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"You were in love with Peter, weren't you?"
Laura looked down at her feet, told herself it was necessary to watch her step. "Yes. Yes, I was. Once."
"There's my point. You were in love with him, started a life together, and then it all fell apart. Do you have any idea how many relationships I've watched unravel or just rip? I couldn't count them. Nothing lasts forever."
"My parents?"
"Are the shining example of an exception to the rule."
"Wait a minute. Wait a minute." Kate grabbed at her arm.
"Are you and Josh thinking of getting married?"
"No. Good God, no. Absolutely not. Neither of us is the 'till death do us part' type." Needing to be closer to the sea, Margo picked her way down some rocks.
"Do you want to be in love with him?"
At Kate's question she looked over, annoyed, impatient. "It's not a choice."
"Of course it is." Kate didn't believe that love, or any other emotion, was uncontrollable.
"Love isn't a spring suit," Laura put in, "that you try on for size."
Kate merely moved her shoulders and scrambled agilely down to the ledge. "If it doesn't fit, you put it aside, as far as I'm concerned. So, Margo, does it fit or not?"
"I don't know. But I'm wearing it."
"Maybe you'll grow into it." Or, Laura worried, grow out of it.
It was the tone that made Margo stop. Concern was a layer over doubt. "I really do love him," she said quietly. "I don't know exactly how to handle it yet, but I do. We don't seem to be able to talk it through sensibly. I know, I can see that part of him is hung up on the way I've lived. The men I've been with."
"Oh, right. Like he's been in a monastery copying scripture for the last ten years." Kate squared her shoulders, her feminist flag waving high. "It's none of his damn business if you've taken on the Fifth, Six, and Seventh fleets. A woman has just as much right as a man to be stupidly and irresponsibly promiscuous."
Margo opened her mouth, but for a moment she could only laugh at the cleverly insulting support. "Thank you so much, Sister Immaculata."
"Anytime, Sister Slut."
"My point is," Margo continued dryly, "that it's not just garden-variety jealousy with Josh. I could overlook that, or be annoyed by that. In this case, he has cause to doubt, and I'm not sure how long it will take to prove to both of us that that part of my life is over."
"I think you're being too easy on him," Kate muttered.
"A
nd too hard on myself?"
Kate smiled cheerfully. "I didn't say that."
"Then I will," Laura said with an elbow jab to Kate's ribs.
"It's more than the men." Staring out to sea, Margo tried to make sense of it all. "That's just a kind of symptom, I suppose. He says he's proud of me, what I've done to put my life back in order. I'd say he's more surprised than anything else. And because of that," she said slowly, "I realize that it's unlikely he really expects me to follow it all the way through, to stand and to stay. Why should he?" she murmured, remembering his sharp reaction to her recent photo shoot. "He's waiting for me to take off again, to run to something bigger, easier."
"I'd say you don't have enough faith in him." Frowning, Kate studied Margo's face. "Are you planning to run?"
"No." It was something, at last, that she could be absolutely certain of. "I've finished running. But with my track record—"
"The two of you better start concentrating on now," Laura interrupted. "Where you are now and what you feel for each other now. All the rest, well, that just brought you to where you're standing, and who you're standing with."
It sounded so simple, so clean. Margo struggled to believe it. "Okay. I think it's best if we take it one step at a time," Margo decided. "Like a recovery program, in reverse." Reaching down, she picked up a pebble, tossed it out to sea. "Meanwhile, we're in meanwhile. It might be fun."
