Page 101 of The New Place

Abbot stares down at their hands, his knuckles white and Ned’s resting gently over his grip on himself.

Abbot pulls a breath in. Lets it out. The din of the TV drifts up from downstairs with the scent of a sautéing onion.

He nods when he can, the lump in his throat aching.

“I wish I could have met her,” Ned says.

Abbot can’t do this. He wants to crawl out of his skin. Run down the stairs and burst outside, disappear into the frigid winter air.

He stands, pulling away from Ned. “I need to return some emails.”

“Okay,” Ned says and it comes out as a sigh. “Look, I’ll run interference downstairs. Don’t feel like you have to rush back in with everyone.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you said that.” Ned looks up at him from the bed. “We really can talk.”

“No, thank you.”

“I’d like to.”

“I know.”

“Okay,” Ned says to his lap. He stands and says it again. “Okay. Fine.”

“Ned, it’s not you. I⁠—”

“Dad doesn’t know not to talk about her,” Ned says. “I’ve never told him not to. I never know what to say, since I don’t know anything other than to just not bring up the subject.”

“He’s fine,” Abbot says. Dan is fine, Abbot is fine, and this conversation would be fine if it would just come to an end, so he pulls open the door, walking back down the stairs to prove it.

Dinner is interminable. There’s a toast to their engagement, and another to Peggy, which makes her grin in delight. Two texts from Liesl come, and when he checks his phone after they’ve eaten, she’s messaged We could do cupcakes instead of a cake, then minutes later, I’m NOT going to be a junior bridesmaid, that’s dumb, an impressive level of detail in planning for a ceremony that’s the barest thought. A someday, and likely a distant one. Five years.

Does Ned even want to get married again? He’s never said one way or the other, and that suddenly seems an important detail they should sort out.

Maybe he’d prefer to stay hanging in this liminal space. Engaged for all public appearances, a commitment in promise only, not in actuality. An appeasement to Newbury, to Beverly…

Abbot scrubs a fork until it shines, then picks up another and does the same.

“Married,” Cheryl says into her phone. “I know, I know, it’s so amazing. He’s right here, actually. No, Ned’s putting Peggy to bed, but Henry? It’s my sister-in-law.”

“Hello,” Abbot obediently says into the phone, and whether it’s Dan’s sister he met at the Cape last summer, or a spouse of Cheryl’s sibling, he doesn’t know.

“Congratulations,” the woman on the other end of the line says. “What great news. We’ll have to send you two something. What’s a good address?”

“Thank you,” Abbot manages. An address? “You certainly don’t need to⁠—”

“I’ll just send it to Dan and Cheryl, easy enough. It’ll be right in the mail,” she says. “And you’ll let me know when you two get your own spot?”

“Yes, of course,” he says, which he won’t, because he doesn’t know who she is, and Maybe in five years, Ned had said.

He hands the phone back. And they’ll get married five years after they move in together, and begin discussing children in another half a decade, when they’ll both be nearly too old to consider the topic.

He goes upstairs long before he has any intention of sleeping. To find Ned, ostensibly, who hasn’t returned from Peggy’s bedtime, but more accurately to escape. He’s exhausted. He has work to do, he could say if Dan or Cheryl ask, but they don’t, just give him one last radiant smile he struggles to return.

Ned’s sitting on the bed when Abbot opens the door. He pauses, surprised.

“She’s still up,” Ned says.