“What did you do to your hair?”
“I think the answer is obvious. ”
“Oh. ” He frowned, disconcerted by the sight of her and by her answer. It was flip and unlike her. He’d imagined this moment—dreaded and looked forward to it in equal measure—for weeks. But whenever he’d imagined their meeting, it was with the old Annie, impeccably dressed, smiling wanly, a little nervous. This woman standing in front of him was someone he didn’t recognize. “Well, it’ll grow back. ” Belatedly, he got to his feet. “It’s good to see you, Annie. ”
The smile she gave him was reserved and didn’t reach her eyes. She sidled into the booth and sat across from him.
With a quick wave of his hand, he signaled a polyester-clad waitress, who hurried to the table. Blake looked at Annie. “Coffee?”
“No. ” She drummed her fingernails on the table, and he noticed that she was wearing no polish and that her nails were blunt, almost bitten-off short. And on her left hand, in the place where his ring belonged, there was only a thin band of pale, untanned skin. She smiled up at the waitress. “I’ll have a Budweiser. ”
He stared at her in shock. “You don’t drink beer. ” It was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything else. All he could focus on was the ring she wasn’t wearing.
Another false smile. “Don’t I?”
The waitress nodded and left.
Annie turned her attention back to Blake. Her gaze swept him in a second, and he wondered what this new woman saw when she looked at the old Blake. He waited for her to say something, but she just sat there with her new haircut and her no makeup and her terrifyingly ring-less finger and stared at him.
“I thought we should talk . . . ” he said—rather stupidly, he thought afterward.
“Uh-huh. ”
Another silence fell, and into the quiet, the waitress came to the table. She placed a frosted mug of beer on a small, square napkin, and Annie gave her a bright smile. “Thanks, Sophie. ”
“You bet, Miss Bourne. ”
Miss Bourne? The address left him winded.
“So,” she said at last, sipping her beer. “How’s Suzannah?”
Blake winced at the coldness in her voice. He knew he had it coming, but still he hadn’t expected anger. Annie never got angry. “I’m not living with her anymore. ”
“Really?”
“Yes. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. ”
She stared at him across the rim of her glass. “Really?”
He wished he’d rehearsed this more, but he hadn’t expected her to make it so difficult. In his mind, it always went the same way: He swept into a room and she hesitated, then smiled and cried and told him how much she missed him. He opened his arms and she hurled herself at him . . . and that was that. They were back together.
He tried to gauge her emotions, but the eyes he knew so well were shuttered and unwelcoming. He tripped through the words uncharacteristically. “I made a mistake. ” He slid his hand across the table.
“A mistake. ” She drew her hand back.
He heard the censure in her voice and knew what she meant. It was a mistake to be late on your Visa payment; what he’d done was something else entirely. The way she looked at him, the soft, reserved sound of her voice—not Annie at all—punched a hole in his confidence, and he began to feel as if something vital were leaking away from him. “I want to come home, Annie,” he said softly, pleading with her in a way he’d never pleaded in his life. “I love you, Annalise. I know that now. I was a stupid, stupid fool. Can you forgive me?”
She sat there, staring at him, her mouth drawn in a tight, hard line.
In the silence, he felt a spark of hope ignite. He scooted around the vinyl booth and came up beside her, staring at her, knowing that all his heart and soul was in his eyes and hoping to hell that she still cared. Memories of their life together swelled inside him, refueled his confidence. He remembered a dozen times he’d hurt her, birthdays he’d missed, nights he hadn’t come home, dinners that had been ruined by his absence. She had always forgiven him; it was who she was. She couldn’t have changed that much.
She stared straight ahead, her eyes wary and filled with a pain he knew he’d put there. He gazed at her profile, willing her to look at him. If she did, if she looked at him for even a second, he’d see the answer in her eyes. “Annie?” He took her hand in his, and it was cold. “I love you, Annie,” he said again, his voice choked. “Look at me. ”
Slowly, slowly, she turned, and he saw then that her eyes were flooded with tears. “You think you can say you’re sorry and it’s all over, Blake? Like it never happened?”
He clutched her hand, feeling the delicacy of her bones and the softness of her skin. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you. ”
She closed her eyes for a second, and a tear streaked down her cheek. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him. “You did me a favor, Blake. The woman I was . . . ” She drew her hand away from his and swiped the moisture from her cheek. “I let myself become a nothing. I’m not that woman anymore. ”