A Wedding in December_ A Novel - Anita Shreve [132]
Though either of the boys could have had the front seat, they’d chosen to sit together in the back. Bridget put the car in reverse. She had not said good-bye to Agnes or Harrison. Had they left already? Bridget made the turn, and as she did she caught sight of a branch of a tree glistening. It might be a trick of light, she thought, for it was just the one branch. Bridget stopped the car. It was a sight too beautiful to pass by. The branch pointed toward the mountains and glittered as if encased in jewels.
The limb must have been in shade, but now that the sun had hit it, the gemlike casing would last only seconds in the warmth.
Bridget had a thought. An extraordinary thought.
There was every possibility that she might live.
She might see more of Matt’s baseball games. Melissa might come for Christmas. Bridget might one day be sweltering in the bleachers watching her son graduate from college.
Bridget and Bill might grow old together. Really, really old together.
The thought was so astonishing that Bridget glanced back at Matt to see if he, too, had seen the glittering branch, if he, too, had had a similar realization. But her son already had on his earphones and was fiddling with his Walkman. He smiled at her and gave a little wave.
The wonder of it, Bridget thought as she put the van in gear and pulled out of the parking lot.
Harrison returned to his room and began packing. On the desk was his letter to Evelyn, written two days earlier. He read it and tore it up, dropping the bits into the wastebasket. With her lawyer’s eye, she would note the repetition of Nora’s name, and she might wonder.
His suitcase packed, Harrison glanced around the room to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. He stepped into the corridor. He let the heavy door close and click behind him.
He started for the lobby and the registration desk, but when he had descended the stairway, he took a quick detour into the library. He gazed out at the view (now familiar, now losing some of its charm), at the high-tech coffee machine, at the framed photograph of the house as it had been years ago. He studied again the racetrack, the train a blur in the distance. The place had been here long before there was a Nora or a Carl Laski or a Harrison Branch or the ghost of a Stephen Otis. How many other stories might there be, Harrison wondered, in a house so old?
He walked out into the lobby, but there was no one at the desk. He waited a suitable interval and then placed the heavy gold key on the blotter. He’d already given his credit card. They would send him the bill. How odd it would be to receive that piece of paper in Toronto. To have an envelope from Nora’s inn sitting on his kitchen table. One world intruding painfully into the other. Would Harrison be able to open it, or would he simply drop it into a file of bills, to be glanced at later—months later, perhaps?
It would sting, that bill, just the way a quick memory of Stephen could reach out and sting at any moment.
Harrison hoisted his bag over his shoulder and stepped into the sunshine.
The pavement was wet. The maze was revealing itself. Even the wrought iron fence shone in the sunlight.
Harrison walked quickly toward his car. It would take him just under two hours to get to Hartford. Another hour until his plane left. Two hours to Toronto. He’d be home in time for Sunday dinner, an old-fashioned ritual Evelyn and Harrison had decided to maintain, thinking that the boys needed one immovable feast in the week. Evelyn would do up a rack of lamb (his favorite) or a pork loin (the boys’ favorite), and they would take their time over the meal, allowing nothing to interfere. Today that dinner would be a kind of torture for Harrison, though next week’s would be slightly easier, and easier still the week after that. And finally his memories of this wedding weekend would not be with him all the time, but would come only intermittently—at lunch, say, while waiting for a colleague and trying to draw from memory