The Nominee

Eleven

Tuesday, April 24

WELL, EVERY DAY BRINGS something different. Yesterday, for instance, brought murder and mayhem. Today might bring some answers, but at the very minimum it should bring a new apartment, because murder or no murder, mayhem, or inner serenity, I was off this boat in just a few day’s time. Perhaps this is what Fitzgerald — Robert, not F. Scott — meant when he said life is for the living — even the most mundane parts of it.

What F. Scott said was, “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight,” a gorgeously constructed line that was starting to have special meaning for me.

I woke early, planted myself on a rickety old picnic bench in a grassy park along the edge of the park, and studied the myriad stories in the morning papers about Paul Ellis and his family, all while sipping a fresh-squeezed orange juice under a shower of springtime sun. TheRecord was jarringly complete, including my own front-page story on Paul Ellis’s eleventh hour bid to block an ongoing attempt by Campbell Newspapers to buy his family newspaper. It was the biggest news break on the biggest story in town, as well as the first time in my career I’d ever felt anything but elated at giving readers something they couldn’t get anywhere else. TheTraveler, meanwhile, was uncommonly kind, aside from their screaming front-page headline, “Cursed!” They quoted unidentified police officials pointing to the likelihood of a robbery attempt gone awry. In some ways, I hoped they were right.

It was what the paper had inside that was more bothersome. Anchoring its daily gossip column, “Scene and Heard,” was a fat item about theRecord ’s own Robert Fitzgerald, a regular target of snide attacks from sundry second-tier reporters in this town.

The section was headlined, “Untruths and No Consequences.” This, I knew, would not be good. It went on to detail how Fitzgerald had written a story the previous month about a pair of twins who had been placed in a foster home as four-year-olds some thirty years ago, were separately adopted, and met by coincidence when they moved to the same neighborhood of an unnamed Boston suburb. They each had children of their own and were talking about their backgrounds at a local park when they came across the stunning truth that they were sisters.

In the original story, Fitzgerald used what he said were the women’s real first names, but withheld their last name on their request, as well as the town to which they moved.

But in this gossip item, theTraveler said it went through all state adoption records by hand from the year in which the girls would have been pulled from the foster home and found no one with their first names. It also quoted retired state officials from that era as saying it would be highly unlikely, if not downright improbable, that sisters would be split up like that. “Either the world is lying, or once again, Robert Fitzgerald ofThe Boston Record is,” the item concluded.

It felt like the roller coaster of life had just jumped off its tracks. I crumpled the pages up and slam-dunked them into a nearby trash can, where, for my money, the thing belonged. This wasn’t exactly what my paper needed right about now, which was probably exactly why theTraveler was doing it.

I punched out Fitzgerald’s home number on my cellular phone.

“Robert, you see theTraveler today?” I asked.

He sighed. “I ignore theTraveler, even when I read it. And yes, today I read it.”

There was a slightly awkward pause between us, and he said, “Jack, the women exist. The story is true. One of them called me up herself to—”

I cut him off. “Robert, there’s absolutely no need to explain anything to me. I just called to say that there’s no question in any intelligent person’s mind that a bunch of jealous twits get their kicks out of attacking someone who has risen to the top of the field. That’s just what we do in this business, Robert, at least the worst of us. We just try to bring people down.”

“Thank you, Jack. I won’t let them, but I am getting tired of it all. Someday soon might be the right day to retire.” He paused again, then said, “And you ignored my advice on going to the police with your information about the takeover bid but I must say, that was one hell of a story you had on the front page.”

And so forth. I complimented him on his eloquent front-page profile of Paul in that day’s paper, and we hung up with plans to talk that afternoon.

First on the day’s agenda, a longstanding appointment with a real estate agent in Back Bay, followed by a day of working on the Randolph nomination and Paul Ellis’s murder. I made a quick call on my cell phone to the city desk, where I was told that no arrests had occurred and no news was made overnight.

My next call was to Mongillo. It was only sevenA.M., a good hour before most reporters would begin the long process of rousing themselves awake. But I knew from experience that Mongillo was slogging away on the treadmill of the Boston Sports Club, a headset over his huge, sweaty crown as he dialed out the first of his many dozens of phone calls for the day.

“What are you hearing?” I asked.

He was breathing hard, wheezing at times. I heard him gulp in air to collect himself.

“Jesus Christ, Fair Hair. The fucking cops are apoplectic over your story today, throwing around words like ‘obstruction of justice.’”

“Yeah, well, the hell with them.”

“I keep hearing about bad blood between you and Travers. I’ve got to hear the full story. Anyway, yesterday they had nothing. Starting this morning, they’re all over this Campbell connection. They already have two detectives out at Logan catching a flight to Chicago to interview Terry Campbell. I’ve got calls out right now, and will hit you on the phone soon as I learn more.”

He added, “And by the way, you see Scene and Heard today? I don’t like to say I told you so. Actually, fuck that. I do like to say I told you so. And I did.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “That was weak, and you know it. They’re just out to kick us when we’re down.”

“I don’t know,” he said, in an almost taunting manner.

I steered the conversation someplace more pleasant and productive. “Hey,” I said, “we’ve got to get together today on the Lance Randolph hit. I’ll show you the records I have and we’ll divvy up the work. We need to get it in the paper as soon as possible.”

“Ready when you are.”

“I’ll be on the cell this morning. With all this going on around us, I’ve got to find a place to live. I’ll see you in the newsroom late morning.”

As we hung up the phone, I swear to God I could hear him lighting up a cigarette.

The cell phone wasn’t down on the table more than five seconds when it rang with Travers on the other line.

“Well, I hope you’re pleased,” he said, without introduction. “You effectively hindered the investigation into your publisher’s murder because you thought you could tuck it to me. You’re only hurting yourself.”

“Can I help you with anything?” Stern, straightforward, aloof.

“I’m only going to ask you this once. Is there any other information you have that might help us catch Paul Ellis’s killer?”

I said, “You know everything I know.” And I hung up.

Perhaps the most extraordinary accomplishment of modern man is the ability to map the human genome, to be able to scientifically predict the onset of individual disease and then take definitive steps to eradicate it. But hard as that’s been, it hasn’t posed nearly as difficult a challenge as trying to find a landlord in Boston that will allow a dog. For this reason, I had decided to buy a condominium in Boston of my very own.

Should be a happy occasion, right? Well, not exactly. Life, like journalism, is all about context, and this was in the context of one of the biggest failures I hope to ever see.

It’s funny, though not really, how you can never in a million years imagine an end to a relationship that is just beginning, and such was the case with me and Elizabeth, who I sometimes fear is the last woman I will ever love.

We had met a little more than a year before, of all places, on a story. A deranged father from Auburn, Maine, in the midst of a divorce went out and firebombed the day care center that his four-year-old boy attended every day. The guy, it ends up, was about to lose all visitation rights, and decided that if he couldn’t see his own and only son, then nobody else would either.

I’m a little beyond covering breaking crime and grime stories, but the paper was short-staffed that day, so I threw my hand up, then just about set a land speed record getting there, just in time to watch three children carried out of the ash and rubble in tiny black body bags that shone in the light of the surging television crews. It was the coldest, bleakest day I’ve ever felt. The entire city of Auburn seemed to gather at the scene of all the carnage — parents in navy blue factory uniforms and waitress aprons desperately searching the crowd for any sign of their own kids, city officials looking to help rather than mug for the cameras, locals who simply, sincerely wanted to lend some moral support.

As the frigid late afternoon seeped into the unbearable cold of a Maine winter’s night, the crowd finally thinned out. The mayor and his crew returned to a situation room in the warmth of City Hall. The victims’ families returned to painfully empty houses and lives that would never be the same — an emptiness I knew all too well. My feet were so cold I could barely walk as I hobbled back to my car while trying to compose the story in my head.

It was then that I caught a glimpse of her across the way. She had her laptop computer powered up on the trunk of a State Police cruiser and she stood in the enveloping dusk tapping at her keyboard, occasionally taking long glances over at the fire scene in front of her as if playing out the tragedy in her mind. She had on a ski jacket and a black wool hat pulled low over her head, and her nose was so ruby red it looked like it might just fall off on the icy ground.

But it was her eyes that I remembered best — big, haunting eyes, oval-shaped eyes, eyes such that when she looked up and momentarily met my gaze from about ten yards away, it was as if someone had just flicked on a light, her eyes were that bright. My heart began pulsing. She looked back down at her computer and didn’t seem to give me another thought.

That night, after filing my sad story and transmitting it down to Boston, I sat at the bar of the Holiday Inn in Auburn eating an under-cooked hamburger and reading theNew York Times in a failing bid to forget most of what I had seen. I hope I’m not alone in conceding that all roads eventually lead to myself, so I ended up sitting at the bar reliving that awful morning three-and-a-half years ago when Dr. Joyce led me into a nondescript conference room at Georgetown Hospital to tell me that my wife and newborn daughter had just died at birth. Death was everywhere.

When I got up to head for my room that night, I saw her sitting alone at a table right beside the bar, picking at an unappetizing-looking vegetarian dish and sipping a glass of red wine. She had a few sheets of scribbled notes spread across the table, and her long brown hair was mussed, obviously from the wool cap. Her face, strangely familiar, appeared tired.

Unfortunately, I lack the chromosome that allows me to talk easily to women I don’t already know. Those rare times when I summon the courage to approach one of them, I end up saying something like, “The thing I like best about spring is that my hair stops being so staticky.” I actually said that once, but I’ll spare the details for now.

But fortunately for me, as I walked by her table she tossed me a lazy smile and said, “Tough story, huh?” I may not be able to talk to women about anything, but I can talk journalism with anyone.

“They don’t get much tougher,” I replied. Confident, reserved. I reached my hand out and said, “Jack Flynn. I write for theRecord down in Boston.”

She shook my hand firmly while staying in her seat and said, “I’ve heard of it.” Another lazy smile, her head cocked a bit. “And you. Elizabeth Riggs. I write for theTraveler.”

Oh my.

“I’ve heard of it.”

“This one really got to me,” she said, her weary face holding not even a hint of the smile of a few seconds before. As she spoke, she rested her chin in one hand and pushed a fork absently around her plate with the other. “Did you see all those parents, the panic and pain all over their faces? I even saw a fireman, some big burly guy with a mustache, sit on the edge of his truck with his helmet still on and sob.”

“Imagine,” I said, “dropping off your three-year-old, not that I have one, but dropping off your three-year-old at day care at nine in the morning and finding out at two in the afternoon that there’s been a fire, then realizing at three that your kid has been burned to death. How are you ever supposed to get over that?”

Likewise, imagine racing with your pregnant wife to the hospital one morning expecting her to give birth, only to return home alone a few hours later without a thing in your life that even remotely matters? I thought this, but didn’t say it. Not the right time.

She shook her head. “I don’t even know how I’m going to get through the next couple of days. You know my paper. They’re going to want every conceivable angle covered, and all I want to do is go home, lock my apartment door, and be alone.”

To the uninitiated, that line would only have stated that she was tired of this story and wanted to get off it as soon as possible. But to the more probing, more perceptive male mind, what it really said was that she lived in an apartment rather than a suburban house, and alone rather than with a husband and a couple of kids. What it said more than anything else was that she was available. What it meant to me was that I was breaking out of my self-imposed funk.

I was standing over her table like a lug, typically unsure what the next move was, when she nodded to the empty chair across from her and said, “Do you have a moment to sit?”

I did, silently. And then we talked. We talked about her paper and about my paper, about how and why we got into the business, about the other big stories we’d covered over the years, about the frustrations of deadline reporting, about how editors never know when to let it go. She asked me about my time in Washington, about my relationship with the president. We drank some wine and then some coffee and one hour turned to two and two to three and finally the bartender walked over and said they were shutting down the lounge. She fixed those eyes on me, those mesmerizing blue eyes, and said, “I feel a little bit better. Tired, but better.” And she smiled.

We both got up and walked toward the elevator in silence. Once on board, she pressed the button for three, I pressed four. I moved toward her ever so slightly to see if there was the possibility of a parting kiss. God forbid I do anything more overt. She reacted not at all, so I stopped and abandoned the sketchiest of plans before failure reared its ugly, late night head.

When the door opened for her floor, she turned to me and said, “Goodnight. I’m glad you were there.” She looked at me for a long, confident, tired moment and walked off. I mustered only a simple “Nice to meet you.”

Suddenly very much alone, I stared down at the floor as the doors squeezed shut. I was staring at the floor when I saw her foot jut between the closing doors, causing them to slide back open. She walked back on, staring at me, probing me. “Do I sound too forward,” she asked, pausing right there, almost theatrically, “if I ask you for a goodnight kiss?”

I shook my head and put my fingers on her perfect cheeks and kissed her right there on the elevator of the Holiday Inn in Auburn, Maine, at first tentatively, then softly, then a little more passionately. As it continued, I heard the doors shut behind her and felt the elevator begin moving up and remember wishing that I was staying on the top floor of a high-rise hotel, and not just for the free breakfast and evening cordials that go with being on the club level that I like so much. I put my hand on her soft neck, then ran my fingers through that hair that I wanted to touch all night — hers, not mine — and we kissed again, all of it in loud silence.

The doors chimed and opened for my floor, and not knowing anything better to do, not knowing what I was supposed to do, I got off, kind of awkwardly walking backward with undoubtedly an absurd look on my unbelievably happy and surprised face. She gave me a cute little wave and a timid smile. And walking down the hallway to my room, I thought it amazing that something so good could come out of something so bad. Never for a second did it occur to me that I would someday have to think of it in reverse.

Two weeks later, in a fit of uncharacteristic emotion, I told her I loved her. I told her that I didn’t ever think in a million years that I’d ever feel that emotion again, but here it was, in all its warm and wonderful glory, all because of her. Never, did I tell her, would I feel even a droplet of doubt.

I told her that as we were walking Baker in the Public Garden at about eight o’clock on a wintry Sunday morning with nary another human being around to see the majesty of a freshly fallen coat of perfect white snow. She was wearing my shirt, my sweater, my favorite cap—“Cabot’s Ice Cream, every day is sundae”—and my jacket, in that inexplicable way that women just assume a man’s wardrobe, whereas, if we did the same, we’d be considered perverts.

“Never?” she asked me. She asked me this as she blocked my way, boring her huge eyes into mine.

“Never,” I said, and she kissed me, engulfing my head in her mitten-covered hands mashing her lips hard against mine in sharp contrast to the cold all around us. I knew then — I probably knew it before — that I would marry her.

We walked another dozen or so steps when she hit me in the side with a closed fist and said, “Never means never, right?”

“Never means never,” I replied. I had no idea then the number of times I would hear those words over the next many months, though if I thought about it a little at the time, I could have easily imagined that they’d become the most comforting words I would ever know.

• • •

Suffice it to say that my mood was not particularly good when I arrived at the corner of Beacon and Charles streets on prestigious Beacon Hill to meet my real estate broker. But Julie Morris, God love her, was there to make it better.

On the phone, she sounded perfectly pleasant, professional, knowledgeable about the market. In person, when I met her that morning for the first time, I noticed that she was, I don’t know, about nine feet tall, six feet of which were legs, covered by approximately two feet of a black skirt. A good choice not going with that guy named Horace over at All-State Realtors.

More to the point, she showed me a couple of places that were remarkable only for their price, which was, in a word, outrageous. I feared she might have some false assumption that because I was well-known around town, that I was also rich, which I’m decidedly not. Anyway, buying property in Boston is like purchasing a diamond — no one knows exactly what they’re doing, and there is absolutely no chance of achieving perfection, the only goal being not to get completely screwed.

The third place I liked before we even went inside, first because she let me know the price, which was much more in my range, and second because it was situated in a stunning turn-of-the-century — the last century, by the way — brick townhouse on the flat of Beacon Hill, just a couple of blocks from the Charles River and the Public Garden — two places where I often walked with Baker.

We went inside to an elegant though understated lobby, with mail and assorted catalogs resting on a nice antique buffet. She unlocked the only door on the parlor level and we stepped inside.

Seeing a house or an apartment for the first time is like coming face to face with a blind date. You know immediately, within about three seconds, whether it’s wrong. You may not know for another thirty or forty years if it’s right.

This place passed the first test, and then some. The living room, with huge bay windows overlooking Brimmer Street, had soaring ceilings and elaborate bright white moldings set off against dramatic bluish-gray walls. Someone obviously still lived here, and the furniture, set around a marble fireplace, was big and soft and comfortable, though easy and clean to the eye. The antique rug was a rich navy blue and burgundy.

“It’s only been on the market for a couple of days, and I don’t imagine it’s going to last,” Julie said, locking the door behind her.

She added, reading from a sheet of notes, “It’s a short-term, furnished rental right now, and the current tenant is due to be out in a few days, so that’s not going to be a problem. It’s available to close as soon as anyone wants it.”

As she spoke, I was already wandering back to the kitchen, which was in the middle of the apartment, with its own bay window complete with a window seat looking out over a side courtyard filled with red and yellow tulips.

“You can see the modern appliances, all stainless, oversized refrigerator, built-in microwave.”

As I walked out of the kitchen, I heard her voice trailing off and saw her out of the corner of my eye approach the refrigerator and look at some photographs stuck on the door with a magnet.

In the back of the apartment, the bedroom was big and bright, its windows rising from floor to ceiling with what agents call a “river glimpse”—a snippet of the Charles in the distance. A pair of women’s jeans was tossed on the bed and some running shoes on the floor, and the dresser was filled with black-and-white snapshots set in an eclectic array of frames.

“Jack, um, do you have any questions?”

I turned toward Julie because her voice sounded different, halting. She stood in the bedroom door with her arms folded over her clipboard. She looked at me as if I had just done something wrong, which perhaps in all my self-pity, I had.

“How flexible do you think they are on the asking price?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied, distant, almost absent. She continued to stand in the door looking at me as I wandered about the bedroom drinking in the mood of the place. There was something familiar about it all, something soothing. Maybe it was the sunlight or the colors on the wall or just the fact that it represented someplace permanent, an antidote to the vagabondish existence I’d had for the past few months.

“Jack,” Julie said, “have you seen this place before?”

Her voice was higher now, somewhat nasally. She still stood in the doorway. I still prowled the room.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

She walked over to the dresser, slowly, and looked at the photographs, picking one up in her hand. I wandered into the bathroom to finish my tour.

When I came out, she said, “You’re sure?”

“Positive. Why?”

She had a frame in her hand and held it toward me. “Because your picture is on the bureau.” She paused, looking at me. “And on the refrigerator.”

I grabbed the photograph out of her hand and sure enough, there I was, posing with Baker on the front steps of my old apartment on Commonwealth Avenue, where I lived when I was married. I had an absolutely ridiculous smile on my face. Baker had a tennis ball in his mouth. I couldn’t help but think for a moment that we were a pretty good-looking pair.

I quickly walked out to the kitchen and looked on the refrigerator. There we were, me and Elizabeth, standing outside the Albergo del Sole on the Piazza de Pantheon in Rome, during a quick getaway weekend early last fall. I vividly recalled the scene. An old Italian woman in a black cape was shooting the picture for us. I was whispering in Elizabeth’s ear what on film looked to be my deepest, most heart felt emotions. That’s partly right. I was telling her I couldn’t wait to get her into bed, and she was telling me — smiling for the camera — that I had better hope she was in the mood.

She was, by the way.

No matter. I began to shake and feel nauseous. I flung open the closet doors and rifled through the hanging clothes. There was my favorite black suit of hers, next to my favorite skirt, next to the silk tank top I bought her at a Newbury Street boutique to wear to the theatre one night a year before.

“Shit,” I said, not loudly, not even firmly. Just resigned.

All this time, Julie stood there watching me. Eventually, she asked, “Are you alright?”

“It’s my ex-girlfriend’s apartment.” That didn’t exactly answer her question, though maybe it did.

She held both her hands to her perfectly formed chest and said, “Oh my God, Jack, I’m so sorry.”

“Not an issue,” I said, still looking in the closet, not really meaning it. And me being only human, and humans being what they are, I cast a fresh eye around the room looking for anything male, any sign of even occasional cohabitation. I walked into the bathroom again, this time searching for a razor. But nothing. A single toothbrush in the holder, only makeup on the vanity. Elizabeth was a woman living very much alone, which for a variety of reasons, made me feel better.

Julie walked out of the bedroom, I assume to give me a little privacy. I looked at the photographs again, at the happiness spilling across my features, but I didn’t think about what a wonderful time that had been in my life, I only thought about how it all ended, how so much seemed to be coming to a premature close these days. My relationship with Elizabeth: over. My wife: dead. My newborn daughter: dead. My parents: dead. And now throw in the publisher ofThe Boston Record who helped make my career. Standing in the bedroom of an ex-girlfriend, to whom I was once on the verge of proposing, my overriding feeling was one of utter loneliness.

The last time I saw Elizabeth was on the Saturday afternoon that I accused her of having an affair. We had been distant the prior few weeks, and my worries had blurred into suspicions, and perhaps my suspicions served as a convenient excuse — an excuse for my newfound guilt, for my sadness over leaving Katherine, my wife, behind, for being more elastic than my conscience was willing to allow. I had gone out a month before and bought a diamond engagement ring, and with that ring safely hidden in a pair of old sweat socks in my top bureau drawer, our entire relationship began to unhinge.

One morning I came home from walking the dog and saw that she had forgotten to log off her computer, and on her email account I saw note after note from Travers@aol.com, so I opened one. It was from Lt. Detective Luke Travers, and it was to finalize plans to meet for a drink.

In the next note he thanked her and wrote about what a great time he had. In the next one he proposed getting together again. After that he mentioned how he could never talk to his own wife the way he could talk to her. And on they went, a bad cliché waiting to ruin a life.

Or perhaps I had ruined it already. I don’t know.

Either way, I got dizzy as I was reading them, so dizzy I couldn’t see the words on the screen, but I knew what they meant. I loved Elizabeth, even if I sometimes doubted whether I was ready to have her, or maybe I doubted whether I should be ready even if I was. I wanted to have children with her, someday. I wanted to grow old with her and live and joke and laugh as if we owned the entire world. And yet my history nagged and here she was in the present running around with a married cop having a pathetic, seedy affair. She was probably with him that very minute, a thought that caused me to pick up the keyboard and smash it on the desk. And then I sat on the couch, our couch, thought about Katherine and the baby that we never had, and I cried.

When she walked into our apartment, I asked her to sit. I calmly explained that the game was up, that I knew she was having an affair, that our relationship was over and that I wanted her to leave. If she needed money, I’d give her money. If she wanted the furniture, she could have the furniture. I just wanted her out of my life.

“Jack,” she said, her face more panicked than angry, “you’re wrong. You’re absolutely wrong—”

“Are you sleeping with this guy?” I yelled.

“Jack, I’m not having an affair, but we have some real problems.”

She made a move to come sit next to me, to touch me. I pulled away and she flinched back in shock.

“Don’t fucking lie.”

“I’m not, Jack. But we have problems.”

No — but. No — but. No — but. The words, the brutal softness of the denial, punctured my already splintered heart.

“You have it wrong,” she said, trying to compose herself amid her tears.

But I didn’t. I knew I didn’t. I knew I didn’t because this is what I did for a living. I looked into people’s eyes, even big gorgeous ones that I loved more than anything in life, and I saw either truth or I saw lies. And here in my own living room with my own girlfriend on an absurdly hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of an endless July, I saw nothing but lies. My life, as I knew it, as I loved it, was over. Again.

“Get the hell away from me,” I seethed. “And get out.”

I leaned forward in the chair with my arms on my knees and my hands on the back of my bowed head so she couldn’t see me cry. I sat there in utter silence, wondering what was going to happen next.

“You’re wrong, Jack.”

I ignored her.

“You’re wrong.” She was crying, almost hysterical. I could barely understand her words, they were so soaked by tears. “Wrong. Wrong.”

My head stayed down. I continued to ignore her.

Eventually, I heard her get up and walk back to the bedroom. I heard her fumbling around, crying, wheezing. Then there was a stale, stiff silence, until finally I heard the sound of her overnight bag being zipped, soft, yet it seemed to crash through the still apartment like cannon fire.

She walked back out into the living room. I heard her kneel down and hug the dog, then I heard her quaking in tears as she stood near me.

“I love you, Jack,” she said, softly, her nose all stuffed and her voice unsteady. It would have made my heart break if it wasn’t broken already.

“Go,” I said softly, never looking up.

And she did. I heard her walk to the door and slowly open it. She was convulsing. It sounded like she was leaning against the wall, maybe with her head tucked in her arms, and the door stayed open for several long seconds. Then I heard it softly shut, and the dog came walking back toward me and sprawled out at my feet with a groan, his eyes wide open looking at mine.

Tears were rolling down my face and onto the floor as I wiped my palms across my cheeks, half expecting her to walk back through the door, wondering if she did, what I’d do.

Her fault. My fault. Our fault. Or maybe it was just my life, my destiny, to say goodbye, again and again and again.

I stared back at the dog in the stultifying silence.

“Never means never, right?” I whispered. And then I broke down in another storm of quiet tears.

I carefully placed the vacation photograph I was holding back on the dresser and took a long, deep breath, all those images from all those pictures washing over my mind like foamy waves on the Cape Cod shore where her parents used to have a weekend home. I mumbled, “How did you make such a mess of things?” I think I was talking to Elizabeth, but maybe I was talking to myself, given that I was the only one in the room. I looked at the floor for a moment and halfheartedly corrected myself: “How did we make such a mess of things?” I ran my hands across my stricken face, took one last look around her bedroom, and walked down the hallway to the living room, where Julie was pretending to be reading sheets from her listing book.

“You all set?” she asked me, sympathetically.

“All set,” I said with a pathetic attempt at a smile. “I’ve got to run to the office. I’ll give you a call in the next couple of days and see about looking at a few more places.”

And with that, it was time to answer a couple of nagging questions from the recent past.