Page 152 of Under Story

“You’re so strong,” said Eli. “You were right. I couldn’t know what you were feeling last time. I thought I did, but it was beyond me. I’m sorry, Laurel. I’m sorry,” he repeated. “Is it too late to tell you that?”

Laurel shook her head. “It isn’t. Thank you.”

Eli brought his forehead to hers.

“I love you,” Laurel said. “I need you to know that this isn’t about love. It’s like the tree, you see? We have to be able to stand on our own.”

“So—so what do we do?” Eli asked. “We break up? We see other people?”

The idea was crushing, but Laurel said, “I think so.” Otherwise, their freedom would be false.

“I need to know that it won’t be forever,” said Eli.

Their heads were still touching. Laurel nodded. “Let’s pick a time—a date when we’ll come back together.”

It was a fallacy, and they both knew it. They could decide to reunite, but they couldn’t know how it would feel when they did.

“When?” Eli asked.

“Before high school.” In the antiuniverse, high school was akin to day camp for retirees, with arts programming, fitness classes, and continuing education. “We could go home together.”

He broke away and turned. Outside, a couple walked their schnauzer, oblivious to the drama that was happening in Laurel and Eli’s house. The thought of living alone, not being able to see Eli, not being able to touch him—Laurel couldn’t think those thoughts.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“I know,” she said. “I can’t, either. But don’t you think we have to?”

Eli came close again and put his arms around her. She felt as though they were standing on a precipice, watching their most precious shared belonging tumble down the cliffside.

Into his chest, she said, “I’ll come to San Francisco next September, for the conference. You should, too. We can decide if we want to stay the course.”

“I’ll be thinking about you the whole time,” he said. “I won’t be able to stop.”

“Me, too.” There was one more thing. It would cleave her to say it. “But we—we shouldn’t talk while we’re apart. Or else I don’t think it would work.”

It was not fully real to Laurel until they sold the house. The buyers agreed to wait until summer: Laurel had signed a contract for her old apartment, the one with the rickety outdoor staircase, but she couldn’t move until August. Eli found a faculty rental in Palo Alto. The tension between them dissolved. They had opened a window. All the trapped air flowed out.

And they held to the promise of their reunion in San Francisco. They could decide then if they’d made a mistake.

Eli would drive across the country after New Year’s. On the day of his departure, they arrived separately at their favorite diner: Laurel in her silver Subaru, Eli his blue Acura. They ate breakfast together, though neither could muster an appetite.

On the street, he kissed her ardently. A middle-aged woman glanced at them with reproach.

Kids, she might have thought.

Then he was gone: the Acura turned toward the highway, taking the pearl of Laurel’s heart with it.

—

Some people couldn’t understand the separation.

“You were so good together,” said Maisie. Gloria looked stunned.

But the other Clare was not surprised—“This will be good for both of you, honey,” she said—and Tess nodded grimly (“After my nephew passed, my brother and his wife drifted apart. It’s so common, Laurel”).

Eli had taken Laurel seriously when she told him that they shouldn’t talk. She didn’t hear from him when he arrived, presumably, in Palo Alto, or in the days that followed. Hourly Laurel felt the stretching of the cord that bound them, a tether not unlike the one that had joined her to Silas. But Silas was inside her now; Eli was beyond her, two thousand miles away.

Christopher Two—her ex-boyfriend’s double—entered as if on cue. His visiting professorship had begun that spring. Laurel avoided him strenuously. Everything about him repelled her, from his habit of saying “It’s true that…” to his little tin of mustache wax. Christopher was undeterred. He plied her with chanterelles and stood too close in the elevator. It seemed that nothing was so tempting as Laurel’s total lack of interest.