Page 96

The words cut exactly as he meant them to. For one second, I saw the future he offered me if I held the line I’d drawn. There would be no move to Cleveland, no office waiting for me, no easy place at my father’s table, no engagement, and probably no Lorrie.

For a man who had always known what came next, the emptiness ahead looked enormous.

Then I thought of Lorrie standing in the doorway, pale and furious, telling me her money wouldn’t save my father.

I thought of the way she had said suitable and of the ring hidden in my drawer, and the woman I’d bought it for without ever asking whether she wanted the life it represented.

“I meant what I said.”

My father’s voice dropped. “Get out of my house.”

“Alan,” my mother said.

“If he wants to behave like a stranger, he can leave like one.”

That hurt, but it didn’t change my mind.

I picked up my jacket from the chair where I had dropped it.

At the door, my mother touched my sleeve.“Paul.”

She looked smaller without the armor of makeup and pearls, though only slightly. My mother would have considered fragility a private matter, if she acknowledged it at all.

“Don’t make a permanent decision because Lorrie is acting like a child.”

I walked out before either of them could say another word.

The drive back to my apartment took less than ten minutes, although it felt longer. I kept hearing my father’s voice.

Without the firm, what are you?

I parked behind my building, climbed the stairs, and let myself into the apartment without turning on the overhead light. The room smelled faintly of coffee and the cologne I’d put on before going to see Lorrie, back when I still believed my confession might matter.

I removed my tie and dropped it on the counter, then went into the bedroom and opened the dresser drawer.

The ring box sat where I’d left it. I took it out and sat on the edge of the bed. For a long time, I only held it.

I could still feel Lorrie’s fingers wrapped around mine at dinner. Her head heavy on my shoulder in that movie theater while Romancing the Stone played while she slept, her laugh, and the look on her face when she spotted the ring in the jeweler’s window.

I opened the box as the diamond caught the lamplight.

I still wanted to marry her. I wanted the mornings, the dinners, the arguments, the years I couldn’t yet picture clearly, but suddenly understood wouldn’t arrange themselves just because our parents approved. I wanted Lorrie in my life, not because she fit, not because my father could see financial advantages, not because the club dinner had been planned, champagne ordered, and everyone in attendance.

I wanted her, and had fallen in love with her. Instead of putting it back in the drawer, I closed the box and set it on the nightstand

18

Lorrie

Wednesday — August 22, 1984

The sound of rain against the windows woke me as the dream faded. I’d been running through a park calling for my daughter, but couldn’t find her. When I tried to picture her, I could see the shape of her nose but that was it. The closer I came to the end of my time here, the more I was losing memories of my children.

For a while, I simply stretched out in bed, watching the rain run down the windows as I tried not to panic. Did the changes I’d already made here in the past have an impact on my future? Or was it the magic’s way of making me focus on the here and now?

I sat up slowly. The floor was cool beneath my bare feet when I crossed to the little table and opened the notebook. So many things no longer made sense, partial phone numbers, names, and several statements underlined so hard the pencil had torn the paper.

I turned to a page from several days earlier and read the first line.