“I don’t think so.”
“I just want to congratulate you on all your success.”
“... Thank you.”
“And I want to apologize. Make amends.”
She frowns a little. Still very beautiful — perhaps more beautiful as a woman than as a girl. So much perfect blondeness. Such high cheekbones.
“I sense,” you say, “just observing... that you’ve been making a few apologies yourself. That you’ve been the one making amends.”
She draws in a breath. Her breasts rise and fall.
“People don’t always respond well to apologies,” you say. “But a person has to try, right? I can tell your results tonight have been something of a... mixed bag.”
She almost smiles. “That’s true. We should talk sometime. But not here.”
“I agree!”
“And, after all, you’re not alone here tonight, are you?”
“No.” You smile nervously — the nervousness is real, but not for the reason she may think. “I should let you go. We’ll talk sometime?”
She nods. “Sometime.”
You return to your table. Join the conversation. From time to time, ’09 classmates come over to say hello. You dance a few times with your significant other, no one else. Then you leave the reunion.
In perhaps an hour, that significant other is asleep in bed next to you — you can hear the gentle snoring — and you go outside to your car. From the trunk you remove a grocery bag with some things in it. Otherwise, you don’t need the car. You can go on foot.
The Lund home is on North High, not far from downtown. It’s a milk-chocolate two-story frame house, circa early 1920s, nothing fancy but nice. Well kept up by Astrid’s parents, who had for years operated the restaurant at the DeSoto Hotel. Retired, they were in Florida right now, wintering. The yard is fairly good size, the neighborhood quiet. At after one in the morning, it’s really quiet.
You see Astrid’s car out front — a silver Jaguar XF, as sleek and lovely as its owner. Lights are on in the kitchen downstairs — you remember the layout of the house well. You go around and peek in a side window. She is in a black silk robe at the kitchen table, sitting by herself, sipping coffee — or is it tea?
After pausing to leave your grocery bag of things behind a bush, you go to the front door. You knock. Nothing. You try again.
She cracks the door and looks out at you.
“You,” she says.
“I’m sorry to disturb. I was out for a walk and saw the lights on. Couldn’t sleep. And I didn’t like the awkward way we left it. You said you wanted to talk. We could talk now, if you like.”
Through your whole speech, she is looking at you through slitted eyes. When you’re done, she’s still studying you. But finally she opens the door.
“Why don’t you come in,” she says. Her hair isn’t up now, rather hovering above her shoulders. “Just for a while.”
She leads you into the living room — furnishings are mostly the same, nice, nothing special, wood-burning fireplace the best thing about it — through an archway into the dining room and beyond to the kitchen. You remember where the family room is and the laundry room. You were here several times. Not many times, but memorable ones.
The kitchen was remodeled in the ’80s and has a lot of modern wood cabinetry with dated hardware. The round maple table has her cup, four place mats, a fake-flower centerpiece, and nothing else.
“Like some tea?” she asks at the counter, civil.
“I would. Thank you.”
She pours hot water into a cup, drops in a tea bag. Puts the cup on a dish in front of you. Gestures to a chair, which you take. Sits across from you and looks expressionlessly across the fake flowers with those ice-blue eyes, so wide apart you almost have to look at them one at a time.
“Say what you have to say,” she says.
“I’m apologizing for my behavior. Back in the day. It wasn’t right. And it’s... haunted me ever since.”
It has, in a way. You often think of her lovely pale flesh and the ripe curves and what it was like with her. So perfect. So lovely.
“It wasn’t right,” she agrees. “And do you really think an apology covers it?”
“I suppose not. You were apologizing all over the place yourself, earlier, weren’t you?”
She stiffens. “I was. But I don’t think it was quite the same thing.”
“No. No, that’s right.” You remove the tea bag, place it on the dish. Lift the cup and sip the tea. It’s a little hot. Not bad. Nothing special. Not Earl Grey or anything. “Have you ever talked to anyone about us? About what happened?”
“Not a soul.”
“Not even tonight? At the reunion?”
“No! Of course not.”
“... Is it something we can... put behind us?”
“You mean, can I forgive you? Give you a pass?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Maybe.”
You frown. “What do you mean by ‘maybe’?”
“You know what I do, right? How I make my living?”
“You’re on the news. In Chicago.”
“I specialize in investigative reporting.”
“I’m aware.”
She sips her tea. Her coldness turns somehow businesslike. “I’m doing a piece on sexual misconduct.”
You say nothing.
“It’s something of a major topic these days,” she says. “Things that were acceptable once... you might say, things that people got away with... are now frowned upon.”
“Isn’t... isn’t that putting it a little mildly? Aren’t people being ruined?”
She shrugs a shoulder. “Some are. Some deserve it, wouldn’t you say?”
You say nothing. Shrug, because some response is expected.
“I want to explore the way women... and girls... have been mistreated in this society. From harassment to abuse. From date rape to, well... you get the drift.”
“I, uh, do. But you and I, we were...”
“In love?” She smiles. “You know, I thought so, at the time.”
“I did, too. I still think of you... fondly.”
Her expression seems to curdle. Disgust flashes across her lovely features, but then a businesslike calm returns.
“Even now,” she says, “I could hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps destroy you.”
“I know.”
“Maybe you’d like to know how you could avoid that. Maybe there’s something you could do to prevent me from turning your life upside down. After all, we were younger then. We neither one were making mature decisions.”
You sit forward. “That’s right.”
“I would want an assurance from you that what happened between us was not a... pattern. That it was an... aberration, in both our lives.”
“It certainly was.”
“Good. Good. Because what I have in mind is this... I want to talk about what happened between us, on camera.”
“What?”
“I want to talk to you on camera. I will use a small crew, all of whom’ll sign confidentiality statements that you witness. I will sign an agreement with you that states your face will either be pixelated or in complete shadow, and your voice disguised.”
You don’t know what to say. Not at first.
But finally, as she stares at you, smiling with a terrible confidence, real confidence, you say, “But people will guess. They’ll know who I am, because they know you, and—”
“No.” She holds up a “stop” hand. “I won’t identify myself as... the injured party. You will simply be someone I’m interviewing on the subject.”
An offender. Confessing in the dark.
“I would have to think about that,” you say.
“If you feel true remorse,” she says, “you can be part of the solution and not the problem. You don’t have to answer me tonight. I know how to get in touch with you.”
She does?