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“If you’ll have me.”

“I’ll have you.”

The words settled somewhere low and warm before I stepped outside.

The drive back to Maple Bluff felt longer than usual.

I kept thinking about Dean stopping before he kissed me, and about how easy it would have been for him not to.

By the time I reached the pool house, the lights in my parents’ house were mostly dark except for the kitchen, where Bitsy had probably left one lamp burning in case I came in and required questioning.

I changed into my old Asia T-shirt, washed my face, then sat on the edge of the bed.

The future felt very far away tonight, and that frightened me enough that I reached for it.

Claire. I pictured her phone at Hudson’s, waiting beside the bread plate because my daughter believed availability was a moral duty. Her name lighting my own phone. I tried to remember the number. I closed my eyes.

216...

There should have been seven more digits.

I had dialed them hundreds of times before phones began remembering numbers for us.

My chest tightened. I reached for the legal pad I’d hidden inside the bedside drawer and wrote carefully, Claire Elizabeth Ellsworth, and beneath it, Benjamin Walter Ellsworth.

I stared at my children’s names until my eyes blurred. Their names remained, but the edges of the life around them were beginning to blur.

The thought should have sent me running toward the safest possible choice.

Instead, I thought about Dean stopping with his mouth inches from mine because I still belonged, at least technically, to someone else.

Thirteen days had seemed like plenty of time when I found myself back in the past. Now I understood how quickly thirteen days could disappear. Before Friday the twenty-fourth, I was going to find out what Dean Wyatt had really been to me. Not a memory softened and blurred by time, not the regret, but the man.

8

Paul

Thursday — August 16, 1984

I brought Lorrie white tulips because she’d once told me in passing that roses were boring.

She’d said it at the Chadwicks’ anniversary dinner in June, after Mrs. Chadwick had pointed out the centerpieces three separate times and waited for everyone at the table to admire them. Lorrie had leaned close enough for only me to hear, eyes still on the enormous arrangement in the middle of the table, and whispered, “Roses are so predictable and boring.”

I’d nearly choked on my water.

My mother would’ve called the remark unkind, which meant she would’ve laughed in the car on the way home and told my father not to repeat what she said.

I’d remembered. That was the thing about her. She made small remarks that stayed with me, then seemed surprised when I remembered them.

It had been hot all day so I’d left my blazer on the backseat. The tulips lay beside me on the passenger seat of the Saab, wrapped in white paper, stems damp at the ends. I’d stopped at the florist after work and felt silly choosing flowers when everyone was still talking about Olympic medals, Walter Hale was discussing the Cleveland move with my father, and both our mothers had begun treating the upcoming dinner at the club as if it came with an announcement already printed on heavy cream stationery.

I hadn’t even asked Lorrie yet. For most of the summer, that fact had seemed like a minor detail. Lorrie and I were together, our families approved, we knew the same people, understood the same rules, had been raised in houses where children learned early which fork to use and which adults were allowed to be boring because they gave large donations to the museum. I liked her. More than liked her, though I wasn’t the sort of guy who said things out loud too soon.

I’d thought we were moving toward the same future because no one had told me otherwise.

The pool house door opened before I reached the walk.

Lorrie stood there in a navy wrap dress, one hand on the doorframe, her hair pinned up, high heels on her feet. A few chestnut pieces had already come loose near her temples, which made her look like a woman who laughed too loudly when she was supposed to be composed. That was the Lorrie I liked best, when she let go and laughed without caring if it was too loud.