worst. But there is something kind of great about the extremity of the despair. Feeling that strongly about love.”
“So I guess Andrew wasn’t your first love?” Sam said.
She twirled spaghetti around her fork, then wondered if it was childish to do so. She felt happy, sophisticated, having this conversation at a candlelit table covered in white linen.
“No, no, no,” Elisabeth said. “The first was Jacob. I was wild about him. I thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together.”
“What happened?” Sam said.
“My father slept with his mother.”
Sam was stunned. She might have had a hundred guesses and never come up with that.
“Jacob left me over it. The whole thing ended his parents’ marriage. It was dark.”
“Oh God,” Sam said.
“His mother thought my father was going to marry her. That’s why she confessed everything to her husband. When my father dropped her, she tried to kill herself. Jacob didn’t want anything to do with me after that.”
“How awful.”
“It was. We were living together by then.”
“Did your mom find out about the affair?”
“She knew. Just part of my parents’ sick games. When I stopped speaking to my father because of it, my mother told me not to be selfish, that it had nothing to do with me.”
“That is horrible,” Sam said. “I’m so sorry.”
“He’d always been a philanderer. But that one, I have to believe, was just for the purpose of breaking us up. My father hated Jacob. He wanted him gone. And my father has to get his way.”
“Why did he hate him?”
“Jacob was a musician. Covered in tattoos. Long hair, the works. Not up to my parents’ standards. That’s the kind of guy I used to go for.”
“When you met Andrew, were your parents elated? He seems like the type parents love.”
Sam wondered if this was why Elisabeth had chosen him, but Elisabeth shook her head.
“It wasn’t until after Andrew and I eloped that I even told them about him. If anything, them liking him might have worked against him. But I was ready. For a nice, stable guy who treated me well and was smart and kind and steady. You’ll see. Your friends will lose their taste for bad boys in a few years. It gets old.”
“Did your father ever apologize?”
“God no, he’s incapable. My sister, Charlotte, is the one family member who fully understood and acknowledged how screwed up it was. She didn’t speak to our father either, during those three years we weren’t talking. Then he had a heart attack. That ended the standoff. But Charlotte and I still keep our parents at arm’s length, even now. There are ways my father would love to use to get back in our good graces, but neither of us will let him.”
So this was what she meant by semi-estranged.
“I don’t think my parents like Clive very much,” Sam said. “They don’t believe we’ll be able to live, with my being just out of school and him doing what he does.”
“Andrew and I were in the same boat when we met,” Elisabeth said. “Totally on our own. But we made it work. You will too, Sam, if it’s what you want.”
Sam took such comfort in her advice, coming, as it did, from experience. It was like she was in the presence of an older, wiser version of herself. She could tell Elisabeth liked giving her advice too, being the voice of reason.
When the bill came, Elisabeth wouldn’t let Sam near it.
“I can’t believe how cheap this place is,” she said. “Compared to restaurants in the city, it’s like nothing.”
* * *
—
George’s discussion group met in the quiet commercial center of the town where he and Faye lived. Every third storefront was boarded up. A veterinarian’s office was gone, and a bookstore. A hot pink poster board was taped to a plate-glass window under a sign that read DONAHUE’S SHOES.
Thank you for six wonderful decades, someone had written by hand. It was our pleasure to serve you.
“We fought hard for that one,” George said as they passed. “We got a group together to protest online shopping. There was even a one-day boycott. We got over fifty signatures from people agreeing to take part. But poor Hal, eventually he had no choice but to close.”
Next door to where the shoe store had been was Lindy’s Bakery. George pushed the door open. A bell jingled overhead.
Inside, there were four small tables, three of which were empty.
Three old guys and a heavyset woman in an apron sat at the fourth table,