Through the Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

not quite as smoothly as I would have liked, I said, “Well, I wish I could talk, but I need to get going.” I took a step back, because it seemed strange to just turn my back on him.
    “Don’t go yet,” he said.
    “I’m sorry, maybe we can talk another time,” I said, not meaning it.
    When I took another step away, he repeated more urgently, “Don’t go. Please.”
    It’s hard to walk away when someone says that to you. I found I couldn’t do it. So I waited, but Dan didn’t say anything else. I shifted my gaze to the baby on his chest. The little girl was sleeping: her head lolled against his chest, her face slack, and her mouth open in that perfect baby pout. Sometimes babies look like strange versions of their parents, but this baby didn’t seem to look like either Stacey or Dan. It just looked like a generic baby, with the small button nose, the pouty lips, long eyelashes, and light downy hair.
    The silence went on so long that I started to think I might be able to escape after all. I didn’t realize that the length of the silence was really just an indication of how uncomfortable the topic of conversation was going to be.
    Finally, Dan burst out, “Nora, what happened to us? Remember when we thought we’d never be apart? What happened to that?”
    It took me a second for my brain to process the words.
    “I don’t think this is exactly the time or place, Dan,” I said. It wasn’t my most inspired response; it was trite and cliché, but it was also true. There were Tostitos on one side of us, and cheese in a can on the other.
    He wasn’t really listening to me though. “That’s what I always hear. I want to know, when is the time and place? Can you tell me that?” He threw out his arms in a gesture that would have been dramatic if he hadn’t had a sleeping baby strapped to his chest. As he threw his arms out, the baby’s head bobbled—it blinked, and then settled back into sleep.
    I glanced down at the baby, I thought quite pointedly, and said, “I can’t tell you. I think maybe you should try talking to your wife about that.”
    Dan didn’t seem to notice the glance, and he seemed oblivious to the fact that he might not be talking to the most receptive audience.
    He shook his head stubbornly, “But she’s the one who always says it’s not the right time or place. I want to talk to someone who will listen. Someone who knows me.”
    He was obviously going to need a bit more of a direct hint I decided.
    “Then you definitely have the wrong person,” I told him firmly. “It’s been a long time, Dan. We don’t know each other anymore.”
    I thought that would surely do it. But it didn’t.
    “You’re wrong,” he insisted. “I know you. And you know me. I’m the same person you knew back when we were together. I haven’t changed.”
    I wanted to ask him who that was. Because there was the person I thought I knew, and then I came home one vacation to a man who had cheated on me and was leaving me for another woman. On that day I realized the Dan I thought I knew was gone—had in fact never existed.
    “Maybe I have,” I said. “Maybe I’ve changed.” I wanted that to be true.
    “No,” he said. “You haven’t. I know you haven’t. What you’re doing for your mother . . .”
    I didn’t like the idea of him knowing anything about my life. “How do you know about that?” I asked.
    “Nora, come on. It’s not exactly a big town here. Haven’t you noticed?”
    “Yes, I’ve noticed,” I said, thinking of all the times over the years I’d seen the dented blue Camry in the parking lot of the Price Chopper, parked in front of the video store, idling outside the hardware store, and I’d kept on driving past what had been my destination.
    As if reading my mind, he said, “I don’t understand how I haven’t seen you more. I think about you. I think about us. What we could have had. I feel like nothing in my life has gone right since we broke up.”
    How many times had I