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She slowly sobers and says, “You must see all sorts of horrible things though. Sick people and death. It has to be hard, especially after what happened with Bethany.” My throat tightens at the mention of my sister’s name. “I’m sorry,” she says. “You probably don’t want to talk about that.”
“No,” I say, “it’s okay.”
“I heard what happened,” she says. Of course she did. Everyone we went to high school with knew that the year after I graduated, Bethany killed herself. “I wanted to reach out. I can’t even remember if I sent a sympathy card.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Nat would have been a freshman in college at the time, like me. I can’t remember if or where she went to school, but if she went away, it would have been hard for her to come back for the funeral. And anyway, Nat and I were friends, but it wasn’t as though we were best friends. We were teammates. We had a friendship in the locker room and on the court, but we never got together to hang out on a Friday night. Once I started dating Ben in high school, I spent more time with him than my friends anyway. Ben was there at the funeral with me, standing by my side through the services.
After I returned to college, I abandoned all aspects of my past life except for Ben and tried to forget what happened, as if that was possible. My parents left my childhood home, citing too many painful memories, and there was never a reason to go back. Even Ben’s parents eventually gave up on Midwest winters and left.
“I heard you married Ben Long.”
“I did,” I say, and then I give a short, wry laugh and add, “You can see how that worked out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I should have known better. Almost no high school relationships last. It was naive to think ours would be different. Did you know Ben in high school?”
“Not really. We had a couple classes together, I think. I’m not sure we ever talked.”
I nod, realizing how long ago high school suddenly feels. So many years have passed that many names and faces have become hazy if not altogether gone. “What do you do for a living?” I ask, changing the subject, though I already know what she does because I saw it on Facebook. After I finished looking at Nat’s Facebook page the other day, I went to Instagram to see if I could find out more about her there, but no luck. She isn’t on Instagram as far as I could tell.
“I’m a teacher.”
“What grade?”
“Preschool. Four-year-olds.”
I smile. “Aww. Little ones,” I say.
“Yes. They’re the best.”
“Where do you teach?” I ask, and she tells me about the co-op preschool in Lincoln Park. “Do you have kids yourself?”
“No. My husband and I wanted to wait until we were married for a few years to have kids,” she says, her hands back on the table now, fingering the handle of her coffee mug, and then her voice drifts and I catch her drift: their marriage didn’t last that long.
The waiter comes. I order a chai tea, though after the day I’ve had and the news I just received from Dr. Berry’s office, I could use a glass of chardonnay. Most of the time, it’s not cancer, the woman on the phone had said, but what she didn’t say is that sometimes it is.
I consider it for a minute—ordering wine—but with Sienna waiting at home and work in the morning, the last thing I need is a foggy head or a wine headache. “What are you drinking?” I ask Nat, wanting to get her another coffee to make up for the one she spilled, but she demurs.
“If I have another coffee, I won’t sleep tonight.”
“Decaf?” I suggest.
She looks to the waiter and says, “I’ll just have some water, please,” and the waiter says of course and leaves.
Beside us, the fire in the fireplace crackles. Orange flames dance behind the screen, licking the air.
“The irony being,” she says, coming back to the conversation, and I look away from the fireplace and to her, “that we wanted time for us, for our marriage to blossom before bringing kids into the equation. I should be grateful, I suppose, that I had time to figure out who he really is before having children with him.”
Without meaning for them to, my eyes go back to the bruise and, though I can’t see it behind the panels of hair, I still know it’s there.
She catches me looking.
“It’s awful, right?” she says.
“What is?” I ask, playing dumb because I feel guilty that I’ve been caught staring again.
