“Yes,” she replied, “but it was strange. I haven’t spoken to him in months, and suddenly he wants my advice about his love life.”
Peter shook his head as if someone had tossed water in his face. “That seems odd.”
“I know,” she replied. “It sounds completely inappropriate when I say it out loud. The whole conversation was kind of upsetting, actually.” Gwen pointed at her glass of water. “I think I might need something stronger than that.”
He slid the wine list toward her, but Gwen didn’t need to read it. She’d eaten there so many times that she had the entire menu stored in her head.
“Would you like to share a bottle of white?” she asked. “Have you tried the Tidal Bay yet? It’s local, made here at the winery. They call it ‘Nova Scotia in a glass.’”
“The server mentioned it,” Peter replied. “She told me it pairs well with the scallops.”
“It does. You’ll love it.” Gwen placed the order, sat back, and took a deep breath.
“We were talking about your husband,” Peter said encouragingly.
“Yes. And I’m not sure what to think right now. He said the woman he’s been dating wants to get engaged, and that’s what hewanted advice about. They’ve only been together for six months, and she’s young. Like ... twenty-two.”
Peter’s lips formed an O, and he slowly whistled. “And he’s not sure? I wonder why.”
Gwen propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. She stared at the small vase of flowers and imagined Eric cooking dinner for Keri. Talking about having children one day. Had they ever discussed that? She couldn’t bear to think about it.
“How do you feel about him getting engaged to someone else?” Peter asked.
Gwen took her elbows off the table and leaned back. “I’m not sure. He brought up the reason why we separated, and he apologized for how it all went down. That was a shocker because up until now, he’s always blamed me for pulling away, when really, I think he was having just as much trouble dealing with the grief as I was. He just handled it—or mishandled it—in a different way.”
“Grief over your daughter ...,” Peter said, making sure he understood.
“Yes. Eric thought I was going to be depressed forever. He said I was like a dark cloud hanging over his life, when he wanted to be happy and start living again.” Gwen sipped her water. “Hence the twenty-two-year-old sociology major who wants to go dancing all night and speed cycling the next day and fly to Jamaica to go kitesurfing.”
Peter’s eyebrows lifted. “You don’t like water sports?”
Gwen chuckled. “I love the water. I just didn’t want to organize vacations in general when I had just buried my firstborn child.”
“Understandable.” Peter leaned forward and spoke gently. “I’m sorry you went through all that.”
Something tugged in Gwen’s chest, but then her shoulders relaxed, and she let out a breath. “Thank you. I appreciate that. But let’s not talk about this anymore. I don’t want to think about Eric right now.”
The waitress arrived with the wine, uncorked the bottle, and poured. She then took their dinner orders. After she left, Gwen glanced around at other people in the restaurant enjoying their meals. Then Peter, across the table from her.
“You know a lot about me,” she said, “but I know nothing about you, except that you’re a photographer.”
“Was a photographer,” he said. “Now I’m a writer.”
He offered no more than that, so she asked, “Married? Kids? I see you don’t wear a ring.”
He turned his hand over and looked at it. “No, but I recently came out of a five-year relationship.”
She was surprised to hear this—that he’d been in a committed relationship. The moment he’d walked through her door, Gwen had taken him for a man who enjoyed his freedom. From what she understood, he worked all hours of the day or night, staking out homes of celebrities, waiting outside their gates. Gwen imagined him living in a small apartment with a mattress on the floor. Other times, she imagined that he made buckets of money as a paparazzo and lived in a glitzy penthouse apartment, which he used as a babe magnet. But a five-year relationship? That was not something she’d envisioned.
“Can I ask what happened?”
“We were living together,” he explained, which squashed the playboy persona. “And everything was fine for the first few years. From the beginning, she said she had no interest in getting married. She thought a marriage certificate was an unnecessary slip of paper that represented a dying institution that made money for lawyers, since so many marriages end in divorce. But then something changed, and she started suggesting that I was a commitment-phobe and she was wasting her best years on me. Anytime I reminded her that she had told me from the beginning that she didn’t believe in marriage ... well, that just proved her point—that I didn’t want to commit and that’s why I was with her in the first place. By that time, I was so frustrated by the constant arguments thatI wouldn’t have married her if she’d dragged me down the aisle by the scruff of my neck.” He frowned a little. “She looked at me with such contempt. So we broke up, and I moved out.”
Gwen found herself riveted. “That must have been rough.”
“Yes, but that’s just my side of the story. I’m sure she has a totally different take on it, and when she tells the tale, I’m the villain.”
Gwen tipped her head back and sighed. “That’s always how it goes, isn’t it. I’m sure I’m the villain in Eric’s story too. I mean, when you think about it, when a relationship ends, there’s always disappointment for both people, and we tend to focus on our own heartache or anger. It’s easier to believe that none of it is your fault and that you’re the victim, instead of taking responsibility for the mistakes you made too.”
