“Mom,” Abigail said. “It was totally worth it. Think about what you accomplished, all the plays you put on, all the actors you employed, all the people who were entertained, who were intellectually stimulated. You made art.” Abigail was aware, even as she was saying the words, that she was parroting what the man from the bachelorette weekend had said to her. She felt a flush of feeling for that man whose name she never even knew.
“No, I know,” Amelia said, and put her mug down on the side table. “I keep thinking the same thing. Just because something ends doesn’t mean it didn’t have value. Your father and I …”
After a pause, Abigail realized her mother wasn’t going to finish the sentence and said, “I guess marriage is hard.”
“Maybe not for everyone, honey. Maybe not for you. We really like Bruce, you know that?”
“I know you do.”
“And we can’t wait for the wedding.”
“You won’t cry, will you?”
“I’ll try not to cry too much. Can’t vouch for your father. What do you want for dinner tonight? If I were here alone, I’d probably eat cereal.” She’d moved to the edge of the sofa, her hands on her knees, suddenly practical.
“Cereal sounds great.”
Abigail waited for her mother to rise and go to the kitchen, but she stayed seated for a moment, then said, “You know, Abby, we’ll always be a family, the three of us. That will never change.”
“I know, Mom,” Abigail said.
That night Abigail woke just before dawn, struggling up from a bad dream that slipped away as soon as she tried to recollect it. Her chest hurt, and there was perspiration in her hairline. She lay still for a little while, wondering if she’d be able to fall back to sleep, but her body tingled, as if she’d had too much coffee. She watched the bedroom window fill with gray light and thought about her parents. They’d never seemed so vulnerable to her as they did this weekend. Even so, it was clear to her that Bruce’s plan to fund the Boxgrove Theatre again was a nonstarter. Or seemed to be. Her mother wasn’t interested in going down that road again, and she wasn’t sure that her dad would have the energy, either.
Her train was leaving Northampton at ten that morning, and for a few minutes Abigail wasn’t sure she wanted to go back to New York. She didn’t necessarily want to spend any more nights in her childhood home consoling her parents. But she suddenly imagined life if she lived here in Boxgrove, maybe in a cute studio apartment near the town center, the rent cheap enough that she wouldn’t have to work full-time, and she would have time to write. She’d get coffee at the Rockwell Diner and go to the tavern at the inn on Friday nights, where she’d probably know everyone in the place. She thought of Bruce, and for a surreal ten seconds couldn’t picture his face. Then it came to her, and with it, her fantasy about returning home disappeared.
CHAPTER 8
Bruce, after Abigail returned to the city, suggested that Abigail and he should spend the remaining nights before the wedding in their own apartments. At first Abigail thought it was an unnecessary restriction, but she soon grew to like the arrangement. There were only two weeks left before the wedding, and there was something old-fashioned and romantic that, after eating dinner together, Bruce would accompany her back to her apartment and they would kiss under the streetlamp as a way of saying good night. Bruce also suggested that they watch a film together—Abigail in her apartment, he in his, and they could talk about it later. They’d watched The Omen and Carrie (Abigail’s picks) that way, then watched The Descent and Kiss the Girls (Bruce’s picks). After a brief bout of hot September days, the weather had cooled, and the city was bearable again. Those post-dinner walks home, her arm casually looped through Bruce’s, discussing what film to watch that night, made Abigail feel as though she were falling in love with not just Bruce, but New York City all over again.
The wedding was all planned. They were getting married in a refurbished barn in the Hudson Valley, home to a Michelin-starred restaurant and a boutique hotel. Just ninety guests, sixty of them coming from Abigail’s friends and family. In some ways, planning the wedding had been relatively easy, with Bruce accepting all of