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nothing, and as the silence stretched on I felt myself fill with self-loathing. I was not meant for marriage and children and the rest of it. These things were not for me, had never been for me. I’d been a fool to think otherwise.
    I felt myself receding from him, and from myself too, our images shrinking in my mind’s eye. I heard him offer to give me a lift home. Heard myself decline politely, telling him I needed the fresh air, then wish him the best of luck in Alabama. Saw him lean toward me. Saw myself turn my head so his kiss found my cheek instead of my lips. Watched as I walked away from him, my back as straight as pride could make it.
    Mother pounced on me as soon as I came in the door. “Henry stopped by earlier,” she said. “Did he find you at church?”
    I nodded.
    “He seemed eager to speak with you.”
    It was hard to look at her face, to see the hope trembling just beneath the surface of her bright smile. “Henry’s going away,” I said. “He doesn’t know for how long.”
    “Is that . . . all he said?”
    “Yes, that’s all.” I started up the stairs to my room.
    “He’ll be back,” she called out after me. “I know he will.”
    I turned and looked down at her, so lovely in her distress. One pale, slender hand lay on the banister. The other clenched the fabric of her skirt, crumpling it.
    “Oh, Laura,” she said, with a telltale quaver.
    “Don’t you dare cry, Mother.”
    She didn’t. It must have been a Herculean effort. My motherweeps over anything at all: dead butterflies, curdled sauce. “I’m so sorry, darling,” she said.
    My legs went suddenly boneless. I sank down onto the top step and put my head on my knees. I heard the creak of her footsteps and felt her sit beside me. Her arm went around me, and her lips touched my hair. “We won’t speak of him,” she said. “We won’t mention his name ever again.”
    She kept her promise, and she must have passed the word to the rest of the family, because no one said a thing about Henry, not even my sisters. They were just overly kind, all of them, complimenting me more often than I deserved and concocting ways to keep me busy. I was in great demand as a dinner guest, bridge partner and shopping companion. Outwardly I was cheerful, and after a time they began to treat me normally again, believing I was over it. I wasn’t. I was furious—with myself, with Henry. With the cruel natural order that had made me simultaneously undesirable to men and unable to feel complete without one. I saw that my former contentment had been a lie. This was the truth at the core of my existence: this yawning emptiness, scantily clad in rage. It had been there all along. Henry had merely been the one who’d shown it to me.
    I didn’t hear from him for nearly two months. And then one day, I came home to find my mother waiting anxiously in the foyer. “Henry McAllan’s come back,” she said. “He’s in the parlor. Here, your hair’s mussed, let me fix it for you.”
    “I’ll see him as I am,” I said, lifting my chin.
    I regretted that little bit of defiance as soon as I laid eyes on him. Henry looked tan and fit, more handsome than he ever had. Why hadn’t I at least put on some lipstick? No—that wasfoolishness. This man had led me on, then abandoned me. I hadn’t gotten so much as a postcard from him in all these weeks. What did I care whether I looked pretty for him?
    “Laura, it’s good to see you,” he said. “How have you been?”
    “Just fine. And you?”
    “I’ve missed you,” he said.
    I was silent. Henry came and took my hands in his. My palms were damp, but his were cool and dry.
    “I had to be sure of my feelings,” he said. “But now I am. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me.”
    And there it was, just like that: the question I’d thought I would never hear. Granted, the scene didn’t play out quite like I’d pictured it. Henry wasn’t kneeling, and the question had actually come out