“No wonder we hated each other,” March says. She reaches across the table and takes Susie’s hand.
“All I can say is, I’m glad my mother never found out.” Susie squeezes March’s hand, then withdraws it so she can get a Kleenex out of her purse. “I’ve really tried not to be angry at him, but I don’t think I could have been so generous if my mother had known.”
“Have you ever talked to him about it?”
“Him? My father?” Susie wipes her eyes, then blows her nose. “Are you crazy? You don’t talk to my father, you listen.”
Regina brings over desserts—on the house: chocolate mousse with sugar cookies wedged in along the side of the bowl, and a helping of plum pudding, in honor of the Founder. Regina sits down with them for a minute to talk about old times and discuss her pet project—the Harvest Fair down at Town Hall. Somehow, before Regina goes back to work, March finds herself announcing that she would consider running a booth that will raise funds for the children’s section of the library.
“Why did you do that?” Susie asks, when they’ve gotten their coats and paid their bill—with a thirty percent tip for Regina. They’ve left behind half-portions of everything they ordered, and are stuffed all the same. “You won’t still be here for the Harvest Fair. If you want my opinion, you should go home right now.”
“Well, thanks,” March says as they go outside.
The wind has died down a bit, but it’s still a raw night.
“When you come back to a town like this, people think you’re staying,” Susie says.
March wraps her scarf around her throat. “I don’t care what people think.”
“Okay, forget people. How about Richard?”
“Who?” March teases.
“You’re deranged.” Susie links her arm through March’s. “You’d better get serious.”
“I’ve been serious for so long I can’t stand it.” If she hadn’t been so serious, would she have agreed to come back to him, even though she was in the seventh month of her pregnancy? By then, she’d already lined up a baby-sitter and a diaper service; she had registered in a new mothers’ exercise class. Could she have booked a flight to Logan anyway? Could she have tried? “I need a break from my life, that’s what I’ve realized.”
This, of course, is what she’s been saying to Richard—it’s only a break; it’s nothing, only a little time apart.
“The definition of a break is a rupture,” Richard said to her, only yesterday, an answer which, of course, drove March completely crazy.
“What if Richard jumped on a plane? What if he arrived in the middle of the night and said you had to leave with him?”
“He’s taking his graduate students into the field next week, and he’d never disappoint them. Even if he wasn’t scheduled to do that, he wouldn’t appear in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t tell me what to do. Richard’s not like that.”
“Exactly,” Susie says. “I should have married him.”
They head for Susie’s truck, parked down the street from the Lyon Cafe, which is all but overflowing.
“What a party,” March says.
“Every drunk in town. Except for Alan. This is Hollis’s turf.”
“Thanks for sharing that.”
March gets into Susie’s truck and slams the door. Just hearing his name stirs everything up for her. It’s even colder in the truck than it is out on the street. March turns up her collar; she’s had too much wine with dinner, she realizes that now.
Susie comes to sit behind the wheel. “Look, if you want to kid yourself, fine. If you want to put something over on Richard, okay. But don’t think you’re going to fool me. You’re here because of Hollis. I don’t understand it, but I guess I don’t have to. Maybe you need to see him, to make certain he doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“I’m glad that being a reporter for The Bugle entitles you to psychoanalyze me.”
March opens the door, and without a look back, she heads off down the street. She’s furious, but when she really thinks about it, she’s angry because Susie is right. March is drawn to the Lyon Cafe, only a few steps away now, in hopes of seeing Hollis. Susie knows her far too well, although March herself isn’t certain whether or not she’ll really have the courage to act on her impulse, until Susie honks her horn, trying to get her attention. That’s when March walks through the door.