in two. She’d felt that they were the two luckiest people in the world.
“What does he do for a living?” Cait asked now.
Rebecca scanned her face, looking for some trace of slyness, but Cait just seemed curious. Maybe she really didn’t know. Rebecca wasn’t about to tell her now. “Oh, he works for the government,” she said vaguely. “I don’t really understand it. What about you?” she asked, desperate to change the subject. “Are you married?”
Cait barked out a laugh. “Me? God, no.”
“You’re too young, I guess.” Though she couldn’t have been much older than Rebecca had been at the time. But Rebecca had the sense that women Cait’s age didn’t aspire to marriage, not in the way her generation had. Theirs had been the last to invest in their parents’ model for life: marriage, mortgage, kids. People Cait’s age didn’t seem to care about those things the way they had, or perhaps it was more accurate to say they had accepted that the promise those things offered was often empty and unachievable. Rebecca had read the articles about how hers was the first generation destined to be worse off than her parents’. She guessed they hadn’t gotten the memo in time. Cait’s generation had. “Do you have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend?” Rebecca added hastily.
“Nothing to write home about.”
“Well, you’re still young. There’s plenty of time.”
“I guess. How long did you know your husband before you got married?”
“Just a couple of months. Not long.”
“Jeez. I don’t know if I like a pair of shoes until I’ve worn them for a couple of months. Never mind marry them.” Cait winced. “Not that I’m comparing your husband to a pair of shoes.”
“Don’t worry, I know what you meant. You’re right, it was fast. Our friends all thought we were crazy.”
“Ten years,” Cait marveled. “How old were you? Twelve?”
“Twenty-five.”
“That’s how old I am!” The way Cait said it made it clear that this was unfathomable to her. “God, it’s just . . . I feel like I’m barely an adult, you know? Like, I’m still impressed when I pay a bill on time or remember to get the Jeep serviced.”
“I guess we were pretty young, though I don’t remember feeling that way at the time. The opposite, really: we were completely sure of ourselves and each other.”
“How did you know he was the one? Like, this guy I just started seeing—I like him, but there’s no lightning bolt, you know? I always thought that, when I met the right guy, it would be like getting struck by lightning.” Cait tossed her an embarrassed look. “But in a good way, obviously.”
“I guess it was a little like being hit by lightning,” Rebecca said. “I guess people would call it love at first sight.” She could remember those early weeks, when it felt like the entire universe had aligned itself toward the two of them. Neither of them slept longer than a few hours a night, too consumed by the newness of each other’s bodies and minds and hearts. There was a feeling of something precious slipping through their fingers. When he proposed to her over a bottle of Ernest & Julio Gallo, holding a dime-store plastic ring in his outstretched hand, it felt like a warm blanket spreading out, waiting to catch her.
Rebecca looked at the girl, one hand resting lazily on the steering wheel, the other fiddling with the mess of curls on top of her head. She tried to picture herself living Cait’s life: single, scraping by on tips, making these long drives with strangers, ignoring the inherent dangers that lay around every corner for a woman like her. The truth was, even when Rebecca had been living a similar life, she hadn’t really believed it was hers. She was waiting for her real life to begin, and when she met Patrick, she believed that it had. The thing she’d wanted more than anything was a love like her mother and father had. Even though it was embarrassing to admit, even though it went against all she and her college friends had purportedly railed against, all she’d ever wanted was to be a woman who was loved.
“What’s he like?”
“My husband?”
Cait nodded.
“Oh, you know. He’s great. Smart. Good-looking. Considerate.” Were these things true? she wondered. He was certainly smart, and no one could deny that he was good-looking. Could she still think of him as considerate? In his way, she told herself. In his own way, he was. “My father never liked