The First Husband

Jesse started to change direction, heading toward the side door.

“Where are you going? They see us!”

“Don’t care,” he said. “Not going to deal.”

I grabbed his arm, talking in a fierce whisper. “Jesse! Don’t leave me alone here,” I said. “Haven’t we done this already?”

He disentangled himself from me, squeezing my shoulder. “Sure,” he said. “It’s our thing.”

Then, with barely a wave, Jesse moved toward the side door, but not before he leaned into me and whispered into my ear.

“Oh, by the way, Gia is the one who found Griffin,” he said. “Just so you don’t feel sideswiped.”

“What did you say?” I asked.

But he was already gone, and Gia and Emily were in front of me. Emily and Gia, standing close to each other, standing seemingly united, in their matching black coats and cashmere sweater sets—and matching in that they each looked the exact opposite of me: my hand reaching up to touch my disheveled hair, to pull at my ripped sweatshirt.

I gave them a smile. “Hi . . .”

They gave me one back. “Griffin said you were back,” Gia said. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you.” I looked right at her, trying to figure out what to say about her finding him, knowing none of the details. “And thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“Finding him.”

She gave me another smile, this one more meaningful. “Thank yourself for coming back. He’s doing better,” she said. “He’s looking more like himself.”

“I’m glad to hear you think so,” I said, feeling something loosen something inside of me, feeling it starting to let go.

Then I turned toward Emily. “And I just saw the restaurant,” I said. “I just saw Home . . .”

I started to add that it looked incredible. But incredible felt tiny in comparison to how I felt about it. So I had to hope Emily heard it, in my silence.

Amazingly, Emily seemed to. “He did a wonderful thing there, didn’t he?” she said.

“He did,” I said.

And she nodded, further agreeing with herself. Which wasn’t the same thing as complimenting—or even commenting on—my photographs now lining the walls. As commenting on why. But it wasn’t not the same thing either. I chose to focus on that part.

“I should probably be heading home,” Gia said. “Brian’s been waiting for me.”

Then Emily pushed Gia’s hair behind her ear. “Okay, sweetie,” she said. “Thanks again for checking in.”

“Tell G I’m here if he needs anything.”

“Of course,” Emily said.

G? She called him G. No big deal. Just something I didn’t know. She called him G, and she knew, maybe even better than I did, what it meant for him to look like himself. They had history—a lengthy, deep history—and that was never going away.

But now we had some history too, far more critical to deal with. Our first marriage. The first time through. When we were starting to figure out what it meant to get things right.

Life is messy, Aly had said in London. The calm continueth not long without a storm, Jesse had said just a few hours before.

Looking at my mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law she’d no doubt prefer—there was no denying that.

But still, we could let it be the other way too, couldn’t we? At least some of the time? Especially when the most important thing was just almost lost for us.