The Divorce Party

“You shouldn’t have come here,” he says.

“No kidding,” she says. She looks out behind him, the wind kicking up, the clouds covering up what was left of the sun. “Where’s the car?”

“Across the street, by the dunes. I worried that you would need to make a quick getaway.”

“And?”

“And I decided not to let you.”

She looks at Nate, meeting his eyes, and has to bite her lip hard, to stay composed. Because now it is real. He is standing before her, and they are standing here in front of the restaurant, and she can’t ever go back to not knowing the things she knows now. She can’t go back to that complacent feeling she had that things were simple between them, or one way. That illusion, in all its glory, ends here.

Staring back in the direction of the restaurant, she realizes there is a more pressing issue. The real kitchen sub has probably introduced herself by now, and Ryan or Alisa, or both, will want some answers.

“You know, in about five more seconds, someone is going to come out here trying to figure out who I really am. So unless you want a less-than-happy reunion, we should probably walk.”

“Okay.” He nods, and points in the direction of the ocean, and they start walking that way. She doesn’t know exactly where they are going, but she keeps up with him—keeps a few feet away, but keeps up with him—until they cross the road and head down the small hill, the small houses dotting it, past the green sign that says PRIVATE BEACH.

And then the Volvo is there—the one that Eve hit this morning—in a small, otherwise empty parking lot. But instead of getting in the wagon, Nate walks past it, over the rocks, toward the beach itself.

Maggie stops on the rocks, holds her ground. “I don’t want to sit down on the beach, Nate. I don’t want to pretend everything’s okay.”

He turns back to look at her, his hands shoved into his sweat-shirt’s pocket. “And if we’re standing here, things are less okay?”

“Yes.”

He nods, but she can see him starting to crack a little, getting defensive. “So we’ll stand here, if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want any of this,” she says. “You were married? How is th

at possible? How is it possible that you didn’t feel a need to mention that any time over the last eighteen months?”

“It’s not that simple,” Nate says.

“It’s also not that complicated.”

He is silent, looking away from her. This is his worst nightmare, this kind of confrontation, and it almost makes her feel bad for him. If she weren’t feeling so bad for herself, she’d stop this.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Maggie.”

“How about you’re sorry?”

“I am sorry.”

“For not telling me, or that I found out?”

“Both.”

“Not good enough,” she says. And suddenly she realizes nothing is going to make this good enough.

“Okay, let’s start easier, Champ. What have you told me that’s right? Because apparently I know nothing about your past. Not the type of high school you went to, or your family’s situation, or your most significant relationship before me. Don’t you think any of that information would have told me something about you?”

“It doesn’t.”

“It doesn’t?”

He shakes his head. “The information that is relevant about me is that I left here, and went to school and moved to California and fell in love with you. All the rest of it is . . . prologue.”

She shakes her head, thinking of the messiness of her parents’ split, of growing up on her own without a mother, of all the things she disclosed to Nate late at night, that were hard for her, hard to acknowledge as having to do with herself—the pieces of herself she’d like to be less true.