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He doesn’t have a phone, and I don’t know his number.
He lived in Elmhurst, Queens. She knew his full name. The world was large, but people had connections to other people, and the Sherpa people she’d met at Everest all seemed to be related in some way to one another.
The Indian family in front of her pushed their wheeled luggage cart off to the right, and there was Winston.
Her ex-husband, in a dark suit and polished shoes, sitting on one of the leather-and-chrome airport chairs checking the time on the Patek Philippe timepiece she’d given him for their fifth anniversary.
Beside him was Kal, eating a slice of pizza and speaking to a young woman with an explosion of frizzy hair. She wore a shiny purple minidress and white moon boots, her bare legs as skinny as a supermodel’s.
They saw her, and everything happened at once.
Winston trapped her in a furious embrace, his familiar voice in her ear, words rushing over her too fast for her to make anything of them, Chasity, my assistant, found you on the manifest, I’ve no idea how, she’s a miracle worker, but we knew you’d be on the flight, met this young man as we’ve been waiting, he’s filled us in, so good to see you, I’ve left I don’t know how many voicemails and texts, no worries, though, darling, we’ll whisk you into a hot bath and get some food into you, you’re terribly thin.
Light poured in through the high windows in the arrivals hall, everywhere bright and white and crowded with people embracing, packed full of voices and noise that made it hard to draw in a breath. She felt dizzy in Winston’s arms, limp with exhaustion and obligation and love, too, for this man she’d once been married to, who’d fretted and worried and shown up to fetch her.
“Get off,” she said finally. He pulled away, his face drawn with deep lines of concern. “Where’s Beatrice?”
“She’s in Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin.
She didn’t know where Wisconsin was, or how to get there.
The loss seemed staggering. She sucked in a breath, then another.
Beatrice was in Wisconsin.
The frizzy-haired woman tugged at Winston’s arm, “Give her some room, hon.” Rosemary found herself being ushered into an empty seat and handed a styrofoam cup, the straw coated in a bright pink smear of lipstick.
“It’s Coke. I think you need some sugar,” the woman said.
Rosemary sipped it. She didn’t care for soda, but she drank it until the woman took the cup out of her hand and she heard, belatedly, the sucking vacuum noise the straw had been making in the ice.
She couldn’t seem to make her eyes focus on Winston’s careworn face, or on the woman’s sharp features. Kal hung back, six feet away, silent. All of them watched her, waiting.
“Thank you,” she told the woman.
“I’m Allie.”
Allie. Allie was the name of Winston’s girlfriend.
This woman was Winston’s girlfriend. This was the woman he’d fallen in love with, texted Rosemary about in what passed for raptures for Winston. This was the Allie whose mother was an artist, whose family had gone through an adventure the previous fall that led them to New York and threw Allie and Winston together. Allie who sold vintage clothing and owned real estate. Allie who’d changed Winston’s life.
Rosemary looked at Winston for confirmation. He nodded, his expression caught somewhere between sheepish and proud. “Yes.”
She put out her hand, willing her fingers not to tremble. “Pleased to meet you.”
Allie pumped her hand up and down. “I’m very pleased to meet you, too, and also pleased you’re alive, because let me tell you, we’ve been living with the very real possibility that you weren’t, and the world without Rosemary in it is not a world I’m interested in living in, noooooo, thank you.” She paused, threw away the soda cup in a nearby rubbish bin, and returned to say, “I think that was kind of tactless. Sorry. It’s not your fault you were almost dead.”
“It’s quite all right.” Rosemary glanced at Kal. He was watching her, his expression unreadable but his eyes friendly.
I’m sorry, she told him telepathically.
He smiled.
Winston was speaking. Rosemary watched his mouth move, everything about him familiar, although he had a bounce and brightness to him she hadn’t seen in ages.
Love suited him.
