Page 46 of Inventing Mr Darcy

He glances over his shoulder, as if he needs to make sure of his surroundings. “Um, yeah? My mom wanted to stay at the hospital, so Gaby and I came out to the house to take care of some things here. We’ll go back into the city first thing in the morning. I’m exhausted,” he finally admits, and I expect him to wish me goodnight. But instead, he says, “So, why don’t you tell me about your day?”

“I wrote, mostly.” I don’t tell him what. I describe the cat’s delight in exploring his big old house and my tentative wish to bring in some Christmas spirit.

He’s half awake, at best, but he smiles. “Mm. That sounds nice.”

I keep talking because the sound of my voice seems to soothe him. The phone tilts at an odd angle as his hand relaxes, and his eyelids stay closed an extra moment every time he blinks. Finally, I whisper, “Go to sleep. Call me tomorrow,” and disconnect the call.

Over the next three weeks, we fall into a pattern. After an exchange of good morning texts, I spend my day writing—and not my dissertation. Fisher spends his day worrying, because his dad’s recovery is not as linear as anyone would like; there are lots of setbacks, irregular heart rhythms, talk of additional procedures. Most days, we end with a video call in the late evening, a drowsy conversation about everything and nothing all at once. I become expert at reading his face, which tells me better than words that he’s slept (or more likely, that he hasn’t), his father’s pain level, how his mother and sister are coping with it all. I stop worrying about what I knew or didn’t know before. Here and now takes the place of happily ever after.

One morning, I send him a picture of his neighborhood blanketed in six inches of fluffy white snow, and he replies immediately with a warning to be careful if I go out, the location of the snow shovel, and the name and number of a teenager two doors down who’d be happy to clear the steps and sidewalk, if I want.

Proof, if I needed it, that he knows how to warm a Midwestern girl’s heart.

Another evening, I casually mention missing his fettucine alfredo. I wake up the next day to a grocery delivery of the ingredients, a link to a recipe vlog, and a calendar invite to a late-night video chat, during which he walks me through the process while he makes the same dish a thousand miles away so we can eat together.

The week before Christmas, I show off the wreath with the red plastic bow I’ve hung on his front door, which some kids were selling for a school fundraiser, and the old-fashioned ceramic Christmas tree I borrowed from Mrs. Merriweather and placed on the center of the entryway table, and finally the string of dollar-store twinkle lights I’ve draped among the pictures on the mantel.

Their soft glow reflects in his dark eyes, “Is that my diploma?” he asks in surprise. I’ve rearranged all the frames so it has pride of place but no longer covers up his family.

I turn the camera back to my face. “If it were, would that be OK?”

He’s well within his rights to tell me I’ve overstepped. But he doesn’t. He tells me, in a roundabout way, how it ended up in a box in the attic in the first place.

“Kind of funny to think that I’d never have come to Grantham; I’d have been working at Davis Investment Group straight out of college, if I hadn’t fallen in love.”

My phone slips a little in my hand, thanks to a rush of jealousy that catches me by surprise.

“With higher mathematics,” he explains. “Not a girl. Though she was—is—almost as beautiful to me as you are. Mysterious. Endlessly fascinating. All those gorgeous curves …”

One of my brows hikes involuntarily as I absorb his raptures, and my credulous expression doesn’t escape his notice. “Ah, see? You only thought you knew what a hopeless dork I am.”

“Well,” I point out drily, “the t-shirts were kind of a clue.”

He laughs, more freely than I’ve heard him laugh in days. “Anyway,” he continues after a moment, “I was supposed to be getting a bachelor’s degree in computer science; that was the agreement with my dad. I didn’t tell him when I changed majors. He only found out at graduation, in fact. I was so sure he’d be hurt by the reminder, I simply put the evidence away. Out of sight, out of mind.”

I picture Fisher going up to the attic on occasion, sitting and studying his diploma by the light of that bare bulb, seeing not the gothic lettering and gold embossed seal, but his father’s disappointed expression. In spite of his laughter, I’m afraid I’ve reopened a terrible wound.

But Fisher doesn’t look unhappy. “It’s nice to see it again,” he insists. “But not as nice as it is to see you.”

All these exchanges are intimate in a way I’d never anticipated, forging a connection between us in spite of distance, one that goes beyond the ordinary conversations we had before he left, and even beyond that one night of extraordinary sex. There’s something powerful about sharing your darkest worries, your almost unspeakable hopes, your most vulnerable moments, with another person.

Is it romantic? Not most of it, not in any sense of the word I once thought I knew.

It’s … real, in a way I’m rapidly coming to appreciate even more.

EIGHTEEN

On Christmas Eve, the familiar pattern of our days is broken.

My first text of the day comes not from Fisher, but from Cassie. In it, she reveals that Bill might propose (!) on Christmas and if he does, she intends to accept. When I ask if she’s sure, she tells me she’s almost thirty, the job market is uncertain, and she doesn’t want to be single forever. It’s an uncanny echo of that line from the movie we used to quote, about being twenty-seven, with no prospects—but without any hint of twenty-first-century wry superiority. When I ask about romance, she sends me the skull emoji. And when I ask whether he makes her happy, she says, and I quote, what’s happiness got to do with marriage?

After all that, I need a vat of coffee. While it’s brewing, I hear the buzz of another text and smile to myself as I pick up my phone. Fisher, surely.

But no, it’s Geoff, asking if I’ve got room in my luggage for some materials for the convention, and if so, can he drop them off? Naturally, I haven’t begun to pack for a trip that’s still almost two full days away, so I can’t exactly deny that there’s plenty of room in my suitcase. And since it’s a holiday and all the obvious places to meet up are closed, he offers to bring them by my place.

Without thinking too much about it, I text the address—804 Elm St—and suggest a time. And then I spend the rest of my day drafting the final scene of my … well, I don’t think there’s any denying it’s a novel now, the way it’s grown … and I’m actually starting to feel like it’s pretty good.

It’s well into the evening when Fisher finally calls with the news that they’ve been busy making arrangements to move his dad to a rehabilitation center, somewhere closer to their home in Connecticut so he can recover in more peace than the hospital provides and work with therapists to regain his strength.