Page 85

“So, this is goodbye, then?” Dev takes a step toward me.
I don’t have to try to remember his face. It’s etched into my memory. I put out my hand, like I’m ready to shake and close a deal. Dev laughs and gives my hand a decisive, businesslike squeeze. And then he pulls me toward him. For a goodbye kiss, it’s a great one. I put my hand on his chest, and feel the rhythm of his heart in my palm. I push him lightly away.
“Go,” I say, and turn around quickly.
If this were one of Amity’s romances, Dev would start to drive away but then I’d dash out and leap in front of his car. He’d get out yelling that I was crazy, that he could’ve run me over. I’d shout back something charming and nonsensical, and then we’d be kissing and crying, in each other’s arms again, vowing to never part. But these days Amity can’t do happy endings, and apparently neither can I.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Amity and I find Wyatt in the lobby, on his phone.
“Look at that smile. He can’t contain it,” Amity says.
Wyatt holds his hand over the phone and says, “I’m calling Bernard.” He’s jiggling his foot, pursing his lips as if to hold back a smile.
“Come on, come on,” he whispers, and then he’s smiling fully. “Oh my god, Bernard, it was amazing. I was amazing. I was Poirot and Miss Marple and DCI Foyle with dramatic pauses and everything.” His smile is huge. “Yes, in front of everyone. Nope, no vomit. A miracle.” He listens, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling. “I do too.”
Wyatt turns away, takes a few steps to distance himself, lowers his voice. He speaks too quietly for me to decipher his words, but I hear something for sure. There is love in his voice. He’s bubbling over, not only because he wants to relive the moment but also because he’s sharing it with the man he loves and who loves him back.
“I never bought all that nonsense about Bernard being tired of Wyatt,” Amity says. “Who would be tired of Wyatt?”
“So why did Bernard send him away?”
“I think he had a better sense of what Wyatt needed to be happy than Wyatt did himself. Wyatt was never going to be fulfilled trying to take on what Bernard loved. He had to pursue his own passions.”
“And you say you can’t write happy endings.”
Amity smiles. “This one wrote itself.”
This is Wyatt’s moment, and we revel in it like proud parents or, more accurately, like good friends. Because in the most unlikely of circumstances, that is what we have become.
On the way back to the cottage, there’s little traffic in the village, so we all three walk in the road. It’s started to rain, misty and light, and none of us are prepared, so we let the drops fall on our heads and our cheeks. Amity’s face is glistening under the streetlights. Wyatt’s freckles look darker and somehow more adorable. We talk about what’s next, at the end of our respective flights: Amity all the way back to San Francisco, Wyatt to Newark, and me to Buffalo. Amity has some wildly brilliant ideas for her thriller and has already messaged her agent that she’s going to try something new. Wyatt wants to find something back home that makes him feel as alive as he did solving this crime and presenting the solution to a live audience. My plan, if I have one, is less concrete. I want to sit with what I’ve learned about my mother and try to find out more. I want to understand the most important story she never told me.
The chance comes sooner than expected. As I walk back into the cottage, my phone rings. It’s Germaine. Thanks to Edwina, who knows someone who knows a social worker who knows everything, she’s found my grandfather, still alive, at the Derby Oaks Care Home. She suggests I delay my flight for a day so she can take me to visit him. I tell her I’ll think about it, that I’ll call her back. I’m not sure I’m brave enough.
Amity and Wyatt, not surprisingly, urge me to go.
“It might be your only chance,” Amity says. “Who knows when you’ll be back.”
“Isn’t it better to know him than to imagine him?” Wyatt says.
“The man whose carelessness set my mother’s childhood on fire? Maybe not.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
SATURDAY
Germaine picks me up early, right after Amity and Wyatt leave for the train station. She drives fast, which makes me even queasier than I already am. But I don’t know if I want her to slow down, which would delay this meeting, or speed up so I can get it over with. I don’t even know if I want to go.
“Pull over,” I say.
“Are you going to be sick?” Germaine checks her rearview mirror as she starts to slow down.
“I don’t know if I can do this. My grandfather sounds awful. Do I want to meet him? Is this what my mother would want?”
Germaine stops the car on the shoulder.
“I don’t know, Cath. You seemed sure last night.”