“Smiley wants feel-good?” Ryan said, laughing a little too hard, clearly trying to lighten the mood.
“I know, right?” I said, running my hand over a crystal goblet filled with freshly squeezed orange juice, refusing to laugh.
“What are you thinking, babe?” he said.
So I told him exactly what I’d been thinking. “I was wondering whether this was a wedding gift,” I said, tapping on the glass.
Ryan hesitated, then nodded gravely, as if making a somber admission.
I picked up the silver fork in an ornate pattern. “And this?”
He nodded again, then sat up.
“Why did you keep them?” I said, more curious than anything else. “Doesn’t the girl usually keep this stuff?”
He shrugged and told me Blakeslee didn’t want them.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. She just didn’t.” His forehead went from smooth to furrowed. “Her taste changed, I guess.”
“In one year? Her taste changed in one year?”
“She changed her mind about the marriage. So why not the crystal and silver?”
It was a fair point, but I still felt confused, agitated. I said nothing, a trick of good reporting. Silence keeps them talking.
It worked, as Ryan offered up more information. “I picked most of this stuff out anyway.”
“You handled the registry?”
“Well, we went together. But she let me pick most of the stuff.”
“Huh,” I said, thinking: That’s weird.
“And besides … things ended badly … So she said the gifts were tainted …”
“I thought you said you were still friends?”
“We are. Now. Sort of.”
“Even though it ended badly?” I tried to sound breezy but spoke too quickly, giving the question a cross-examination feel.
He gave me a circumspect look and said, “I knew it. You are pissed.”
“No,” I said with a purposeful shrug. “I’m really not.”
“It seems like you are.”
“It seems like you want me to be.”
A chilly standoff ensued, each of us staring at the other, neither speaking until he said, “Look. Let’s not talk about her anymore, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, thinking that it would be just fine if I never heard her name again.
No such luck. Because later that morning, just as I finally got Blakeslee out of my mind, the phone in my cubicle rang, an unknown Houston number on the screen.
“Shea Rigsby, Dallas Post,” I answered, thinking that it hadn’t worn off yet. Every time I said my title, I felt a little thrill.
“Hi, Shea,” a woman’s voice on the other end of the line said. I tried to place it, but it didn’t sound familiar. “This is Blakeslee Meadows. I don’t know if you remember me?”
“Yes,” I said, my heart pounding. “How are you?”
“I’m well,” she said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” I said, as it occurred to me that we had never actually had a conversation, only a few passing hellos in college. She had always made it clear that I was beneath her—and I wondered if she felt the same now.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”
I murmured my agreement, trying to anticipate where she’d possibly go from here just as she said, “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m calling you.” Her voice was soft and hesitant, and didn’t match my memories, her polished photos, or her confident public persona.
“It’s about Ryan,” she continued.
“Yeah. I figured,” I said, lowering my voice and glancing at the cubicles surrounding mine. Murphy’s law had quieted the floor down in the one moment that I needed privacy.
“He told me he was seeing you,” she said.
“Yeah. He told me that he … told you,” I stammered as Gordon glanced my way. Ever since I’d told him about Ryan, I had the feeling he was more interested in my conversations.
“Right. Well. I debated calling you … And I know your relationship is none of my business.”
I said nothing, thinking this was a pretty major understatement.
“But I just … I had to …” Her voice cracked, making her sound both sad and desperate, and I felt an unexpected stab of sympathy. In one instant, she was no longer competition, just a girl who had lost her husband, perhaps the one man she’d ever loved. Maybe she still loved him. Maybe that’s what this was about. Her trying to get him back. Maybe she was actually manipulating me.
“Are you okay?” I asked, feeling disoriented.
“Yes. Thank you, Shea. I’m fine …” I heard her take a few deep breaths, and, when she started speaking again, I had the feeling she was reading from a script. “As you know, Ryan and I got divorced about a year ago. It was really hard and very, very sad. I loved him a lot … and we both really wanted things to work. But they just didn’t. They couldn’t.”