When I Pulled My Best Friend’s Mother From A Sinking Car On A Frozen Michigan Road, I Only Thought I’d Saved Her Life — What The Weeks After Revealed Changed Everything

Part 9

Thursday came in clear and cold in the specific way of a northern Michigan March that is trying.

I closed the garage at five, which was an hour earlier than usual. The dog watched me lock up with the expression of an animal who has decided that human rituals are mostly beyond comment but bears witness to them anyway. I left him with his bowl and the Silverado for company and went upstairs and stood in the bathroom for longer than necessary deciding that what I’d put on was fine.

It was fine.

The Italian place on Elm was the kind of restaurant a small town keeps for the occasions that require something to be different from the ordinary — the checkered tablecloths and the candles and the bread that came without asking. I’d been there twice. A work dinner when a client insisted and a birthday for someone at the shop whose name I was now embarrassed to find I had to think about. Both times it had felt like a set of instructions I was following. Neither time had felt like this.

She was there when I arrived, which I had not expected because I was five minutes early.

She was already seated at a corner table, her coat on the back of the chair, reading the menu with the attentiveness she applied to everything. She’d done something different with her hair that I noticed without being able to specify what was different, which was probably the intended effect. She looked up when I came in and something in her expression settled, the way things settle when something expected arrives.

“You’re early,” she said.

“So are you.”

“I didn’t want to make you wait outside.”

I sat down across from her. The waiter came and there was the business of ordering, which gave both of us something to do for a few minutes that wasn’t the conversation.

When he left she looked at me. “How was your week?”

“Steady,” I said. “Yours?”

“Eventful.” She set the menu down. “My attorney called Wednesday. Richard’s attorney has already been in contact. He’s not denying the account exists, which my attorney says is actually the best possible opening because it means he’s going to try to explain rather than dispute. Explaining is much harder.”

“That’s good news.”

“It’s progress.” She looked at me. “I didn’t come to dinner to talk about Richard.”

“Okay.”

“I’ve been talking about Richard, in one form or another, for six years. I’d like one evening that isn’t shaped by him.”

“Done,” I said.

She smiled. It was the smile she used when something had landed correctly — brief, real, not performing anything.

We talked about other things. Her spring semester and the student who’d turned in a paper arguing that minimalism was a form of cowardice, which she’d given a B-plus to because the argument was wrong but the prose was excellent. The Electra Glide, which I’d finally finished and whose owner was coming Tuesday, a man named Garrett who called it his only relationship and meant it as a compliment to the bike. A book she was reading that she’d described to Mason and he’d immediately texted me *you should read this* with no context, which was exactly the kind of thing Mason did.

“He talks to you about what I’m reading?” she said.

“He talks to me about everything. I’m the stationary audience.”

“That’s not how he describes you.”

“How does he describe me?”

She considered. “Reliable,” she said. “Which coming from Mason is —”

“High praise.”

“The highest.” She looked at me. “He told me about the phone call. What you said.”

I went still.