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“I’m not telling the truth,” she says.
“Excuse me?”
“You were married to Nate Huntington, right? He was your husband at some point . . .”
She stares at Maggie with a look that could go right through her, but doesn’t answer. And for a blessed second, she can still say no. Until she doesn’t.
“Yes. I was married to Nate.”
Maggie nods. “I know his sister pretty well. Georgia? And I just remembered that I knew already. I remembered something she had said once, offhandedly. Anyway . . . I realized that I knew that. I realized I already had the answer to my own question. You were married to Nate. And now you’re not. And I apparently like the sound of my own voice . . .”
Ryan nods, looking back down at the food in front of her, going back to work. “How is Georgia?”
“Pregnant.”
She smiles. “Good for her. Congratulate her for me. Not that she’ll want to hear it, necessarily. But . . . and how’s Nate doing? Do you know?”
Maybe, maybe not. What is the right answer?
Maggie picks up some more tomatoes. What she is doing with them is unclear to anyone. “He’s doing well. He’s opening a restaurant in Brooklyn, actually. In this area called Red Hook near the pier.”
“I thought I heard something about that. That’s great for him. That’s a great thing . . . I didn’t exactly handle things well with him, but you live and learn I guess, right? That’s the problem. Sometimes you do it at someone’s expense.”
And this is her chance. Ryan will tell her now whatever it is she came here to find out—exactly what happened between them. Only why does she want to find that out? So she can know why Nate’s past fell apart? It feels more merciful than that, this mission, even in its chaos. It feels to Maggie like she wants Ryan to say something—the one thing—that will make Maggie understand not why Nate’s past fell apart, but why Nate has kept it hidden. What she can do so he doesn’t want to hide anything else.
Only looking at Ryan—who in the twenty minutes since Maggie met her has seemed like an array of contradictions: tough and kind, sweet and biting—she wonders if maybe Nate doesn’t understand himself what happened. Maybe he doesn’t understand what happened, and because of that, he couldn’t imagine a way to explain it to someone else.
But then the opportunity to ask Ryan anything, to test out any theory, is gone. The kitchen door swings open. And a woman in overalls walks in. A woman in overalls with brown hair, wide cheeks, and a friendly smile. One of the friendliest smiles Maggie has ever seen. And she is carrying produce. She is carrying a huge basket of fresh corn, needing to be shucked, beautiful broccoli, beets, radishes and cucumbers.
“Hey there, darling,” she says to Ryan. “Sorry it took me so freaking long to get here.”
“You should be,” Ryan says.
Then she leans in, this woman does, and kisses Ryan on the lips, long and full. The basket of produce still in her hands, Ryan’s hand reaching around to hold the back of her head.
Which is when Maggie drops it, the tomato in her hand, and it splatters on the floor. Splatters right in front of her.
“Gosh, I’m sorry,” she says, and leans down to pick it up, sopping up the juice with her apron.
“Who is this?” the woman says, looking down at her.
“This is Maggie. Maggie, this is Alisa Barrett. My partner.”
Here in the restaurant, here in life? But Maggie knows the answer. This is the person whom Ryan left Nate for. Maggie knows it. Does it make it harder or easier that it is a woman as opposed to a man? Probably both harder and easier. And, in the end, it comes down to the same thing, anyway: this is the person whom Ryan is with now, the person she has chosen. This is the person who, unlike Maggie, knew of the first marriage— knew about Ryan’s past—and therefore got to keep it as the past. Because she was given the chance to understand it. Because it wasn’t kept secret, and given the power that a secret gets when it finally emerges. Stinging us with its history, with its preserved weight.
“Maggie is covering for Lev tonight,” Ryan says.
“Not very well,” Maggie says, holding up the broken tomato as proof.
Alisa Barrett laughs. She has a nice laugh, rich and full and bold, and it makes Maggie like her. It also makes her want to get out of their kitchen immediately.
“You know,” Maggie clears her throat, “I’ll be right back. I’ll be back in, you know, no time at all.”
Ryan looks over at her. “Where are you going?”
Maggie points loosely in the direction of the front room, loosely in the direction of where she imagines is a bathroom, or a car, or somewhere else that she logically needs to be. Then she is walking quickly, so quickly—through the kitchen door, back through the restaurant—that she doesn’t see her until it is too late, that she runs headfirst into a girl with cropped, bleached-blond hair on her way in.
And falls.
