This is a ridiculous question, because I’m visibly ransacking the beach house’s cabinets and the refrigerator, but I answer seriously anyway: “I’m cooking dinner.”
I line up my discoveries on the countertop—not exactly a woolly mammoth I’ve hunted, shot, and skinned, but pretty damn satisfying: One box of rigatoni, one jar of tomato-and-basil sauce, a bag of frozen green beans dated only three months ago, and a half-empty, non-moldy plastic container of grated Romano cheese. A veritable feast.
I can’t undo any of the shitty things that have happened to Eden on my watch, but I can feed her.
She’s staring at me.
“What?” I demand.
“I guess I wasn’t expecting you to cook.”
“It’s not exactly gourmet. Boxed pasta, jarred sauce, frozen veg.”
“I just didn’t picture you cooking…anything.”
“What do you think a single guy in New York City does for food?”
“Takeout.”
“Your faith is touching.”
“Can I—help?” she asks. She unfolds herself from the couch, stretching out long legs and pushing a strand of blond hair behind one ear. She steps toward the kitchen, lithe and fluid in motion.
Yes,I think.You can stop being confusing and beautiful. You can stop getting divorced and married and jilted, you can stop needing to be rescued, you can hold still somewhere far away from me where I can’t see or touch you.
Somewhere along the line, maybe around the time I unzipped her dress, I stopped being strong enough to make her hate me. I started needing for her to seesomeone other than the asshole who’d stolen her money and her time with her dog and herlife.
But I don’t say any of that. I say, “You probably have a lot of texts and emails to reply to.”
“God. I do.”
“Go,” I say, pointing to the couch.
She gives me an eyebrow that says,Really? You get to boss me around?But then she heads back to the couch and settles herself there, and I putter in the kitchen. Through the big wall of windows, as I set two pots boiling and a third with tomato sauce heating, I watch as the sun deepens toward orange. Near the horizon, where clouds have massed, the sky turns shades of pink and purple and wild blues—even green. My gaze strays back to her, curled up on the couch, long lean limbs and hair tinged gold by the dusky light.
I make myself look back at the sky.
“Sunset,” I say, inclining my head toward it.
She looks up from her phone. “It’s so beautiful here.”
Yes,I think, admiring the way the light touches her face, licking the gleaming porcelain of her cheek.It is.
“Did you come here a lot with Paul?”
The words are out of my mouth before I can consider if they’re a good idea, but she doesn’t flinch.
“A few times,” she says. “But I used to come to the beach with my dad when I was really little. When I came with Paul the first time, all these memories came flooding back. Sandcastles and kites and dipping my toes in the water and then crying because it was so cold it hurt. My dad would rub my feet to get the feeling back in them and then take me to the doughnut shop and let me pick out one doughnut for each hand.”
“That’s sweet.”
“He was great,” she says, eyes far away and sad.
I know—from the divorce and the wedding—the basics of Eden’s parental situation. I’d even seen theNochecked next to Eden’s mom’s name on the guest list, but I hadn’t let myself think about how that might have affected Eden. Because in general, thinking about Eden was a terrible idea.
Still is, it’s just that now I don’t seem to be able to stop.
“He died when I was six,” she says. “My mom is Caryn Simmons?—”
