Page 64 of The Beast
"I had a whole version of the future," he said. "Very detailed. I could see it in a way I can't always see things. The house, eventually—somewhere with a yard, which I know is a cliché, but I genuinely wanted the yard. I wanted—" He paused, and hishands shifted on the wheel. "I wanted to cook on Sundays. I had this idea about Sunday dinners, the kind that go all afternoon, and having people over. I was going to learn to make your mother's bread. I'd already asked her for the recipe."
Something moved through my chest that I didn't have a clean name for.
"She gave it to you?" I said.
"She did. She wrote it out on an index card and put it in my jacket pocket at the rehearsal dinner." He smiled at the road. "Said not to tell you because you'd tease her for going soft."
My mother and her index card. My mother who had saidGod is telling us somethingin the kitchen this morning with her hands shaking. My mother, who had loved Daniel Whitaker in the way of mothers who recognized men who would take good care.
"Daniel," I said.
"You don't have to say anything," he said. "I'm not—I'm not trying to make this harder. I just want you to know that it was real, what I was looking forward to. It wasn't just—a plan, or the next logical thing. I wanted it. I wanted you. I wanted the yard and the bread and the Sunday dinners." He glanced over briefly. "I want you to know that someone wanted all of that with you."
I felt my eyes go bright and pressed my lips together.
"I know," I said. "I know you did."
"And I also know," he said, returning his eyes to the road, "that you couldn't. I don't fully understand why—maybe I'm not supposed to—but I believe you when you say it wasn't about me. I believe you that it was something you had to do." He was quiet for a moment. "I'm trying very hard to believe that."
"It's true," I said. "I need you to believe it because it's true."
"I know." His voice was even. He was managing this so carefully, holding himself so steady, and I understood what it was costing him. I loved him for it in the way you loved someonewho was doing the hardest version of a hard thing with all the grace they had.
"You're a good man," I said. "You are—you are genuinely one of the best people I know, Daniel, and I am sorry. I am so sorry for yesterday and for everything that came after. You deserved better than standing at that altar."
He was quiet for a long moment. The highway opened up around us, the afternoon light glinting off the traffic.
"Can I tell you something?" he asked.
"Yes."
"When I was standing there—at the altar, waiting—there was a moment, before I knew something was wrong, when I looked down the church and I thought—" He stopped. Seemed to be choosing. "I thought: I hope she's happy. Whatever happens. I just—I want her to be happy." He exhaled. "That was the thought I had. And I've been trying to hold onto that one, because the others are—" He stopped again. "The others are harder."
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth for a moment.
"You shouldn't be this kind to me," I said. "You're allowed to be angry."
"I am angry," he said. "That's the thing. I'm angry and I'm—I have a lot of feelings that I'm not going to put on you in a car on the way to the airport." He looked at me briefly, something almost rueful in it. "I'm also an attorney. I know how to compartmentalize."
I made a sound that was part laugh and part something else.
"I'll be okay," he said. "I want you to know that. I will be okay, and I'm going to be okay, and I don't need you to carry that as a weight." His voice was level. "That's not me being noble. It's me being honest."
We drove in silence for a while. The airport signs appeared at the edges of the highway—the universal grammar of departures.
I thought about Sunday dinners that weren't going to happen. An index card with my mother's bread recipe in a jacket pocket. A pub in Killarney that had been there since the 1700s, the name written down three times so it wouldn't be lost.
I thought about a different version of this afternoon—Daniel and I, today, driving to an international terminal instead of a domestic one. Passports out. The giddiness of an airport when you're going somewhere you've always wanted to go.
"I should have told you more," I said quietly.
He glanced at me.
"I should have been more honest, earlier. A year ago. Two years ago. I should have—I should have said the things I was feeling instead of letting them pile up underneath." I looked at him. "You deserved someone who could be fully present. I was always—half somewhere else. In the studio. In my head. I don't think I knew how to give you everything, and I should have understood that sooner and said so."
"We were both doing our best," he said simply. "I think that's probably what's true."
"You were doing better than your best," I said. "The bread recipe. Backup copies of the pub name."
