We haven't spoken in two years. I made sure of that. " "I know you did. " Denise's voice was gentle, but there was an effort behind the gentleness, as though she were laying down each sentence with great care. "That's why it mattered so much. You called and you asked to see her. You said there was something you needed to say to her face, something you should have said a long time ago and never had the courage to.
You asked her for one chance, just one. " Henry looked at Lia's back, at the line of her spine against the gray window light, and something in his chest pulled tight. Not memory exactly, but the ghost of a feeling, the residue of a decision he could no longer recall making. "And she said yes," he said. "She said yes. " Denise's eyes shown. "You picked her up.
You were driving her out to the overlook, the one above the valley where you two used to go. The rain started halfway up, and somewhere on that road" Her voice failed her, and she pressed her lips together until she had control of it again. "Somewhere on that road it happened. The overlook. " He did remember the overlook in the old way that he remembered everything from before the bench he had helped build there one summer. The view of the lights coming on across the valley at dusk, the way Lia used to lean her head on his shoulder and say nothing for an hour at a time.
He remembered loving her there. He had not let himself remember it in two years. But he could not remember choosing to go back. He could not remember picking up the phone. "There's more," Henry said.
It was not a question. He could see it in both of them, the part still unspoken, the thing they were holding behind their teeth. Lia turned from the window. Her eyes were wet, but her jaw was set, and when she spoke her voice was steadier than her mother's had been. "You had a ring," she said.
"It was in your jacket pocket. The paramedics found it when they cut you out of the truck. They gave it to me because they didn't know. They thought I was your wife. " A broken sound escaped her, half a laugh, half something else. "I've been carrying it in my coat for two days.
I didn't know what else to do with it. " The room went very quiet except for the steady electronic beat of the monitor. A ring. He had bought a ring. A man did not buy a ring and drive up a mountain in the rain to make small talk. A man did that for one reason only, and the reason was standing in front of him with a bandage on her head and tears she refused to let fall.
Henry felt the missing night yawning open inside him, and for the first time he understood the shape of what had fallen into it. He had spent two years convincing himself that letting her go had been the right thing, the responsible thing, the only thing a man in his position could do. He had built that belief carefully, board by board, the way he built everything. And somewhere in the dark he had torn it all down and gotten in his truck to undo it. And now he could not even remember the courage it must have taken.