She heard it this time.
Nadine made a sound from her corner.
“Don’t start, Nadine.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
Vivian reached for the wine bottle. “What did you say to him?”
“Nothing.” Margo looked at her hands. “I put my mug in the sink and I got my coat and I left.”
“You left,” Eleanor said.
“Without answering?”
The room sat with that. Vivian poured. Letty was watching Margo with steady attention.
“Are you angry?” Letty asked.
“I was. At him, for saying what he said. At myself, for leaving.” Margo picked up her wine and took a sip. “Now I don’t know what I am.”
Letty looked at her wine glass and turned it slowly on the table.
“When I met Larry,” Letty said, “I’d been on my own for twenty years. Twenty years of making my own dinner, fixing my own sink, watching whatever I wanted on television without asking anyone.”
“Letty,” Vivian said gently, “we’re talking about Margo.”
“I know we are. Let me finish.” Letty took a sip. “Larry liked hot fudge sundaes and college basketball. His kids sent Sanders hot fudge from Michigan—the real stuff, in the glass jar—and the only time we ate it was during the tournament, sitting on his couch.”
Margo’s hand tightened on her glass. Sanders. The dark brown label with the gold lettering. The jar Bernie had pulled from behind the ice cube trays.
“I hate college basketball,” Letty said. “But his kids sent that hot fudge and it was the best hot fudge I’ve ever had, and if I had to watch Duke play to eat it, that was the price.” Letty smiled, and something in her face went soft. “But that’s not what it wasabout, of course. At the end of the day it was just someone to hold hands with. After twenty years. Just someone who wanted to hold my hand on the couch.”
The room was quiet.
Margo was looking at her own hands in her lap.
“Margo,” Eleanor said. “Why are you hurt?”
“Because he’s right,” she said. “He doesn’t need me to come. He’s fine. He’s been fine for weeks. And I’ve been going anyway and telling myself it was about the surgery and the food and the cards, and he just—he took that away. He took away the reason I was giving myself and there was nothing behind it.”
“There’s nothing behind it?” Letty asked.
The room was very quiet. The ocean came through the crack in the door.
“Margo,” Eleanor said, uncrossing her arms and leaning forward. “He wasn’t sending you away. He was asking you to come back for the right reason.”
Margo looked at Eleanor.
“Nobody said anything about?—”
“I did. Just now. You are allowed to let him in. You have been allowed for a very long time. And he has been waiting for you to know it—not for him, Margo. For you.”
Vivian set her glass down. “He asked you to dance at the wedding. With that knee.”
“That was?—”
“That was a man who could barely stand asking you to dance with him at Meg’s wedding. In front of your whole family.” Vivian’s voice was quieter than usual. “And then you both went home separately and nobody said a word about it.”
