The First Husband

by Laura Dave

  “I don’t know how to explain it, Griffin. I woke up one day and it’s like I’d ended up in a completely new life. I know I chose that, but it doesn’t feel that simple,” I said. “None of it feels simple to me.”

  He was already on his way toward the door, he was already on his way away from me. And this wasn’t enough to keep him.

  “I can’t fix that for you, Annie,” he said. “I don’t want to spend my life trying to.”

  He looked at me for one last second. He didn’t look angry, or upset. He looked clear, certain.

  Then he was gone.

  30

  The next morning I called Peter.

  “I think I may have screwed everything up . . .” I said.

  I was standing in the kitchen, the house quiet—perfectly peaceful—the first bit of sun hovering over the backyard, over the forest, making the trees shine.

  I turned away from the window.

  “Peter,” I said, “don’t be mad, but what if I said I think you may be right and I do need to go? To London, I mean?”

  The words felt weird on my tongue, waxlike and wrong. Yet, I was able to ignore that—had to ignore that—because I also felt a certain kind of relief, just hearing them, out in the world, ready to do their work.

  “My love,” he said. His voice was still husky with sleep. “I’d tell you that you could have waited until seven A.M. to share with me what I already know. It’s seven A.M. for unsurprising news. That is the rule.”

  “So it’s not too late to take the job?” I asked.

  “Of course it isn’t too late,” he said. “I accepted the position on your behalf last week.”

  I looked down at the phone, totally confused. “But how could you do that?” I asked.

  “Well, easily,” he said. “Melinda Beckett Martin, the paper’s deputy managing editor, not to mention Caleb Beckett the First’s very favorite niece, called to ask me if you were taking the job, and I told her of course you were. That you couldn’t wait to bring ‘Checking Out’ into international syndication. That despite appearances to the contrary, you weren’t a fool.”

  “No, but what I’m saying is . . .”

  I looked around the kitchen, the twins’ stuff strewn about, Cheryl’s watering can left by the sink; pictured Griffin sleeping upstairs; thought again of all that I was walking away from in the name of not being sure if I had gotten there for the right reasons. And how I could stay.

  “How did you know I’d get here?” I asked.

  He sighed. Then he sighed again, just in case I missed it.

  “My love, how can I say this gently before hanging up on you and going back to sleep?” he said. “I never thought you weren’t going to get here.”

  I don’t remember how it happened, exactly—who suggested it first—that we go for a walk. It didn’t matter. Both of us, I think, already knew what was about to happen, and neither of us wanted to be inside of the house when it did.

  It was after midnight, the moon steering us away from town—toward farther-off farmland, toward the mountains themselves.

  I wasn’t sure what to start by saying, but it felt wrong to make him do it. It felt wrong to do anything but make this as painless as possible. As if, for either of us, that was a possibility.

  “Do you remember the conversation we had at the beach that day?” I said. “How I tried to tell you about the best and worst thing about being with Nick? And I said the worst was that I rarely remembered feeling safe?”

  “Sure . . .”

  “I think that it wasn’t fair to put that on him. That feeling of safe? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that. And maybe instead of just deciding that Nick was the problem, or the latest in a series of problems, I should have thought about something else.”

  “Which is what?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I’m the problem,” I said.

  Griffin looked at me. “Maybe he just wasn’t the right person.”

  “And what’s the excuse this time?” I said. “The evidence is mounting that I don’t have any idea how to do it, Griffin. Make a home with someone else, feel comfortable in it. And maybe I won’t be able to figure out how, unless I can do that first piece on my own. Make myself safe and comfortable. And then be able to feel like I’m choosing into everything else.”

  It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say. But it was close enough. It was close enough for Griffin to understand.

  He leaned in and put his arms around me.

  “I know it sounds crazy. How can someone figure out how to stay by going again? ” I said, trying to explain it. “But going again is the only way I’ve ever found what I’m looking for.”

  He was still holding me there, to him, when he spoke, so I couldn’t see his face.

  “I’m not sure we get to, Annie,” he said. “I’m not sure we get to choose when or where we find what we’re looking for.”

  I started to say that maybe that was true, maybe our timing was the problem, maybe if we met five years from now, or five months, or five minutes even, but—and I was looking for the but, for the way out—I was scared he was saying what he was saying to convince me to stay. To stay right where I was, with him, and try harder.

  But then I looked up at him, into his strong and resolved face, and realized he was saying it to let me go.

  Which was when he kissed me, one last time. And did.

  31

  A few years after I started “Checking Out,” there was a brief period when we expanded the column to include a supplement called “Late Checkout,” which focused on finding the best deals or free activity alternatives in any city you happened to be visiting. In Montreal, for example, “Late” would recommend that instead of paying for a guided dinner-and-dancing boat tour of the St. Lawrence River, you should consider heading down to the ferry on the Jacques-Cartier Pier, which provided visitors with gorgeous views of Montreal’s downtown, and a great way to visit the old fort at Musée David M. Stewart. All for a fraction of the cost.

  But “Late” failed, monumentally and fast, which came as a surprise to me. It had been my idea, and I had thought it was a good one. Who didn’t want to experience a city without breaking the bank? It wasn’t until years later that I realized what we had done wrong. It wasn’t that we provided a free option, it was that we had also provided the expensive option beside it. It was in the comparison that we lost the readers. Because all they could see, then, was the option they wouldn’t be taking. All they could think about was what they’d get if they could spend more. About what was about to be missed.

  I arrived in London late on a Sunday afternoon—stepping onto the tarmac at Heathrow Airport some seventeen hours before I was scheduled to report to my new office at Buckingham Gate.

  For my second major move in less than a year, I’d taken very little with me. Two suitcases, two pictures of Mila, and the phone numbers of two people I knew in the entire country—one number was my new boss’s, Melinda Martin. The other I couldn’t feel good about dialing. Not yet.

  The newspaper sent a car service to the airport to fetch me, which provided a far nicer introduction to my new hometown than the Tube would have granted. As a bonus, the sun had started setting over Central London as the driver, Thomas, took the long way to my new abode, pointing out the sites he thought I’d enjoy along the way: Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column; the National Gallery and Buckingham Palace; Waterloo Bridge and Piccadilly Circus. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I’d been to all of those places before for “Checking Out.” I didn’t ever want to have that kind of heart.

  He smiled at me in the rearview mirror. “So what kind of writing do you do for the newspaper?” he asked me.

  I shrugged. “Mostly,” I said, “obituaries.”

  Thomas took a right down Sloane Street, and I looked out the window at the hustle and bustle of late-day shoppers hurrying in for a chance at final sales, at early-evening restaurantgoers, filling up the good window seats while they still could. Then Thomas hooked a
left onto a tiny side street, which looked like, and felt like, an entirely different world. An exceptionally peaceful and intimate one, with just a handful of manicured gardens and small, beautiful buildings greeting me.

  “This is lovely,” I said.

  “It’s the best block in London,” he said. “Truly. There have been books written about it.”

  “I believe it,” I said.

  Thomas shut off the ignition, and turned toward me. “And it’s your home,” he said, giving me a bright smile.

  I tried to look as happy about that as he did. You’re choosing this, I reminded myself. You’re doing the right thing. Or, at least, the only thing.

  And thankfully, as we walked into my new flat together—each carrying a suitcase—I didn’t have to try so hard anymore to believe it. It was, hands down, the single most charming apartment I’d ever seen. It looked like a carriage house, with large windows and tall, white pillars, an old-fashioned kitchen (complete with a farmer’s sink), and rustic wood furniture running through the hallways and leading up a tiny staircase to the loveliest bedroom. The river just outside every window, endless, and glowing.

  “Quite the digs they’ve handed you here,” Thomas said, as we stood by the living room windows, filling out the paperwork he needed completed.

  “It’s like a ready-made life,” he said.

  I looked up at him, that phrase catching me. A ready-made life.

  Then I forced a smile. And followed his eyes outside. First toward the river, then toward what was across it: Battersea. My supposed-to-be home was over there, somewhere, the one I’d picked out for Nick and me. And there I was—able to look straight at it, from a short distance. Just a few months later than planned. Didn’t that mean something? That, after everything, this was where I was supposed to be?

  I quickly signed along the necessary X’s.

  “You should count yourself as lucky. I’ve seen some of the other places they put the newbies to stay,” Thomas said. “You must be good at writing about dead people.”

  “Very,” I heard someone say.

  We turned to find Peter in the kitchen doorway, holding a bottle of Dom Perignon and two champagne flutes.

  “Peter!” I said. “How did you get in here?”

  “I hid in the kitchen pantry,” he said. “A woman living alone? You really should check all doors upon entering.”

  I ran over to him, giving him a hug. And holding on, probably for a little too long. Okay, definitely for too long, Peter utilizing the expensive champagne bottle to separate us.

  “Hold it together, my love,” he said.

  “I just can’t believe it’s you,” I said. “What are you even doing here?”

  “I told you they were sending me over here for a spell. So here I am to greet you . . .” he said. “Midspell.”

  I gave him a big smile. “I’m so glad to see you,” I said. “I’m just so, so glad.”

  As I went in for another hug, tears springing to my eyes, he handed me my champagne flute.

  “I thought we just decided you were going to hold it together,” he said. “Let’s go ahead and stick to the plan.”

  That night, wine gift in hand, Peter and I went to a cocktail party in South Kensington at the house of my new boss, Melinda Beckett Martin.

  Peter had told me only a few details about Melinda, which was why I wasn’t sure what to expect upon meeting her. She was just your typical, major success: in her midthirties, married to an Oxford professor, and an integral part of Beckett Media, as Peter explained, having run television programming for the company in Australia and Asia, and sending profits through the roof in both places.

  But even if Peter had provided all possible details about Melinda, I’m not sure it would have adequately prepared me for what was waiting when we approached her beautiful, doublefronted Victorian home. When the door opened, Melinda herself was standing there to greet us. I reached out to hand her the bottle of wine that we’d brought.

  This was my first mistake. I narrowly avoided jamming her right in the boobs with it.

  I looked up—all the way up—to see a six-foot-five-inch woman, dressed in a fashionable burnt orange polka-dot skirt and white ballet slippers. Wearing just about the warmest smile I’d ever seen.

  “Mr. Shepherd!” she said to Peter, in a ravishing Australian accent. “Welcome! Welcome!”

  She was carrying a tray of mixed hors d’oeuvres, which she immediately moved out of the way in order to lean down and double-cheek kiss him.

  Then she turned to me.

  “And you must be the divine Ms. Adams that I’ve heard so much about?”

  “That would be me,” I said. “It is nice to meet . . .”

  But before I could even say you, she was double-kissing me too and wrapping her arm around my shoulder, like we were the oldest of friends.

  “We have so much to talk about,” she said.

  And then she was leading us through a central tiled hall into her home—a lived-in home, to use a Britishism: decorated with an enormous farmer’s table, and photographs everywhere (wedding photos and family photos, photos of her husband and her traveling, photos from their respective childhoods), and the type of warm, playful furniture and artwork that made a home feel filled with people and music and laughter, even when it wasn’t.

  Now it was filled to the brim with all three. As Peter situated himself with an old friend of his from university, right by the open bar, Melinda took me around and introduced me to seemingly every single person there: my future colleagues and their drunk significant others; Melinda’s neighbors and favorite friends; her future nanny.

  She kept feeding me the delicious appetizers from her tray as we moved along through the crowd. And by the time we curled into two purple velvet chairs in the corner of the living room, the model-tall Melinda managing to do so far more gracefully than me—curling her lanky body beneath her, wrapping her hand behind her neck in rest position—I kind of loved her a little.

  “So,” she said, “let me start by saying thank you for that.”

  “For what?” I said.

  “Saving me from having to think about what on earth to talk to all those people about, all on my own,” she said. Then she leaned in closer, and gave me a wink. “I dread cocktail parties.”

  “I’m with you,” I said.

  “Well, we will begin with the work stuff tomorrow, but I just wanted to welcome you into the fold officially,” she said. “I hear my cousin Caleb has been less than welcoming, officially or otherwise.”

  I shook my head. “No, I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “I just . . . haven’t spoken to him yet.”

  “Well, with any luck, we’ll figure out how to keep it that way for a while,” she said. “He is one of those people who thinks he has all the answers. So just to piss him off, I send him e-mails marked urgent at least twice a day, asking him impossible questions, like, what is the price of a quart of milk in Adyar, India?”

  I started to laugh, just as someone called Melinda’s name.

  “The problem is,” she said, “he always knows the answer. What is worse than that?”

  “Very little,” I said.

  She pointed at the name-caller to give her a minute. And gave me a kind look.

  “I’m so sorry to leave you. But I think I have to put out a fire in the southwest corner.” She circled her hands around her mouth, making a clock. “Three o’clock.”

  I turned to see a couple of some sort looking desperately awkward trying to talk to each other. Or desperately awkward standing together and not talking to each other. Their eyes on the floor.

  “No, of course, of course . . .” I said. “Thank you for giving me as much time as you did.”

  She stood up again, towering over me in an embarrassing way. “It’s wonderful to meet you, Annie Adams,” she said.

  “You too, Melinda,” I said.

  Then she handled me a final crab cake and ran off.

  I watched her go, her bright polk
a dots moving away with her, and started to look around for Peter, to let him know I was ready to leave. But just then my phone rang, BLOCKED coming up on the caller ID.

  Griffin, I thought immediately, and hopefully. We hadn’t talked since I’d left the house earlier in the week—heading first to New York, and then to London. We hadn’t talked since we had really talked. And I knew it had to come down to me, reaching out to him, if that was what I wanted. And I knew I didn’t have forever to do it. I had far less than forever if I were going to turn things around. Still, I found myself hoping. But it wasn’t Griffin on the other end.

  It was Jordan.

  “Are you still mad at me? ” she asked. “And, before you answer that, please note that I’ve made a list of several very compelling reasons why you shouldn’t be. Almost like an ode to my favorite column. That’s number one, actually. That ‘Checking Out’ is my favorite column.” She paused. “And I’ve written more letters to the editor than anyone on earth to say so.”

  I stepped out onto the balcony, where I could get some peace and quiet, the party still visible—like a silent film, before me—through the glass doors.

  I sighed. “What’s the point of being mad now?” I said. “It feels like a lot of energy.”

  “Really?” she said. “That’s great news!”

  “I’m glad you’re pleased.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “But I do reserve the right to be mad again, when I’m feeling more up to it. And less jet-lagged.”

  “Reserved!” she said. “So, tell me, how is it?”

  I looked at the festive party happening before me, and then turned to stare up at the starry sky above, the dry wind feeling nice against my skin.

  “Unseasonably mild,” I said.