Free The Road Taken by Rona Jaffe Page B

said.
    “Don’t we always talk?” she said, smiling.
    “I mean, a serious talk.”
    “All right.”
    “I enjoy being with you. I know I’ll miss you very much when I go away to start a different life.”
    “But you’ll visit me, won’t you?” Rose asked.
    “No. No, I don’t think so.”
    “But why not?” she said, shocked and hurt, although it should have been apparent to her that this development had been inevitable. It was over; their relationship had run its course.
    “Because I want you to come with me.”
    She was more than startled. This had really not occurred to her, perhaps because she hadn’t let herself think about it.
    “I want to marry you,” Ben said. “I don’t know if you have similar feelings for me.”
    He wanted to marry her? She didn’t know what to answer. Did he love her? If “similar feelings” meant fondness, friendship, even generosity of spirit, always wishing him well, yes, she had those. She had always had those feelings for him, and obviously so did he for her. But she didn’t love him . . . at least, she wasn’t in love with him, if that was what he wanted, what everyone else wanted for her, to be in love with him—what they all, while trying to be tactful and stay out of it, had nevertheless made abundantly clear. She supposed she was dead inside, that she would never love anyone again. There had been too many losses. She had accepted that disappointing realization a long time ago. So she said nothing for what seemed like a very long moment, while she hoped she wasn’t being unkind.
    “You don’t have to love me,” he said calmly. “You would be the right wife for me, and I would be a good husband to you. We would have intelligent and beautiful children. I would give you an interesting and comfortable life, better than you would have here, I think. We would discover New York together. It’s the most exciting place in the world right now. You would help me rise in my career, help me entertain, and I would give you anything you want. My mother will give you the ruby ring that belonged to her mother.”
    He hadn’t even said he loved her. He didn’t care if she didn’t love him. She was being punished for having believed in everlasting love, in passion, having believed in it so much that she had used it all up; and this business deal was what he was offering her instead. She knew she should be practical—she was the suitable mate for this practical man—but she felt as if some little thing had torn in her heart.
    “How can you marry a woman who doesn’t love you?” she asked.
    “I don’t mind.”
    Because you love me so much or because you don’t love me at all? Rose thought, dismayed. Even now, she had not been ready for his casual answer; she had been expecting—or at least hoping—that he would tell her at last that he was in love with her, that he had been hiding it, and that he would
make
her fall in love with him, that she would learn to love him because he would be so kind.
    “You should mind!” she said. “You’re entitled to more.”
    “I would be happy to be with you. Think it over.”
    So this was her choice: Lose her friend or marry a stranger, the stranger she knew, but a stranger all the same. After all these years, the man doesn’t know me, she thought. I suppose I have been so cold that this coldness is what I get in return.
    “Yes, thank you, I’ll think about it,” Rose said.
    “I have many things to do before I go,” Ben said, rising. “I would like to come over the day after tomorrow. Then if you say yes we’ll make plans for the wedding, and if you say no we’ll say a proper good-bye.”
    Marry me or lose me, Rose thought; it’s what people have been threatening their lovers with for years, and it often works. Or not. Doesn’t someone always lose? She had been selfish to think everything would go on unchanging forever.
    “All right,” she said. “Until then,” and showed him to the door.
    Her family was