All eyes turn to me. “In what way?” Greer asks.
“Sydney sacrifices himself because he believes love is about giving, not taking. Ethan’s sacrifice isn’t death, it’s restraint. He loves her enough to let her choose someone else, even though it kills him on the inside, if not the outside. They’re both acts of surrender.”
Lucy nods enthusiastically. “Yes. That’s beautifully put. They both surrendered.”
Quinn nods too. “I’ll give you that observation. But one of those endings is a wedding with a happily ever after. The other ends with a decapitation beneath a guillotine.”
Ember swirls her glass of alcohol-free wine. “Meh. That’s details.”
The room fills with laughter again.
Greer reaches for her tea. “Maybe some of us are just showing our age. The classics ask you to find beauty in sacrifice. The modern ones let you believe love can survive anything.”
“Or maybe because of who we’re in relationships with, we can see that both things can be true at once,” Lucy says. “There’s a duality to the men we love.”
Silence settles for a moment as we all consider what Lucy just said. It’s not lost on me that we’re having this conversation now, safely ensconced and protected, while River is out doing something dangerous.
“Well, Dickens can keep his guillotine. I’ll take my swoony carpenter, Ethan, and his happy endings, any day,” Quinn says. “And we can all agree that while love can appear as a theme in many different genres of books, it has to end happily to be considered a romance.”
“I feel like we should reintroduce the guillotine,” I say. “We need a revolution right now.”
Greer raises her cup of tea to that.
Raven rubs a finger over her lip. “You know, I think Sydney’s story hits harder because he never really gets the acknowledgement. He does it alone. Most people wouldn’t understand that kind of love. Makes me think of how Wraith suffered.”
Ember leans over to me and says quietly, “His first wife and their baby daughter were murdered.”
The words are like a lead weight in my stomach. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.” I’m not sure who I’m saying that to.
Greer’s eyes softened. “There was something quite Butcher-like in the story. Only, in some ways, hebecamethe other man, for me.”
“He so did,” Quinn says.
I want to ask how and why, but now isn’t the time. But there’s obviously a depth I don’t understand to all their stories. And yet, there’s also something that I can’t quite put into words. Something noble, maybe. Poignant. Deeply entrenched in themes of love and change and sacrifice.
I think about the words I said to Calista earlier, and what she said in return. That I should fall hard.
I raise my glass of wine. “To happy endings.”
Everyone raises whatever they’re drinking in a toast.
“So, what are we reading next month?” Quinn asks.
“I’m suggestingBleak House,” Greer says.
Quinn laughs. “You can keep that misery. I suggest we read the first book in Vi Graydon’s new billionaire series.”
“Is there one in the middle?” I ask. “Bleak Billionaires?”
“Wuthering Heights,” Raven says. “It’s bleak, and Heathcliff ends up wealthy in the end.”
Everyone chuckles at that.
And I realize, for all I felt a little lost, earlier, I’m glad I spent time with these women.
32
CATFISH
