Page 97 of Never Forget
Someone knocked on the door.
I wasn't expecting anyone.
I opened the door and Mark was standing in the hallway. Hands in the pockets of a coat I recognized. Hair a little damp from the walk over.
"Hey."
I stared at him for a second longer than I meant to.
"Mark."
"I'm sorry to just show up. I ran into Arthur and Cathy yesterday. They mentioned they'd seen you."
I'd run into them outside the Natural History Museum. Cathy had cooed over Rosie for ten minutes and Arthur had asked polite questions about Havensworth. I'd given polite answers. We parted on the sidewalk with the kind of warm goodbye you give people you don't expect to see again. I hadn't thought about it since.
He shifted his weight. "I wanted to say goodbye before you left. Properly."
I stepped back from the door.
"Come in."
He came in the way someone comes into an apartment they used to know well. He noticed the bare walls. The suitcase by the door. Rosie on the couch with Biscuit tucked under her chin. He smiled at her and she gave him the small wave she gave strangers.
"I thought I'd take you to dinner," he said. "If you haven't eaten. There's a place a few blocks down that's good with kids."
I hesitated.
I should have said no. I'd just hung up with Sam. My apartment was packed. My flight was in the morning. There was no reason to spend my last full night in the city across a table from the man I'd left.
But Mark had been decent to me for a year. He deserved better than the way we'd ended on the phone, and I'd known itthen and every week since. If he'd walked over here in the cold to say a proper goodbye, I could give him a dinner.
"Let me get her shoes," I said.
The place was small and warm and low-lit. The waiter brought Rosie a coloring sheet and a cup of crayons without being asked. She settled into her chair and went to work on it with the seriousness of someone taking a test. Mark ordered. Butter noodles for Rosie. The usual for me—penne with tomato sauce, no cheese, coffee black—he still remembered.
We talked about nothing for a while. I asked him how the deal had turned out—the one he'd been closing when I left. He told me it had gone through. He asked about the reform proposal. I told him we'd gotten a few more signatures than I'd expected.
For a few minutes I almost felt like the woman I'd been before I went home. I could have sat in that version of myself for a long time.
Then Mark set down his glass.
"So you're really doing it," he said. "Staying in Havensworth."
"Yeah. I'm really doing it."
He nodded slowly. Looked at Rosie for a moment, her head bent over her coloring sheet, then back at me.
"I've been thinking. A lot. About us. About what I said."
I waited.
"I was scared. When you asked if I was ready to be a father. I panicked and said the wrong thing."
"You said the truth."
"I said what I felt in that moment. But I've had time to think." He leaned forward. "I want to try, Jamie. For you. I want to try."
I looked at him. This man I'd almost built a life with. He was good, kind, safe. The version of myself who'd planned a future with him hadn't been wrong about him. He was exactly whathe'd seemed to be. A different woman would have taken what he was offering and been happy.
