“Of course!” Palmer says. “Alex will love Manhattan. As will you.”
The bees are returning to their strumming in my head. I need to think. I need to go home.
I look up at Palmer and he cups my face with one hand. “May I speak to your father, Maggie? Please say I may.”
For a moment I wonder if it is possible to just run away instead. I imagine grabbing Palmer’s hand and running with him headlong into the great unknown, like Jamie did. I imagine flying away from everything and everyone and beginning life anew, as though I’d never grieved a dead brother and dead mother, never taken a child from his home and kept him, never loved a man who had no need for me, never sung songs to cadavers as I combed their hair.
“Please?” Palmer says.
I hover a second between running away and running home, but then all that I am and have been pulls me back.
“Palmer?” I whisper, and I cover his hand on my cheek.
“Yes, my darling?”
“I need to think about what this will do to my family. Leaving and taking Alex. I need to think. It is no easy thing.”
“But... do you love me as I love you, Maggie? Can you not answer me that?”
His gaze is hard on mine. There is love there in his eyes, but also determination.
I want to answer that he is not just asking if I love him; he is asking if I love him more than I love my home, my family, and my memories of the only life I’ve known. He is asking if I will leave it all for him. And I wonder if he would do the same for me.
“What if I asked you to stay?” The words come out of my mouth soft as gauze.
“What was that?”
“If I asked you to stay here with me, in Philadelphia, would you?”
He blinks, but his gaze never leaves mine. “You want me to decline the job?”
“No, I don’t. I just want to know if you would if I asked you to.”
“To marry you and live here?”
My heart is pounding at the thought. “Yes.”
He puts his hands around my waist and draws me to him even though we are on the street and passersby are surely staring. “If you asked me, I would stay.”
And then his mouth meets mine in a kiss. He has kissed me a few times before, but this is the first that hints of a greater passion, a deeper longing. An ache low in my gut nearly takes my breath away.
I could lose myself in this feeling and never want to be found, but I pull back before it sweeps me away.
Palmer is saying he loves me enough to turn down the job and stay here in Philadelphia. Maybe he does. Surely the woman deserving of that kind of love should cherish him enough to go with him to New York. I cannot ask him to give up the new job when I’m not sure yet that I do love him like that, only that I want to.
“I don’t want you to decline the job.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “Then marry me. Come with me.”
“Will you let me think on it? Please?”
This time he kisses my temple before pulling back. “Yes. But I must leave before the end of the month. And I wish to speak to your father before I go. I can find a place for us and then come back for you and Alex.”
I can only nod as again my voice has escaped me.
He takes my arm, smiling down on me. “Come. I’ll take you home.”
As we walk, Palmer tells me about the new position in Manhattan and about the legendary locale itself. It is small talk I appreciate because it leaves me free to quietly disengage to contemplate the choice I must make.
