Subject: Closer
You’re not a horrible person. You’re just human. And anyway, I don’t think you really mean that.
And don’t worry about your mother. She’s being taken care of.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
Taken care of? Is she locked in the pantry?
And you’re probably right. Because if my mother—the other one—died of a heart attack, then I’d worry even more about what I passed on to the twins. It would seem inevitable then.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
My father had a heart attack. It’s on both sides. You don’t get to take all the credit.
And nothing is inevitable.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
That’s for sure.I don’t want all the credit. I just don’t want all the blame.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
I think there’s more than enough of that to go around.
After your surgery, I didn’t step up like I should have. I thought I had but now I can see that I didn’t. I’m sorry.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
Wow. I think I like this Dr. Lewis.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
I figured that out all on my own. In my defense, I didn’t really get all that you did around here until I had to do it myself.
The shrink says that maybe I needed everything to be like it always had been because otherwise I had to think about the alternative, which was what might happen to you. And that was too hot to touch.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
The terror?
From: [email protected]
Subject: Closer
Yeah. The terror.
58
Maribeth hadn’t really meant it when she’d said she was using Todd and Sunita for their Internet. She genuinely liked them. But she had been taking advantage of their Wi-Fi and laptop generosity a lot since Thanksgiving, particularly now that Jason’s e-mails were coming regularly and the cold weather had made the trek to the library so much less attractive.
She decided to show her appreciation by cooking for them again. They’d demolished the paella last time so maybe she’d do a bouillabaisse. It was finals week and if it was anything like Maribeth remembered, the studying made you famished.
She texted the invitation.
Is the Silver Fox coming? Todd texted back.
She hadn’t spoken to Stephen since their lunch last week. To see him now, out of the office, now that they’d kissed, now that she was e-mailing Jason, felt different. He hadn’t called her; she sensed he’d left the ball in her court, but she hadn’t returned it. Which wasn’t to say she didn’t want to see him. She did. She suspected that he wanted to see her, too. A dinner party felt like a safe excuse, so she sent him a text: My kitchen will be smelling good starting tomorrow around five if you’d like to come for dinner. The kids from upstairs are coming, too.
I’ll bring an appropriate amount of wine, he texted back.
He arrived while Maribeth was still scrubbing the clams.
“You’re early,” she said. “And I’m running late.”
“I no longer have a four o’clock patient,” he said, smiling. “So I don’t know what to do with my afternoons.”
“You could try golf. I hear doctors like that. Or scheduling a new patient.”
“I’m not really taking on new patients at the moment.”
“Why did you take me?”
“To collect the bounty for returning you to Cambridge Springs prison, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
He came inside. Maribeth was suddenly aware of certain facts: her apartment, empty, the bed in the other room. Her and Stephen. Two kisses. Jason.
“What’s this?” he picked up the scrapbook holding the twins’ letters.
Maribeth grabbed it from him. “Just a scrapbook,” she said, shoving the book into a drawer. “Nothing that interesting.”
She saw him look around, much the way she’d poked around his house for hints of his life. Through his eyes, she now saw the apartment: its bare walls, its generic Best Western artwork, its lack of any sort of personal effects: diplomas, photos. There were no clues about her life here. Which perhaps was the biggest clue of all. It was less an apartment than a foxhole. But Stephen should get that. He lived in a foxhole, too, albeit one with far nicer furnishings.
“Need help in the kitchen?” he asked.
“How are you with a knife?”
“I’m not a surgeon but I could probably remove an appendix if need be.”
“Then you can devein the shrimp.”
They worked in companionable silence, breaking open a bottle of cabernet at the respectable hour of six. Right as everything was being laid out on the table, Sunita burst through. “One more semester and I will be out of here.” She made a fist pump.