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“When?”

“Last night.”

“After he asked about my money?”

“Yes.”

The answer was honest, but not comforting. Too late, I thought again. The truth had arrived one day late, which was Paul all over. Careful. Serious. Sincere. Late. I went to the refrigerator, handed him the plate my mother had made, then went to the door and opened it.

“Lorrie.”

“I can’t do this anymore tonight.”

“I understand.”

I almost smiled because he didn’t, not really, but he was trying, and that was also Paul. He picked up his jacket from the chair, holding the plate in the other hand.

For a moment I thought he might reach for me, and I didn’t know whether I wanted him to or not.

He didn’t. Instead, he stopped in front of me.

“I did love you after,” he said.

The words moved through me strangely.

After suitability, money, assumptions, and everyone else’s plans. He corrected himself. “I do love you.”

I looked at his face, young and pale beneath the porch light.

“I believe you.”

His eyes changed as a small smile appeared on his face.

“But it doesn’t fix this,” I said.

The smile vanished. “No, it doesn’t.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

That was all the truth I could give him, maybe the only clean thing left between us.

Paul nodded once. “Good night, Lorrie.”

He walked across the lawn toward the driveway, jacket over one arm, holding the dinner plate, shoulders straighter than they should have been for a man I’d just wounded.

The Saab started a minute later. I stood in the doorway until the taillights disappeared between the trees, then I went inside.

The tulips were still there, pink and quiet in the glass. I should have thrown them out. Instead, I stood there and looked at them until the petals blurred and tears dripped down my cheeks.

There would be no proposal Friday, my money wouldn’t save the Ellsworth family. Paul had told me the truth before I confronted him, and still, somehow, nothing felt better.

17

Paul

Tuesday — August 21, 1984

I drove away with Lorrie’s porch light in my rearview mirror.