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Only, when we got there, we had a little problem. In front of what had been Cooper’s house, there was a large For Sale sign with a red Sold sticker running diagonally across it. There was a turned-over empty garbage pail in the driveway. And stacked-up, unopened newspapers. Cooper’s car was absent.
“Tell me this isn’t where your friend Cooper lives,” Josh said. His hands tightened around the wheel, his knuckles losing their color. I knew he was afraid to turn toward me. I knew he was afraid of what else he might say.
“Obviously,” I said. “Not anymore.”
Josh pulled quickly out of the driveway, heading west. He was too angry to even ask me which way he was supposed to be going now. He was too angry at me to ask anything.
I turned and looked out the window and didn’t say anything again, not until we were passing by the tackle shop—the small-hominess of it—which, for inexplicable reasons, lifted my spirits. It occurred to me that I could take Josh inside and show him around. Everyone who came in there would know who I was. And if we stayed long enough, one of the wives would probably come to visit me. But there was no way Josh was pulling over now—not for anything—least of all for my attempt to convince him this wasn’t a bad way for me to live. Both of us, I think, were too worried about the way he was living.
I turned and looked at him, carefully, afraid before the words were out about what I was going to ask him.
“What did you say to her, Josh? What did you say to Grace when you and Elizabeth got back from your walk? In the kitchen. You looked so serious. What did you say to her then?”
He kept his eyes on the road. “I told her I’d be back soon,” he said. “I told her I’d be seeing her soon.”
“Will you?” I said.
He didn’t say anything at first.
“Josh?”
“I really hope so,” he said.
He looked so upset that I turned away from him and looked down at the floor. Which was when I saw it. The shiny pink invitation. For June’s daughter’s birthday party. Holly’s birthday party. Was it really just yesterday that I’d passed June in the tackle-shop parking lot, staring into her crowded wagon? That I had made the silent wish that I’d end up seeing her again today?
Now the invite was staring up at me, like a new promise, the beginning of a different idea.
“You know what, Josh?” I said. “Take a left up there at the light. Take a left and a right and pull in to the first yellow house. And then get your things together.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I may have a way,” I said, “to get us home.”
It was 7:30 on the dot when we pulled onto Drake Road in June’s red Volvo station wagon, thirty seconds after that when we pulled into our parents’ driveway. We couldn’t actually get deep enough into the driveway—the wagon part of the wagon was still sticking into the street—because there were already so many automobiles crowded in there: two Volkswagen buggies with “Lydia’s Florists” written on the side, an oversized silver van, a two-story catering truck. The valet guy was already in place, wearing a white tuxedo jacket. A couple in a gray Cadillac was making their way slowly toward him.
“Are you kidding me with this?” Josh said, attempting to back us out.
He was struggling, as he had been the whole way home, to see over all the junk in the backseat, the very large Papa Smurf doll covering up most of the back window. I had tried to move it when we hit the Connecticut border, but I only made it worse.
“What are we going to do now?” he asked.
I started to answer him, but stopped myself when I realized it was more a rhetorical question. Josh was already making his way down the block and around the corner to the Wademans, whose backyard ran straight into ours. In our younger days, Josh had showed me this shortcut into and out of our property, for emergency use only: early-morning sneak-ins, late-night sneak-outs. You just shimmied past their old oak tree—tire swing intact, even though the children had been gone for over a decade—past Mrs. Mason’s tomato garden, through the first row of bushes, and then the second row, which separated their home from ours.
This was the first time we’d ever done it together. When we made it through the last set, we were standing at the top of our backyard, looking down over the hill at the rest of it.
Tonight, it was full of people milling around, trays already clattering, and right at the center, a rectangular white tent, which, from where I stood, appeared all airy and light—almost like a cloud against the night sky.
Everything was all set up inside the tent: white tea rose centerpieces, thin white tablecloths, floating candles glowing everywhere. The waitstaff was standing by all the tables pouring water into glasses, rearranging everything that was already perfectly arranged.
I bent lower so I could see this.
Josh bent lower too. “I see the Wademans in there already,” I said. “Do you see them? At the corner table, talking to Dad?”
There they were, huddled over in the corner, Mrs. Wademan, looking a little like a floating candle herself in her large hooped dress. Dad was standing right beside her, bending forward toward where Mr. Wademan was seated.
“What do you think they’re talking about?” I said.
“What do I think they’re talking about? Who cares what they’re talking about? Who gets to a rehearsal dinner early? Really. I want to know.”
