The First Husband

“I might screw up and get off track, Annie,” he said. “But, if you give me a chance to, I swear I’ll always make it right. . . .”

I felt something breaking open inside of me. And I had to get away from him. Not because I was mad and sad and totally pissed off. But for the part of me that wasn’t. For the part of me that was something else.

“I’ve got to go,” I said.

Then I pushed past him out the door.

I felt better immediately after I was away from him. After the heavy, old door was between us. I took a breath, let it out, and kept moving.

Except that halfway through the lobby, I felt something in my hand, and looked down to see it. The ring. I was still carrying the ring.

And the breath went back in, in a bad way. Because I had to go back into the sitting room, where I found a bloodied Batman, standing there—still and lost—exactly where I’d left him.

I didn’t say, This is yours. I didn’t say anything.

I just put the ring on the floor, right by Nick’s phone, not risking handing it to him directly. Not risking any more contact.

We both looked down at the ring, resting there.

And this time, when I left, I ran.

29

A little before 3 A.M. I walked into the house, carrying two dripping brown bags, to find Griffin sitting at the kitchen table, still awake, still decompressing from the night. He had a large coffee mug in front of him—the pot making more on the stove—a book open on the table.

“Hey there,” I said.

“Hey there,” he said.

His eyes went to the brown bags, then back to me. He looked tired sitting there—not so much mad, but very tired, eerily calm and tired, which made it even harder for me to know exactly where to start.

I walked into the kitchen, gingerly taking the seat across the table from him, putting the brown bags on the table.

“When did you get home?” I asked.

He picked up his mug, one-handed, held it to his mouth. “Not too long ago,” he said. “We decided to do a midnight supper for the old faithful who’d stuck it out all night.”

“What did you make?”

He gave me a look, like he didn’t want to answer that—like this was, quite possibly, the last question in the world that should be asked right then. But I had a plan. Or I thought I did.

“Portobello mushroom sliders,” he said. “And spicy onion soup.”

“Did you have a second to eat anything yourself?” I asked.

He shook his head, his hand still wrapped tightly around his mug.

“Not really,” he said.

“Well that’s good. Because . . .”

I reached into one of the bags and pulled it out: a perfect red Lasse’s lobster claw—the one Griffin had told me about that first nigh

t. The Lasse’s lobster claw that he’d promised me that night, on the other side of the country, in that first minute where we were learning to promise things to each other. It felt like something—maybe not enough, but something—if I could deliver that promise to him now.

“I thought I could make you some eggs,” I said.

He reached over and took the claw from my hand. “You went all the way up to Lasse’s?” he said.