His gaze scans slowly across my face, and it’s clear he’s thinking about this too. He takes in a sharp breath.
But then he runs a hand down his face, clears his throat.
“So the ex,” he says.
“The who?”
He laughs. “Had he always been so distant with you? Or was that the first time you really noticed it?”
I try to bring myself back to my wedding day, to haul that moment from the depths of my memory.
“You know, I think it’s the latter. James is... complicated. When he first meets people, he’s warm and charismatic. He wants them to feel comfortable around him. That’s how he made me feel, too, at the start. But that kind of attention drops off once he earns a person’s trust. After the wedding, when we settled into our regular life, he just kept drifting away from me.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“It was. Initially I thought it was OK. Healthy, even. We each had our own things going on—he had his work, his routines, his goals, and I had mine. I’d always wanted to find freedom inside of a relationship, and I thought I’d found it in all that space between us.”
“There’s a difference between freedom and—well. Go on.”
I nod. “A couple years into our marriage, I tried to confront him about the distance between us, suggested we could at least schedule regular time together. He made us a dinner reservation for the following week, then neveragain. It was always on me to beg for his time. Eventually it just became too depressing to keep asking. And for a while, I convinced myself that I was happy to trade his attention for the security our marriage provided. I convinced myself that that was enough.” The anger roiling inside me breaks into a rich and profound sadness. “We lived like that for almost ten years.”
Reid is quiet for a moment, like he’s absorbing the story. He clenches his jaw, then unclenches it. “You deserve so much more than that.”
I want people to be nice to you.I remember how Reid saying that simple phrase to me in Bryant Park five million years ago had made me feel worth protecting. It was different from my parents’ protectiveness, which always had an anxious edge to it, like I was a fragile artifact encased in bubble wrap. Reid had made me feel precious, but not breakable.
Now Reid shakes his head and lets out a humorless laugh. “Sounds like he’s a great doctor, but also an asshole.”
“That about says it.”
“So how did Emme fit into all this?” He looks at me apologetically.
“I know it seems misguided to bring a baby into this dynamic—believe me, I do. But I was hopeful that she would bring out all the best parts of him. In retrospect, it was incredibly naive.”
He runs his hand back and forth across his jaw. “Is it naive? Or did you just hope to see the best in someone youloved?” There’s a beat of silence, and I get the sense that he’s gone somewhere I can’t quite follow. Finally, he shakes his head. “You can’t blame yourself for believing that.”
I sigh. “I suppose so. Honestly, I think I wanted to have a child more than I wanted to fix my marriage. James just kept kicking the can down the road. First he had to finish his residency. Then his fellowship. Then pass the boards. Then adjust to his nighttime shifts. Then adjust back to his daytime shifts. And then I was thirty-four, and I knew that if I didn’t insist on having a baby then, James would let another ten years go by. And when we had her... my marriage didn’t get better. It didn’t slow down James’s pace. But my life started making sense again.”
Reid smiles. “That’s how I felt when we had Gracie. She was like this extra puzzle piece that I didn’t even realize was missing.”
“I know I hardly know her, but Gracie seems like an amazing girl, Reid. A little scary. But amazing.”
Reid nods in agreement. “She gets the ‘a little scary’ thing from her mom. She was a force, and Gracie is too. But they both have these enormous hearts.” Reid tilts his head. “It’s taken a little extra work to keep her grounded, but between me, Cat, and my mom—”
“You’ve done great,” I say.
Reid’s use of present tense to describe his late wife isn’t lost on me. I want to ask more about her, but I still feel uncomfortable prying. Like I’m stuck in this purgatory of both barely knowing Reid and having known him forever.
Then Reid looks at me, opens his mouth to saysomething, and quickly closes it again. “I want to ask you something,” he says, “but I don’t want you to take it the wrong way.”
“Just say it.”
“I’ll be less embarrassed if we’re walking.” He gets up from the bench and holds his hand out for me. I take it and stand. We drop palms, and I feel the loss in the marrow of my bones as we start winding around the park.
Finally, he says, “Why aren’t you dating anyone?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Why would you be embarrassed to ask me that?”
He appraises me for a moment. “Maybe not embarrassed. But I might be afraid to hear the answer.”
