That was easier. “I bet they like you, too.” Everybody liked Anne.
She snorted. “His mother hates me. I don’t fit in with them. Like, at all. And she…You should have seen them together, sitting with his parents, like this perfect couple, Dr.and Dr.and Dr.Harris and friends. She’s even blond!” she said in a tone of despair.
“So are you.” Or she used to be.
She set down her mug. Tugged on a hank of her scarlet hair. “The point is, I’m different. I like being different, most of the time. He said that’s why he loved me. The old ‘you’re not like those other girls.’ And I fell for it. I felt so special. So lucky he loved me. And the whole time, he was bonding with his hospital soulmate.”
“Bonding,” Joe repeated. That was one word for it.
“She says she’s his work wife. They were going out together after the party tonight. He didn’t want me to stay at the hotel with him. He didn’t want me. I can put two and two together. I’m not stupid.”
“Not stupid. Trusting. Hopeful.”
“Blind.The thing is, I never suspected. She told me she doesn’t do long-distance relationships. I could have quit my job and moved to Atlanta to be with him, and I never would have known.”
“The way I see it, you’ve had a narrow escape.”
Anne sniffled.
“Once a cheater, always a cheater,” Joe said. Look at his dad. Or Hailey’s. “You’re better off without him.”
“I wish I could believe you. He was so…And I was so…It’s not like I was looking to settle down. I always thought Iwould have adventures, go to Thailand or Paris or Colorado. It’s just that Daanis got married, and my best friends were hooking up, and you…Chris filled the gap, you know? Someone to be with. I applied to Ravenscrest because we were going to move in together. And then Covid happened, and everything shut down. Everything changed. Everything I’d dreamed of and worked for…It was all on hold.”
Joe remembered. “You came home.”
Not that he’d seen her much. His wife had just left him. As long as he kept his head down, he could ignore how much that hurt. He’d been too busy focusing on the job, picking up the pieces, to look around.
“I felt so helpless,” Anne confessed. “Nothing was working out the way I’d planned. But Chris…He was a hero.” She wrapped her hands around her tea mug, holding on. “I couldn’t picture my future, but I could still see us. I could imagine our lives together.”
“In Chicago.”
“Yeah. I mean, maybe? I had this whole idea that I could support him. That we would share things, even when they got bad. I was frustrated, teaching on Zoom. But then I’d look at Chris, putting his life on the line every day, and I’d tell myself, I can do this. We can be partners, making the world better, one kid at a time. But I couldn’t really understand what he was going through. I wasn’t ‘in the trenches’ with him.” She hooked air quotes around the words. “And now it’s too late. I lost two years of my life. And I’ll never get them back.”
“You’re twenty-four,” Joe said. “Your life is hardly over.”
“Twenty-five.” She blew her nose. “Anyway, it’s not about age. Nothing’s guaranteed, is it? Look at Dad.”
And there it was.
When her dad died, she’d lost her anchor. No wonder she was having trouble finding her bearings. His heart gave another tug. Maybe that’s why she pushed so hard. Because nothing was certain. Not a boyfriend. Not a wife. Not a life. Not even tomorrow.
Rob’s death had changed Joe’s plans, too. But at least he’d had his work to keep him grounded. He’d had Mom and Hailey, even Maddie.
He took Anne’s empty mug and rinsed it in the sink. It was something to do. “You must miss him,” he said, his voice gruff.
Stupid understatement.
“I do. I mean, I’m sure I will. I don’t mind being alone. But I feel like my life has been derailed. We made all these plans…But he doesn’t want what I want at all.” She swallowed. “Maybe he never did.”
Still talking about the boyfriend, he realized. “Sure.”
“Do you still miss your wife?”
“Ex-wife,” he said automatically.
He missed…not Britt. But there was a hollow inside him in the space she’d left behind, a longing for the kind of home his mom had created and his father hadn’t stuck around for. He’d had this image of himself as being like…like Rob, he supposed. When Britt told him she was pregnant, he reckoned that was it for him. But it was only a false alarm. His mother had tried to warn him, but he’d been so damn determined to do the right thing, he hadn’t listened.
“I guess I miss…”The life I thought we would have.He cleared his throat. “I figured I’d have a house by now. Kids.”
