“Thank you,” she says when I return with the glasses. Again I make sure our hands don’t touch.
She waits for me to take the seat across from her, then she composes herself and forces her eyes to meet mine. When she begins to speak, the words come out rigidly, as if no amount of practicing has prepared her, as if she sees now that her husband is not just an audience of one. All the lost hours and days, the lonely weeks and months and years, crowd around me and stare across at her, waiting at my back to hear what answer there will be. What possibly can be said. The unrequited moments stretch so far into the distance that she realizes some of them can never be reached by words.
“Alex,” she begins, “I know you must have so many questions about what happened. About where I’ve been. And I will try to answer anything you want to ask. But first there’s something I need to say.”
She swallows. Her eyes seem desperate to look away.
“When I left,” she continues, “I truly thought I was doing the right thing for you and Peter. I was scared of what would happen if I stayed. My mind was so full of awful thoughts. But for a while, I’ve been feeling like myself again. I’m better now. And I’ve wanted to call, or come see you both, except that I was afraid. My doctor says the risk of a relapse is low, but even if it were one chance in a thousand, I couldn’t put you and Peter through that again.”
I begin to interrupt, but she raises a hand from the tabletop, asking me to let her finish while she still can. Her mouth is pinched. For a second she seems gaunt, every muscle in her neck tense, the hollows in her cheeks darkening as she clenches her jaw. In that second, it looks as if the years away have wasted her, as if the regrets have devoured her from the inside. In the sludge of my emotions, the portion that is anger weakens. I cannot forget how Peter and I suffered without her. But I see now we weren’t the only ones to suffer.
“I begged my family,” she continues, “to find out how you and Peter were doing. They asked around and heard you were doing okay. Doing well. So it didn’t seem fair to turn your lives upside down just because the time was right for me.”
For the first time, she lets her eyes fall.
“But then I heard about Simon.” She hesitates. “And I know how much you love him. How hard this must be for you. So I told myself that since things had already been turned upside down, maybe now you might need some help.”
These last words end feebly, almost as a question. As if this is a hope she isn’t sure she has the right to harbor. Mona swallows. She places both hands back on the table and looks at me again, bracing herself. She is done.
Faintly I ask, “You heard about Simon? How?”
Relief crosses her face. It is far less painful to answer this than so many other questions that remain.
“Elena’s new boyfriend works in the vicar’s office,” she says. “He saw the paperwork.”
Elena. Mona’s cousin. I wonder how far from that one office the news about Simon has already spread.
“And who,” I ask, “told you about Peter and me?”
Relief fades. When she forces herself to look me in the eye again, I prepare myself for difficult news.
“My parents,” she says. “I got back in touch with them last year.”
This is a blow. For a year those miserable people have hidden her from me.
“I made them swear they wouldn’t tell you,” she says, putting her hands in a praying posture, asking me not to blame them.
My anger subsides. But only because I see, on her upturned finger, the ring I gave her. She still wears it. Or at least, she wears it tonight.