Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [11]
I looked into his eyes and could see the truth. He was as vested as I was.
***
The next day I told Ryan I couldn’t marry him. It was the worst day of my life to that point. I had had my heart broken once before him—granted, on a much more adolescent level—but this was so much worse. This was heartbreak plus remorse and guilt and even shame over the scandal of calling off a wedding.
“Why?” he asked through tears I still can’t bear to think about too closely. I had seen Ryan cry before, but never because of me.
As hard as it was, I felt that I owed him the truth, brutal though it was.
“I love you, Ryan. But I’m not in love with you. And I can’t marry someone I’m not in love with,” I said, knowing that it sounded like a canned breakup line. Like the sort of unsubstantial, shallow excuse middle-aged men give before divorcing their wives.
“How do you know?” Ryan asked. “What does that even mean?
I could only shake my head and think of that moment on the train, with the stranger named Nick in the blue-gray scrubs, and say again and again that I was sorry.
Cate was the only one who got the full story. The only one who knows the truth, even today. That I met Nick before I broke up with Ryan. That if it weren’t for Nick, I would ve married Ryan. That I’d probably still be married to Ryan, living in a different city with different children and a different life altogether. A watered-down, anemic version of my life now. All the same downsides of motherhood, none of the upsides of true love.
Of course, there was speculation about infidelity among some of our more partisan friends when Nick and I started to seriously date only a few months later. Even Ryan (who at the time still knew me better than anyone, Nick included) expressed doubts about the timing of things, how quickly I had moved on.
“I want to believe you are a good person,” he wrote in a letter I still have somewhere. “I want to believe that you were honest with me and would never cheat. But I have a hard time not wondering when you and your new boyfriend actually met.”
I wrote him back, despite the fact that he told me not to, declaring my innocence, apologizing once again for the pain I caused him. I told him that he would always have a special place in my heart, and that I hoped, in time, he would forgive me and find someone who loved him the way he deserved to be loved. The implication was clear—I had found what I wanted for him. I was in love with Nick.
It is a feeling that has never wavered. Life isn’t always fun, and is almost never easy, I think, as I return to the kitchen in my troubleshooting mode, ready for my second cup of coffee, but I am in love with my husband and he is in love with me. It is the constant in my life, and will continue to be so, as our children grow, my career changes, friends come and go. I am sure of this.
But I still find myself reaching out and knocking twice on our wooden cutting board. Because you can never be too sure when it comes to the things that matter most.
4
Valerie
The following morning, Charlie is moved across the street, from the ER at Mass General to Shriners, which Valerie has been told repeatedly is one of the leading pediatric burn centers in the country. She knows they are in for a long, uphill struggle when they get there, but she also feels relief that Charlie’s condition is no longer a life-or-death emergency, a feeling that is bolstered by the sight of Dr, Russo waiting for them in their new room.
It has not even been a full day since their first conversation, but she already trusts him as much as she’s ever trusted anyone. As he steps toward her, clipboard in hand, Valerie notices how striking his features are, admiring the curve of his bottom lip, his elegant nose, his liquid brown eyes.
“Hello,” he says, forming each syllable carefully, his manner and posture formal. Yet there is something familiar, even comforting, about him, too, and Valerie fleetingly considers whether their paths have