"I thought I did," he said. "For years, I thought what I felt for you was the deepest thing I was capable of. I kept the ache like a trophy. Proof that I could love, even if I'd walked away from it. But Jacqueline… I walked away. My mother said your family's name was poison, and that was all it took. If I'd loved you the way you deserved to be loved, I wouldn't have been able to do that."
Her jaw tightened. She looked away, toward the windows, toward the skyline.
"You're saying it was never real."
"I'm saying what was real wasn't enough. Not for you. You deserved someone who'd fight for you, and I didn't fight. I calculated. I weighed the cost, and I decided you were a price I was willing to pay for my family's approval." He paused. "That's not love. That's arithmetic."
"And Charlotte?" Jacqueline's voice was thin but even. Holding. "Was that arithmetic too?"
"At first. I managed the relationship the way I managed everything — without attention, without actually seeing her." He looked down at the proposal on his desk. The summer literacy program. Kids in the South Bronx learning to read. Charlotte's world. "She stood in front of me and gave me every honest thingshe had at that altar, and I stood there thinking about how well she presented. I didn’t see her. It took her walking away from me to see how truly amazing she is.”
Jacqueline was watching him. The hurt was there, he could see it in the way she held her shoulders. But underneath it was recognition. She was seeing what he was telling her, not just hearing it.
"You love her," Jacqueline said.
"I love her. With everything I have. I didn't know it when I had her. I said your name at our wedding because I'd spent years convincing myself you were the one who got away, and seeing you in that hallway opened up every drawer I'd shoved the feeling into. But it wasn't you I was mourning. It was the idea that I was capable of that kind of love. I kept your memory as evidence. That's — that's unforgivable. And I'm sorry. But Charlotte is the one for me. Even if she never takes me back, I’ll spend the rest of my life loving her.”
Jacqueline was quiet for a long time. He watched her process what he'd said. He owed her this silence. He owed her the space to feel whatever she was feeling without him trying to smooth it over.
"You know what's funny?" she said finally. "David said almost the same thing. When we separated. He said,You kept him like a wound, Jacqueline. And you never let me heal it." She shook her head. "I thought it was you I couldn't let go of. Maybe it was the same thing. The idea. The proof."
"Maybe."
"I'm sorry I came here expecting a different answer."
"Don't apologize."
"I spent weeks building up to this conversation. I rehearsed it in my car." A ghost of a smile. "I had a whole speech about timing and second chances. It was very compelling."
"I'm sure it was."
"It included a reference to that restaurant we used to go to in the Village. The one with the bad wine and the good bread."
"Sal's."
"Sal's." The smile faded. She picked up her bag and stood. "Your Charlotte. Does she know you love her?"
“I’m trying to show her. I don’t want to scare her away.”
"And?"
"She kissed me and then told me it doesn't fix anything."
Jacqueline laughed. Short, surprised, genuine. "I like her already."
"You'd love her. She's so fierce. And warm. And she doesn't let me get away with anything."
"Good. You need that." Jacqueline slung her bag over her shoulder. She stood in his office, backlit by the windows, and for one brief moment he saw all the versions of her at once. The woman he'd loved at twenty-five, the woman he'd left at twenty-seven, the woman who'd walked into a ballroom on her husband's arm and given him a polite nod. None of those women were his. They never had been.
Charlotte was his, as he was irrevocably hers. His heart belonged only to her.
"Be good to her," Jacqueline said, before turning to leave. "If she lets you back in, be good to her.”
CHAPTER 16
CHARLOTTE
Charlotte set down her coffee and went to the window of her classroom.
