“Actually, I can. I’m a writer. I’m working on a book right now, but my deadline is four months away, and I’ve got two weeks’ worth of columns written for emergencies like this. Taking a few days off is no big deal. And besides, this is important. Even if my deadline were tomorrow, I think I’d still be going. This is something I’ve waited a long time to do. Today is the day.”
“Okay, but what about your car? And clothing and stuff. You’ll have to drive home to pack, and I really can’t wait for you. You said you live four hours away. That’s eight hours round trip. I’ve got to be on the road by noon if I hope to get back by tomorrow afternoon. And I need to. I have clients waiting for me.”
“Don’t worry. I can drop my car off at Kelly’s house and borrow some things from her. No big deal. And I’ll rent a car or take the train home.”
“Kelly?” Milo asked.
“Yes, Kelly. You met her last night. She’s the one who told me that you were here. She’s my cousin.”
“I can’t believe it. Are you related to the Brysons too? Emily and Michael?”
“As far as I know, I’m not. We’re probably related in some distant way, but it’s not like I have a lot of family left to keep track of these things.”
A thought then occurred to Milo. “But how did Kelly know where to find me? I never told her where I was staying.”
“She followed you. She knows my story, so when you came asking for Tess Bryson, she knew that you were either the real deal or someone working for my father. He’s sent people to look for me before. But since he’s in prison, we doubted that. Besides, you didn’t seem like the type.”
“God, I had no idea that she knew you. She’s one hell of an actress.”
“It’s just practice. She’s had people knock on her door looking for me before, so she knew what to do.”
“So what name do you use now?” Milo asked. “Tess or Emma?”
“Emma,” she said. “I changed my name when I got down here. I’m Emma Keck now. Have been for twenty years.”
“How does that work? I mean, how does a thirteen-year-old kid change her name?”
“There are people who do that kind of stuff. Name changes. Social Security numbers. Birth certificates. It’s not exactly legal, but it’s doable. But it wasn’t me. My uncle and aunt arranged everything. I can explain it if you want, but not now. We have a lot of driving ahead of us. Plenty of time to talk about it then. Okay?”
“Sure.” And with that single word, Milo resigned himself to his fate. He would be returning to Connecticut on schedule, mission accomplished, but with an unexpected passenger. Tess Bryson, now Emma Keck, would be sitting alongside him for the journey home.
He prayed that his demands would for once remain at bay.
Kelly Plante was much kinder during Milo’s second visit. While Emma ransacked her cousin’s closets for clothing and rummaged through her bathroom for toiletries, Milo resumed his position from the previous evening on the porch alongside Kelly. This visit began with a brief hug, followed by an offer of lemonade and repeated words of appreciation for making the effort to find her cousin.
“I tried to get Emma to go back home for her mother’s funeral, but she just couldn’t do it. I even offered to go along for support. So it’s wonderful to see her so enthusiastic about making the trip now. This is a big step for her, Milo. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Did Emma’s mother know where she was all this time?”
“Her mother knew that Emma was alive and well, but that was all she knew. It was safer that way. For a long time, Emma’s father suspected that she might be down here with her aunt and uncle. He even hired a private investigator to come around and ask some questions, but I was only a few years older than Emma at the time, so I had no idea what was going on. About ten years ago, another guy came around asking questions again, and this time he knocked on my door. I was living in an apartment on Chestnut Hill Road at the time. I knew Emma’s story by then but handled that man just like I was supposed to. Just like Emma taught me.”
“You had me fooled.”
“I’m glad,” Kelly Plante said. “But I handled you differently than the investigators that her father sent. They knew who I was. You didn’t. I never had to admit to even knowing Emma. I know it sounds strange, but lying about this stuff is a lot easier for me than telling the truth.”
Milo understood this sentiment perfectly. He had decided long ago that lying was easier than the truth, though he was now beginning to doubt that decision. “Like I said, you had me fooled.”
“Good. I don’t ever want to mess things up for Emma. But to be honest, you were easy, Milo. Nice guys are always easy to fool. That’s how I knew that you were one of the good guys.”
Emma appeared a moment later with a brown grocery bag in each hand. She had taken off her sweater and was now wearing a simple gray T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans.
“They look good on you,” Kelly said, referencing the pants.
“Yeah. They’re a little short, but I don’t think Cassidy is gonna care.”
“Nope. She’s just going to be happy to see you.”
Kelly and Emma exchanged goodbyes, and a minute later, Milo found himself encased within his Honda Civic with the woman he had come to North Carolina to find. He could never have imagined how much trouble his success might bring.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
“Yup. Let’s get moving before I change my mind.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I do. And thank you, Milo. I know I never asked if you would mind taking me with you. I was afraid that if I did, you might say no. And this might be my one and only chance to go back home. Massachusetts, Connecticut, any place north of the Mason-Dixon Line, are like giant black holes in my mind. Every time I’ve tried to go back, I’ve frozen up. Chickened out. But this time I’m not going back for myself. I’m going back for Cassidy. Had I known how she felt, I might have gone back a long time ago. I don’t know. Maybe it still would’ve been impossible. But this time I’m going with you. With someone else behind the wheel, it’ll be tougher to chicken out.”
“It’s my pleasure, Emma,” Milo said, and even with his fear and uncertainty about the miles ahead, he meant it.
They had been on the road for about half an hour when Emma began asking questions about his personal life, and even though she had warned him of this predilection of hers, the frankness of her questions had still caught him off guard. Added to this was Milo’s difficulty in remembering to refer to her as Emma rather than Tess, which only elevated his level of stress. He had already made the mistake once before, as they were exiting the diner earlier that morning, and Emma’s immediate and pointed reaction had placed the fear of making the same mistake again in the forefront of his mind. She had stopped Milo in his tracks in the middle of the handicapped parking spot and warned him about making the mistake again. “I’m Emma now. Okay? Even if I could be Tess, I wouldn’t. That girl is in my past. Do you understand?”
He did, and expressed as much, but even now, the use of the new name felt awkward and clunky. In an effort to alleviate its foreign feel, he had tried to use it as often as possible during the first few miles.
“Let me know when you need to stop at a restroom, Emma.”
“Are you hungry, Emma?”
“Would you like to listen to some music, Emma?”
“Emma was the name of my Aunt Emma, Emma.”
Though he knew that he would always think of her as Tess Bryson, he was relatively certain that the calculated explosion of Emmas in the last thirty minutes had ingrained the new name in his mind.
One fear, albeit minor, alleviated.
Milo’s greatest concern was that the close quarters of the Honda and the constant fear that one of his demands, and an especially difficult one, such as karaoke or bowling or even the popping of ice cubes from a tray, would precipitate a string of demands from the U-boat captain manning the gauges. In the past, Milo had
found that his demands increased in frequency and intensity in times of stress, and particularly when his stress revolved around the possible onset of a demand. In short, to fear the demands made them more likely to appear. And though he had learned to effectively postpone most of them until he was in a position to satisfy their call, a situation in which the demands began piling one atop another made it almost impossible for him to manage any of them at one time, bringing the Point of No Return in dangerous proximity. Milo thought of it as trying to hold back a flood. If it was a trickle or even a stream of water, he knew that he could dam it up or divert the flow for a short period of time, but once that trickle turned into a torrent, there was no holding any of it back. Unless he found a way to distract himself from the possibility of mounting demands and reduce his stress level, the next forty-eight hours might be bad.
“So you’re separated from you wife, huh? How did that happen?”
“Excuse me?” Milo asked. “How did it happen?”
“I’m not asking which moving company you chose, Milo. I’m wondering what happened to the marriage. What’s the problem?”
“Oh,” Milo said, startled by the question. “I guess it’s a lot of things. It’s hard to say that there’s just one problem.”
“Really? I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean? You don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. It’s just that I think you’ve probably got it wrong.”
“How would you know?” Milo asked, finding himself both angry at Emma’s statement and curious about her possible explanation.
“I just do. I’ve had plenty of friends who have gone through divorce, and the one thing that I’ve learned is that most divorces can be distilled down to a single problem. The list of possible problems is long, but in the end, it can usually be summed up in one word.”
“Well, I don’t know if I agree with you. And even if I did, I wouldn’t know what word to choose,” Milo said, already hunting for one as he spoke.
“Okay, let me try,” Emma said with a level of enthusiasm that made Milo uncomfortable. “Did you cheat on your wife?”
“No.”
“Did she cheat on you?”
The question brought up images of Thick-Neck Phil sitting in his Jeep, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, but again Milo answered in the negative.
“Who asked for the divorce?”
“We’re not divorced,” Milo shot back. “We’re separated.” Even though he was wavering between trying to hold on to his marriage and giving up entirely (with giving up having taken a commanding lead), he found himself suddenly and inexplicably defensive when confronted with Emma’s assumption that he and Christine had already divorced.
“Sorry. Separated, then. Who asked for the separation?”
“Christine did, but when I left, she was upset. She didn’t expect me to find an apartment and sign a lease.”
“What did she expect?”
“She was looking for a break. A couple weeks apart. But I guess she did too good a job convincing me that we needed to make a clean split, because I went full-on with my plans when all she wanted me to do was take a sleeping bag over to a friend’s house for a while.”
“Not a lot of communication going on between the two of you, huh?”
“I guess not,” Milo admitted. “It had gotten … I don’t know. Abrasive between us. Like sandpaper on sandpaper.”
“But she brought up the separation first. Right?”
“Yes.” Even though Milo wasn’t comfortable with the personal nature of Emma’s questions, he knew that the conversation was keeping his mind off of other things. Things he was trying not to think about.
“And you would’ve never left if she hadn’t brought it up first. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” Emma said in a now we’re getting somewhere tone. “So your wife had the problem, then. Was it money?”
“No. I mean, we’re not rich, but we were doing fine, and we never fought about money if that’s what you mean.”
“Did she abuse drugs or alcohol?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“Would you be driving to Connecticut with me if you thought I did?” Milo asked, jumping at the opportunity to break her rhythm.
“Good point. Was she bored?”
“What do you mean, was she bored?”
“The fact that you didn’t answer no probably means that she was. Did you guys run out of things to talk about? Did life get too routine for her? Did she start changing her behavior in any way?”
Yes, yes, yes! Milo wanted to scream. Yes, we ran out of things to say, but only because she stopped trying. Yes, she changed her behavior. She started exercising as if it were a religion. She started going to happy hour on Thursdays and Fridays and staying out later than normal. Now she’s hanging out with Thick-Neck Phil from work and riding around in Jeep convertibles. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Instead, Milo said, “Yes. There were changes in her behavior.”
“New hobbies? New clothes? New friends? Staying out late?”
“Some of those things,” Milo admitted, wondering how this woman could possibly be reading his mind. He had become so enthralled by her line of questioning that he had missed his exit onto Interstate 40 and was now doubling back.
“Well, there you go. Your wife is bored, my friend. Some people call it the seven-year itch. Some call it a midlife crisis. But it all amounts to the same thing: boredom. One word. Told you.”
Milo didn’t know what to say. There was certainly truth in what Emma had said. Christine did seem bored, no longer finding enjoyment in the television, the movies, the afternoons spent at the town pool, and the occasional games of hearts and setback that filled much of their leisure time. In addition to the exercise regimen and the drinks after work, she had started filling her weekends with more and more community service. She had even begun taking an art class at the University of Hartford and had talked about looking into community theater. Milo hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but in light of Emma’s questioning, it seemed as if Christine might have been pulling away from Milo in more ways than he had originally imagined. Could it really have been as simple as that? Could the entire separation amount to nothing more than Christine’s being bored with their marriage, bored with her husband, and bored with her life? It seemed so utterly impossible for so much to boil down to so little, but maybe it was true. Whereas Milo found happiness in his relatively simple life—the time he spent with clients, the evenings in front of the television, his Wednesday nights with the guys, and an occasional movie or ball game—maybe Christine wanted more. Maybe she had decided that she needed the kind of man who would sit at the bar on a Friday night and drink martinis. The kind of man who rode motorcycles instead of mopeds. The kind of man who didn’t spend his time playing Dungeons & Dragons in the basement of a friend’s home and who didn’t have to answer requests for adult diapers and Viagra at all hours. Perhaps in the end, he simply couldn’t measure up to what she had expected. What she had wanted.
Could it really have been this simple?
He also couldn’t figure out how this virtual stranger had managed to diagnose the flaws in his marriage when a professional like Dr. Teagan had not.
“But hey,” Emma added in a noticeably more cheerful voice. “That doesn’t mean it’s your fault, Milo. I’m not saying that you’re boring. I’m just saying that your wife is bored. She’s bored with her life. And since you’re such a large part of it, you can’t help but end up with the short end of the stick.”
“I guess,” Milo said, flipping on his blinker to exit the highway and turn around.
“Seriously. This isn’t an indictment of you. It’s just the way things are. The two of you were probably incompatible to begin with.”
“How can you say that? You don’t even know Christine. And you barely know me.”
“Maybe I’m wrong, but in my experience, these things are m
uch simpler than people make them out to be. Like I said, divorce can usually be explained in one word. Boredom. Dissatisfaction. Addiction. Incompatibility. You choose the word, but it all means the same thing.”
Milo was silent for the next several miles, annoyed with Emma for her presumptuousness, her arrogance, but mostly for her keen insight. And as if she were continuing to read his mind, Emma remained silent as well, allowing Milo to consider all that had been said. Perhaps she was right. He had spent the last five years, including three years of marriage, trying to impress Christine whenever possible, attempting to put forth an image that did not exactly match his personality. He had spent a great deal of time trying to be a cooler, trendier, less nerdy version of himself. Maybe in the end, he had simply failed in his ruse. Perhaps Christine had ultimately seen right through him.
“Maybe you’re right,” he finally said. “Maybe me and Christine weren’t right for each other.”
What Milo didn’t add was his fear that no one would be right for a man whose life was ruled by the urgent need to do strange, unexplainable things, a man who enjoyed reading books with Edith Marchand and living vicariously through his Dungeons & Dragons characters. Perhaps he had known all along that he and Christine were not right for each other, but afraid of being alone for the rest of his life, he had lived his life like someone else, a man who better fit Christine’s expectations, but perhaps never enough so. “Maybe …” he added, thinking about the lawyers in Christine’s firm and Thick-Neck Phil in particular. “Maybe I just wasn’t cool enough for her.”
“Don’t think of it like that. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you. This is just the way these things sometimes work. I have a theory. A woman has two choices only of men: the ones who stopped maturing around the age of ten or eleven and the ones who stopped maturing when they were nineteen or twenty. The ten- and eleven-year-olds aren’t as cool in the traditional sense of the word, so maybe that’s what you’re talking about when you say you weren’t cool enough. These are the geeky guys. The ones that play video games and listen to weird indie bands and watch The Simpsons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They read comic books and walk around in sweatpants and become musicians and teachers and computer programmers. You know who I mean, right? These are the guys who think that The Matrix is the best movie ever made and spend a year learning to speak Klingon.”