I swallowed. “What did she say?”
“‘Remind him of his promise.’”
Silence.
I took a step closer to her. “I kept that promise,” I said. “I kept it for six years. Let me in, Julie.”
“No.”
“Todd is dead. If there was a promise, I kept it. It’s over now.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Check the Lanford website. You’ll see an obituary.”
“What?”
“On the computer. Todd Sanderson. Check his obituary. I’ll wait.”
Without another word, she stepped back and closed the door. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know if that meant she was going to check the website or if she had had enough. I had nowhere else to go. I stayed there, facing the door, waiting. Ten minutes later Julie was back. She unlocked the screen door and gestured for me to come inside.
I sat on the couch. Julie sat across from me, stunned. Her eyes looked like shattered marbles.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “It says he’s married with kids. I thought…”
“You thought what?”
She shook her head sharply. “Why are you so interested in this anyway? Natalie dumped you. I saw you at the wedding. I thought you’d never show up, but Natalie knew you would. Why? Are you some kind of masochist?”
“Natalie knew I’d show?”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“What?” she asked.
“She knew I’d have to see for myself.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t believe it.”
“That she could fall in love with another man?”
“Yes.”
“But she did,” Julie said. “And she made you promise to stay away.”
“I knew that promise was wrong. Even as I made it, even as I watched her exchange vows with another man, I never believed that Natalie stopped loving me. I know that sounds delusional. I know that sounds like I’m wearing the thickest pair of rose-tinted glasses in the history of mankind or I’m some sort of egomaniac who can’t accept the truth. But I know. I know how I felt when I was with her-and I know how she felt. All that stuff we scoff at about two hearts beating as one, about sun shining on a cloudy day, about a connection that went beyond physical, beyond spiritual-now suddenly I got it. Natalie and I had it all. You can’t lie about that. If there is a false note in that kind of love, you hear it. There were too many moments that stole my breath. I lived for her laugh. When I looked into her eyes, I could see forever. When I held her, I knew-once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky. We’d found a place rare and special, a place with color and texture, and if you’re this lucky, you regret any moment of your life that you’re not in this place because it feels like a sad waste. You pity others because they will never know these continuous bursts of passion. Natalie made me feel alive. She made everything around us crackle and surprise. That’s how I felt-and I know that Natalie felt the same. We weren’t blinded by love. Just the opposite. It made us both clear-eyed and that was why it will never let me go. I should never have made that promise. There was confusion in my head but never my heart. I should have kept listening to my heart.”
There were tears running down my face when I finished.
“You really believe that, don’t you?”
I nodded. “No matter what you tell me.”
“And yet-” Julie said.
I finished the thought for her. “And yet Natalie broke it off with me and married her old boyfriend.”
Julie made a face. “Old boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Todd wasn’t an old boyfriend.”
“What?”
“They’d just met. It was all ridiculously sudden.”
I tried to clear my head. “But she said that they’d dated before, that they even lived together and were in love and they’d broken it off and then realized that they belonged together…”
But Julie was shaking her head. The floor underneath me gave way.
“It was a whirlwind romance,” she said. “That was what Natalie told me. I couldn’t understand the sudden rush to get married. But Natalie, well, she was an artist. She was unpredictable. She had, as you put it, these bursts of passion.”
It made no sense. None of this made any sense. Or maybe, for the first time, the confusion was leading to some kind of clarity.
“Where is Natalie?” I asked.
Julie tucked her hair behind her ear and looked off.
“Please tell me.”
“I don’t get any of this,” Julie said.
“I know. I want to help.”
“She warned me. She warned me not to tell you anything.”
I didn’t know how to reply to that.
“I think it’s best if you go now,” Julie said.
No chance, but maybe it was time to circle in from another direction, keep her off balance. “Where is your father?” I asked her.
When I’d first confronted her at the door, a slow stun had come to her face. Now it looked as though I’d slapped her. “What?”
“He taught at Lanford-in my department even. Where is he now?”
“What does he have to do with anything?”
Good question, I thought. Great question even. “Natalie never told me about him.”
“She didn’t?” Julie gave a halfhearted shrug. “Maybe you two weren’t as close as you thought.”
“She came with me to campus and she never said one word about him. Why?”
Julie considered that for a moment. “He left us twenty-five years ago, you know. I was five years old. Natalie was nine. I barely remember him.”
“Where did he go?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Please. Where did he go?”
“He ran off with a student, but that didn’t last. My mother… She never forgave him. He got remarried and started a new family.”
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. My mother said he moved out west someplace. That’s all I know. I had no interest.”
“And Natalie?”
“What about her?”
“Did she have an interest in her father?”
“An interest? It wasn’t up to her. He ran off.”
“Did Natalie know where he was?”
“No. But… I think he’s the reason Natalie was always so screwed up when it came to men. When we were little, she was convinced that one day Dad would come back and we’d be a family. Even after he remarried. Even after he had other kids. He was no good, Mom said. He was dead to her-and me.”
“But not to Natalie.”
Julie didn’t reply. She seemed lost in a thought.
“What?” I asked.
“My mother is in a home now. Complications due to diabetes. I tried to care for her but…” Her voice faded away. “See, Mom never remarried. She never had a life. My father took all that away from her. And yet Natalie still longed for some kind of reconciliation. She still thought, I don’t know, that it wasn’t too late. Natalie was such a dreamer. It’s like finding Dad would prove a point-like then she could meet a man that would never leave and that would prove that Dad didn’t mean to leave us either.”
“Julie?”
“What?”
I made sure that she was looking directly into my eyes. “She met that man.”
Julie looked out her back window, blinked hard. A tear ran down her cheek.
“Where is Natalie?” I asked.
Julie shook her head.
“I won’t leave until you tell me. Please. If she still has no interest in seeing me-”
“Of course she has no interest,” Julie snapped, suddenly angry. “If she had an interest, wouldn’t she have contacted you on her own? You were right before.”
“About what?”
“About being delusional. About wearing those rose-tinted glasses.”
“Then help me take them off,” I said, unfazed. “Once and for all. Help me see the truth.”
I don’t know if my words reached her. I would not be dissuaded. I looked at her and maybe she saw that. Maybe that was why she finally caved.
“After the wedding, Natalie and Todd moved to Denmark,” Julie said. “That was their home, but they traveled a lot. Todd worked as a doctor for a charity. I forget the name of it. Something about beginnings maybe.”