herself thinking, swiftly followed by wondering why it should matter, why she should even want to know.
“I also broke off an engagement,” he said, as if reading her mind. “We were going to be living in a big house in Mill Neck, gifted to us by my father, and I knew I would die out there.”
“Did you leave her standing at the altar?” Audrey is intrigued.
“Not quite, but almost. A week before. I knew it was wrong from the beginning, but she was the girl I was expected to marry, from the right family, and it became a freight train, gathering steam. There was no way to stop it.”
“But you managed.”
“I took the coward’s way out.” He stopped smiling then, a glimmer of shame in his eyes. “I left a note. Horrible. I still can’t quite believe that’s how I did it, but I knew if I tried to do it in person, Clarissa would convince me to stay, and I knew that if I stayed, I would die.”
“Clarissa.” Audrey turned the name over in her mind, picturing a slim, elegant blonde, steel blue eyes, hair in a tight chignon, immaculately dressed in Galanos or Balenciaga, purse matching her pumps, the quintessential Waspy American wife.
“She does look exactly as you would expect a girl called Clarissa to look,” he said, as if reading her mind again.
“Tall, slim, beautiful? Blond with blue eyes? In Balenciaga?”
“Galanos. But yes. The rest. I don’t even want to think about what I did to her.”
“Is there any possibility that just as you knew it wasn’t the right match, on some level she might have known too?”
“I would like to think that’s true. In many ways, I do believe that she may realize that it was never me she was in love with, but what I represented. I could never be the man she needed me to be. Wow.” He shook his head with an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t usually reveal this much to anyone, let alone someone I just met.”
“I’m a good listener.”
“So it seems.”
They smiled at each other, the mutual gaze lasting a second longer than was altogether comfortable, Audrey looking away, confused. It wasn’t done, surely, to reveal so much about oneself to a stranger. Where was the small talk? Where was the polite conversation? How did they get to such big, important stuff so quickly?
And what did it mean?
Don’t be silly, she told herself. It certainly doesn’t mean what you think it means. This isn’t attraction. I am very happily married. Just because a single man who happens to be attractive is standing feet away from me and makes me feel instantly comfortable doesn’t mean I have to start acting like a giddy schoolgirl. Grow up, Audrey. Don’t be so childish.
“You must be busy. Please don’t let me keep you.” She snapped into more formal mode to hide her embarrassment at that gaze, that look that held a hint of something more.
“Okay,” he said with an easy shrug, draining the rest of the can. “It was good to meet you. I’m next door if you need anything.” And with a wave, he was gone.
* * *
In the fridge Audrey found a packet of ground beef. She grated an onion, mixed eggs into the beef, added crushed saltines and some dried herbs she pulled from the spice rack. She sang as she used her hands to mix the meatloaf together, as carefree and happy as a young girl.
She found the loaf pan—there was always a loaf pan—and placed the meatloaf on the middle shelf of the oven. She was not an expert cook but had developed a range of recipes to keep Richard happy: meatloaf, creamed chicken, meatballs. She had learned how to make a traditional Sunday roast, complete with Yorkshire pudding, and had delighted him with American-style fried chicken.
Today, for the salad, she arranged large leaves of iceberg lettuce on a plate, carefully peeling a pear and placing the pear halves on top, dousing them with lemon juice to stop them from turning brown. In the cavity she placed a spoonful of mayonnaise, adding grated cheese over the top, before putting it in the fridge.
The sun streamed through the kitchen windows in a way it didn’t seem to in England, fresh and clear. She had got used to the endlessly grey drizzly days, had even grown to love them in a strange way, certainly to love how green everything was, how lush, until this moment, being back in Nantucket, back in the