Finally, I wrote his name inside, told him I loved him, and mailed it.
There was no check.
In January, Paul asked me to meet him for coffee.
We went to a diner where the server still called everyone honey and refilled a cup before it was empty.
“I’ve spoken to Victor,” he said.
“I imagine you have.”
“He wanted me to talk some sense into you.”
“And here you are.”
Paul smiled without much enthusiasm.
“I told him I’d talk to you. That was the extent of my promise.”
He tore open a packet of sweetener.
“He admits you didn’t disappear. Says things got oversimplified.”
“That’s an interesting word for it.”
“I told him so.”
Paul looked tired.
“I should have asked more questions when Bryce stopped bringing you around. I assumed you were working or that you’d chosen not to come.”
“Sometimes I was working.”
“Sometimes isn’t always.”
“No.”
He stirred his coffee.
“Victor also says you’ve taken Bryce’s wedding money.”
“I haven’t.”
“I know. I asked whose name was on the account.”
I let out a breath.
“He didn’t like that question?”
“Not especially.”
We sat quietly for a while.
Paul told me that the Hartleys had stopped making new wedding payments while Caroline decided what she wanted. There were deposits to sort out, but nobody had asked me to cover them.
“They’re not doing this because of your account,” he said.
“I know.”
“Victor seems to think if the money were there, everything would go back to normal.”
“That may be why we keep having different conversations.”
Before we left, Paul touched my arm.
“I remember that graduation, Jo. You nearly fell asleep sitting beside me.”
“I’d been up since four.”
“You still came.”
I nodded because I couldn’t quite speak.
By early March, I was spending my free weekends on things I had postponed.
One Saturday, I had the truck in the garage to replace its starter. The battery was disconnected, my tools were laid out on an old towel, and I was studying the replacement part when a car stopped in the driveway.
Caroline got out.
She wore jeans, a winter coat, and no ring.
I wiped my hands and walked to the open garage door.
“Do you have a few minutes?” she asked.
“Sure.”
I brought out two folding chairs rather than make her perch on the cold tailgate.
The sun reached the driveway, though the air still had winter in it.
“The wedding’s off,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
“I didn’t come to ask you to be sorry for me.”
“I know.”
For a while, she watched a neighbor drag an empty trash bin back toward his house.
“I kept trying to make it a problem we could solve,” she said. “A complicated family. Something he was ashamed to talk about. I thought if he could explain it honestly, maybe we could start there.”
“Could he?”
“He explained why he wanted me to believe it.”
I looked at my hands.
There was grease beside my thumbnail that the rag hadn’t touched.
“He kept saying his dad put him in a difficult position,” she continued. “Then he said you’d always judged him. Then he said I was letting one bad decision define him.”
“One?”
She gave a small, tired smile.
“I said that, too.”
She told me she had asked about the stories Bryce had told her over the course of their relationship. Some were partly true. Others belonged to different people than the ones he had named.
“When I asked why he didn’t just tell me about you, he said he didn’t want me to think we were that kind of family.”
“What kind?”
“I asked him that. He never gave me a clear answer.”
She pulled her coat tighter.