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“You should ask Tom to give you a few lessons or even shadow him a couple of nights. He’s such a fantastic cook.”
“I’d love that,” Brittany says. “You don’t think it would be an imposition?”
“Not at all.”
“It sounds great. You guys have already been so generous just letting me stay here. And I really owe you a special thanks, Emma. Because I know it had to be your decision, too, and not only Tom’s.”
Wow, Emma thinks,how mature of her to express this so thoughtfully.“Thankyou, Brittany. That means a lot.”
Over dinner, she quizzes Brittany about her current work project and then raises a topic she’d been hoping to find a time to address. “Overall, what’s it been like for you to be back in the area? Has it been nice—or too intense at times? Or both?”
“I guess I’d have to say both,” Brittany says after a few beats. “I’ve loved being reminded of the time my mom and I spent here, but it’s been really sad sometimes for that reason, too.”
“I can only imagine.” Emma feels a vicarious pang of sorrow. “Are any of your old friends around?”
“Not really. The two girls I hung out most with in junior high aren’t in the area anymore. But last night before dinner, I asked Tom to drive me by the old house in Weston. I cried when I saw it but I’m glad I went. My mom made our life there really special.”
Her eyes brim with tears and so do Emma’s. She’s been so preoccupied by little annoyances related to Brittany’s presence and attitude that she hasn’t allowed room for enough empathy until now.
“Tom’s shared with me what a wonderful woman your mom was. And such an amazing doctor.”
“He was her patient, you know.”
“Yes, he told me. He said he never thought he could be so grateful for a scratched cornea.”
Brittany takes her last bite of omelet and smiles, a catlike expression Emma hasn’t seen before now.
“What?”
“That’s not really how they met.”
“No?” Emma doesn’t mean for her brow to wrinkle in confusion, but it does it anyway.
“My mom told me that she and Tom were actually introduced at some kind of glitzy charity auction seven or eight months before he came into her office.”
“Oh, I hadn’t realized that.”
“She’d just split up with my dad and wasn’t interested in dating yet, so when Tom asked if she’d like to have dinner with him one night, she said no. And then she barely remembered Tom when he showed up as a patient.”
“Well, how lucky for him that he needed an eye doctor.”
Another mysterious smile.
Emma doesn’t question her again. Instead, she gives Brittany the chance to say more, which is clearly her intention.
“My mom said he didn’t really have a scratched cornea,” she says a moment later. “He said his eye hurt and that he thought he’d rubbed too hard at it, but she couldn’t detect a scratch.”
“Well, then how lucky hethoughthe’d scratched it—even if he was wrong.”
“Yeah. But my mom always felt sure that his eye didn’t evenhurtand that he’d made up an excuse to see her. I remember her saying then that people always thought of Tom as really spontaneous, but one of his of superpowers is patience when he really wants something. She called him the master of the long game.”
