. The third is that Murphy, now untethered, takes off after the rabbit. I’ve never seen him run this fast before. He’s running like he’s just discovered he has legs and wants to test exactly how fast and far they can take him.
“Murphy!”
Before I can even get the word out, Hugo takes off after him. He’s a runner, still does six miles every Saturday, but I see him struggle to keep up. Who knew that tiny guy had it in him to be a dog.
I watch them zoom around the reservoir, now blurs in the distance, and I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Because I can’t do anything. I am powerless. Murphy could escape, and I can’t do anything to stop him.
I walk quickly in their direction, frustrated by my speed—this forced pace. I want to leap. I want to chase after them, screaming at them both.How could you?
I wrote Jake’s note.
How could that possibly be true? The unthinkable reality of Hugo’s interference. What that would make true about my life, my future, this relationship. I focus on Murphy.
When I got back from San Francisco—after my failed relationship with Josh and my failed job—I was devastated. I felt rejected—by Josh, by the professional collapse, by the city itself. For six brief months I had felt connected, engaged—even better than that,normal.After, it was like the universe had reminded me—not so fast, Daphne. You’re not like the others.
I started apartment hunting in earnest, determined to live on my own even if it meant living in a hovel. I was lucky when I found Gardner Street. The landlord just wanted the right tenant and decided that was me. The first thing I ever brought back to the apartment was Murphy.
“Murphy!”
I’d gone to Petfinder and found a dog at Bark n’ Bitches I thought would be mine. I was certain I wanted a Muppet-y dog—curly and happy and bouncy. But when I got there, the dog I was supposed to see was a total dud. They’d named her Daisy, and you could just tell she had no personality. She sat up against the side of her cage and gave me a blank stare—we weren’t a match. I started to go, and the woman who ran the place asked if I wanted to see Murphy.
“Murphy!!”
I’d had an imaginary friend when I was younger, exclusivelyduring my fifth year of life. It was a brief and torrid chapter, but the gentleman who joined my parents and me at dinners and the beach and—much to their chagrin—required his own ticket at the movie theater, was named Murphy. It felt like fate.
Murphy the dog was such a good boy. He didn’t bark; he didn’t even sniff. They let me foster him for the week, but by the end of the first night I knew he was mine.
