The First Husband

“I’m sorry I’ve been at the restaurant so much. I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much as I want to be.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I don’t want you to be sorry . . .” I said. “I got canned.”

“I had a feeling.”

I sighed, sitting down on the soft couch, running my fingers slowly through my hair.

Griffin sat down beside me.

“I know that there is an argument to be made that it’s for the best,” I said. “I mean, recently I’ve even thought maybe I’d be better off if I didn’t have the column. And I thought that it would force the issue. Force me to figure out what I really wanted. But now that it was taken from me . . .”

“Now that it was taken from you, what?” he asked.

“Now it’s what I really wanted,” I said.

Griffin laughed softly, reaching over, and rubbing my back gently.

“It’s going to be okay. I swear to you . . .” he said. “And I know it’s probably not making it easier imagining starting again from here. I know the tip of the Berkshires is not exactly the bastion of journalistic activity.”

I looked up at him, tilting my head. “Did you just say ‘bastion’?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d enjoy it.”

I smiled at him. “I did.”

“So, that’s one good thing.”

I laughed in spite of myself. Then I shook my head. “I just sat there, so still, the whole train ride back here, trying to figure out, what happens now? And I couldn’t seem to come up with anything, like an answer.”

“Well, what do you want to happen now?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, which was when I remembered what I’d thought about in Peter’s office. That conversation with Nick. The conversation before the last conversation with Nick. The almost conversation.

“What?” he said. “I see you thinking something. What are you thinking over there?”

I shook my head. “It’s silly,” I said. “It’s really . . . I don’t know. Too silly to even mention.”

“Try me.”

“I’ve taken a lot of photographs. Since I started writing ‘Checking Out.’ With all the traveling, the thing that started interesting me the most was how people made a life in all these places. So I started taking photographs of . . . homes.” I shrugged. “Different homes. In all the different cities I’d go to. Homes that struck me somehow. Maybe that would teach me something about how to do it, make one for myself. If that makes sense . . .”

He was quiet, for just a minute. “Do you have them here?” he said.

“The homes?”

He gave me a smile, ignoring my snarky joke. “Sure. Or,” he said, “your photographs.”

I nodded. “They’re in a canvas box. Up in the bedroom.”

“Can I see them?”

“Now?”

He stood up, and reached out his hand for me to take, reached out to help me up.

“Now works for me,” he said.

We spread them all out on the floor—all of the photographs I had taken, all the negatives, all the rolls of films that still needed developing. Six years of a secret love, staring back at us: houses in cities as distinct from each o