As they walk east, in the direction of what he now knows is the next beach over, the one known as Atlantic, she appears to be doing all the talking, almost nonstop.
Lawyers, Robby thinks.You have to kill them to shut them up.
Fine with me.
He keeps the binoculars trained on them until he almost can’t believe his eyes when they stop, and the guy kneels down, and can only be proposing to her.
Robby Sassoon wonders when the photographer is going to pop out of the dunes and start snapping pictures.
But no one else appears on the beach. It’s just the two of them out here right now. Them and the dog.
Maybe when the time comes, I’ll do the dog, too.
No extra charge.
He’s going to enjoy killing Jane Smith if it comes to that, which it probably will unless things change dramatically, and fast. They have history, he and Jane, even if she doesn’t know it. She has a debt to pay, too, just not like her ex-husband’s.
Somehow her getting proposed to like this is just going to make it better.
He tells himself to be patient.
Only a matter of time.
They are hugging now in the distance and she seems to be crying. Or maybe they’re both crying. Sassoon puts down the binoculars and walks around the car and gets behind the wheel.
He resists the temptation to walk down there and give her a pat on the head.
Plenty of time for that later, too.
TEN
I CAN’T STOP STARING at the ring. A shiny object from which I can’t turn away.
Diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friend. Just not mine. Probably another personality defect.
My second husband, Martin, proposed in the middle of a Central Park carriage ride, presenting a ring with a stone almost as big as this. I eventually ended up giving the ring back to him—throwing it at him like a fastball, to be more precise—after I discovered he’d been cheating on me, on multiple occasions, starting in the first year of our marriage. And then even later, before my miscarriage.
“See if you can regift,” I told Martin that night. “If anybody can pull that off with one of your girls on the side, my money’s on you.”
Only now it’s Ben Kalinsky doing the proposing, and I still can’t look away from the diamond.
What I can do is start to cry.
It’s not just because of the proposal. It’s because of Ben Kalinsky, who is every good, kind, honest, and caring thing that Martin never was. Now here he is, kneeling in front of me, asking me to marry him in front of God and Rip the dog. I’m standing on this beach hearing something I never expected— didn’t think I even wanted—ever to hear again.
Until he came along.
Until he chose to love me for all the right reasons, even after he learned I was sick.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m fighting so hard for my life. One of them is how muchIlove being a lawyer, and how alive that still makes me feel, even now. But the biggest reason is this man kneeling in front of me.
Now I’m really crying, full out, chest heaving, gasping for air. This isn’t the kind of middle-of-the-night crying I do in front of Rip.
This is different.
Much.
Ben smiles up at me, making no move to get up.
