“Years ago and it only lasted a month. She was a college student doing a legal internship at my firm. You were acting a bit moody. When we were together you seemed . . . I guess melancholy is a good word for it. I thought I was losing you. And then this ambitious young woman with dark hair and light eyes . . . just like you, she comes to my firm, looking for role models, looking up at me with admiration . . . I was weak, I thought I was losing you.”
“But when . . .” My voice trails off as a memory creeps to the forefront of my mind. “We had only been dating a year . . .”
“Yes, you remember that time, five years ago. You had been at your job for a few months and all of a sudden you pulled away from me. I tried to reach you with romance, little gestures of affection, but you didn’t respond and I was too much of a coward to face the issue head on.”
Too much of a coward. Well, that was one thing Dave and I had in common. Except . . . “You did talk to me about it. We were at my place, finishing off a bottle of wine, and you asked if I was losing interest. You asked if you were the one making me sad.”
“And you started crying. That was the first time you told me about your sister.”
“It was the tenth anniversary of her death.”
A bird lands lightly on the sidewalk by our feet, picks at some crumbs of crackers dropped there by those who had walked before us. “That’s when you broke off the affair with her?”
Again he nods. The bird continues to feed off of someone else’s mess. “I knew when I heard the story of your sister that you were the perfect woman for me.”
“Excuse me?” Again the indignation pounds at my temples.
“You say I’m scared, Kasie? Well, you were terrified. You were terrified by the very idea of being out of control, so much so that, yes, you let me set more rules for us, you allowed me to wield a lot of the control. If you felt the impulse to rebel, you squashed it all in the interest of not being Melody.”
“You took advantage of my tragedy.”
“Because you wanted me to.”
The bird, now done with its snack, flies off to find the next course. Dave stares down at the remaining crumbs, shuffles his feet. “I knew we were in real trouble when you insisted on a ruby over a diamond.”
“It’s a small thing.”
“It was enough to let me know that the current had changed.” He reaches down to pick up my keys. I had forgotten about them. “I guess you’re not scared anymore, huh?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say as I take the keys from his hands.
“Well, at least you’re not alone.” He pauses before adding, “That girl I cheated on you with is married now, to some other guy who’d worked at my firm. I doubt she ever told him about me. I haven’t seen her in years, but her husband and I travel in the same circles. I hear things. They have a baby now. Apparently she decided that a career in law isn’t her thing. Too much ugliness and aggression. Now she’s running the Sunday school at his church or something.”
“It sounds like she would have been perfect for you.”
“Yeah, maybe she would have been.” He meets my eyes. His sadness is mixed with just a little bit of anger and maybe a few spoonfuls of regret. “I picked the wrong woman.”
I stand outside my car and watch as he walks away, not to the club but toward some other destination. I’ll never know where. The little minutiae of his day-to-day life is now off limits to me. He’s going to become a stranger.
Maybe he always was.
I turn my head, not wanting to see the moment when he disappears.
CHAPTER 13
I’VE ONLY JUST opened my car door when I hear him call my name. I turn to see Robert striding toward me. “Where is he?” he asks; his voice is steady but I can hear the undercurrent of aggression.
“He left. Like I said in the text, it’s over.”
He studies my face then looks around to see if he can spot Dave. “He’s not going to give up so easily.”
“Nothing about this was easy,” I say.
“He’ll talk to Freeland. He’s petty like that. You just have to look at him to see it.”
“ ‘Petty’s the wrong word,” I say but I can’t think of the right one. The only word that comes to mind is lost. “He won’t talk to Freeland.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s like the rest of us, guided by self-interest. There’s nothing in it for him anymore. It serves him better to just walk away.”
Robert shakes his head, unable to accept that any man would so readily accept defeat. The wind blows, making the trees rustle above our heads; leaves fall among the crumbs. Robert looks down and lifts my left hand. “He took the ruby back?”