had offered another kind of certainty. If ballet had been my first love, Michael was my second—he wasn’t so much the one as another one, although I’d never said that to him, and it wasn’t the case now, or even after a few months together. But even if he wasn’t exactly eloquent about it—and he wasn’t, back then—he’d never been afraid to tell me that I was the one for him, the one and the only.
September 18, 1983
Tess,
I can’t believe how much I miss you already. Feels like months have gone by since I saw you, instead of just a week and a half. I’ve been busy, too, getting adjusted to life here in Straus. It’s a good dorm—Harvard Square is just outside—and I have a single room, which suits me. It’s not huge, but then, I don’t have to share it.
At the same time, since classes haven’t really started in earnest yet, I don’t have a lot to do but read and think about you. So I’ve been thinking about you a lot—what you’re doing, what school is like your senior year, if your new job is all right, everything. I’m pretty happy to be here (I mean, it’s Harvard. Who wouldn’t be?) but in those empty moments that I’m waiting around, wishing for something to do, I’d really rather be there, with you.
I began writing a short story about this, but I’m not going to share it yet. If ever. It’s still pretty rough, and in some places it keeps turning into a Penthouse letter. Not that I ever read them, you know. Really. Okay, forget I said that. Really, I’m reading poetry. All the time.
When I’m not thinking about you, that is. Have I said how much I miss you? I think I have, but it bears repeating. It’s so infuriating that we met only to be forced apart three months later. I guess it could have been worse (not meeting at all), but when you find something so awesome, you want to keep it next to you. You want to be able to touch it and look at it. Now I’m making you sound like an object, which is not the point at all. (Maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer. Crap.) It’s just, I love you, Tess. You’re the biggest part of my life, even way up here in Cambridge.
Write soon. I love you. And also? I love you.
Michael
CHAPTER FOUR
LATER THE SAME DAY NELL AND I toured Willowdale Farm, I was trimming fresh green beans in the kitchen when Michael came home. He pushed open the screen door and leaned down to pet Walter, who greeted him with his usual drool-and-pant doggy grin.
“How’s my girl?” he said, setting his briefcase down and tossing his jacket on the back of a chair.
I could sense him hovering behind me. He usually kissed the back of my neck when he found me this way, whispering kisses that made me smile and wriggle away before the meat burned or the vegetables dissolved into mush.
But we hadn’t talked all day. He’d left two messages, and I’d called back at his office, only to be told he was in an art meeting. The impromptu errand with Nell had helped distract me this morning, but I’d returned to a silent house and work that refused to take my mind off the issue of Drew Keating. By three, I’d given up and settled on the sofa with a bag of chips, flipping the channels through bad made-for-TV movies and home-design shows until I was drowsy and more than a little numb.
“Just waiting to hear about your conversation with Drew.” I didn’t turn around, and instead thwacked the ends off a dozen more green beans a bit more violently than necessary.
Michael lifted the lid of the saucepan on the stovetop, where chicken breasts were simmering in wine and garlic. The kitchen smelled delicious. I was paying for the junk food, and probably my attitude, with a decent meal.
“We talked,” he said finally, and I heard the scrape of chair legs against the floor as he sat down. “Can I talk to you now? Face-to-face?”
I set down the knife and took a deep breath before turning, and what I saw in his eyes evaporated the bitterness and resentment I’d been working into a team all afternoon. He was exhausted, and worried, and at the moment I was pretty sure he was more worried about me than about his brand-new son.
“I’m sorry.” I dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his hands in mine. “I’m being awful. Tell me what happened.”
He pulled me onto his lap, his thighs lean and bony beneath my legs, and I laid my head on his shoulder, breathing in his scent and his warmth as he talked. Eyes closed, Michael’s arms around me, I let the comfort of his closeness soothe the rough edges of my mood. Walter joined us, pressing his firm little body against my leg and nosing Michael’s hand for petting.
“He sounds like a good kid. Kid. I guess he’s more than a kid now, but it’s hard to get my head around it. And he was nervous, too, which was even weirder, because he…Well, he sounds a little like me when I’m rambling.”
I swallowed hard, holding Michael tighter, not daring to look into his eyes.
“And he wants to meet me. Well, us. All of us.” It was Michael’s turn to swallow, choking back sudden emotion. “He was kind of emphatic about that part, and he kept apologizing for whatever waves this was causing.”
“But did he say why?” I asked, finally getting up to walk back to the stove. The lid on the chicken pan was rattling, and I needed to turn down the heat. “I mean, why he’s getting in touch now?”
“He said there was a reason.” Michael loosened his tie and then slid it free of his collar. “He’d rather tell me—us—in person, though.”
I was moving the chicken breasts around in the pan to keep them from sticking, but my mind had already jumped ahead to the moment I would look this young man in the eye. The idea was overwhelming, and a host of other thoughts accompanied it. What if Sophia joined him? How was Emma going to react? How could we be sure that Drew was in fact Michael’s son?
“Tess?”
I must have frozen—I looked down to find the wooden spoon motionless and the pan lid in my other hand, suspended over the counter, dripping condensation.
“I’m sorry.” I finished with the chicken and wiped my hands on a kitchen towel. “It just struck me that…well, how do we know Drew is your son, biologically?”
Michael’s frown deepened, a worried slash above eyes gone still. “We don’t, not officially. But I don’t doubt it, Tess. And I can’t ask him to prove it, at least not until I’ve met him.”
Outside, a squirrel bounded through the yard, and Walter, parked at the screen door, barked his disapproval. I hushed him and turned back to the green beans, still piled on the cutting board.
“You’re right. It’s just that it’s so unbelievable,” I said, running water in another pot. “But too believable at the same time. Do you know what I mean?”
He was silent for a moment too long, and when he spoke, his voice was tight. “You mean it’s too easy to believe that I slept with Sophia?”
I actually whirled around, for possibly the first time in my life, and water splashed over the rim of the pot, splattering my shirt. “No! No, that’s not what I meant at all. It’s just that this kind of thing does happen. You see it on TV and in the movies and on the news, but when it happens to you…I think you’d be the first to admit it’s a little surreal.”
He
