waved at her. âYou wonât understand, Chloe. You and Mason are so perfectly aligned.â
âAre we?â Chloe wouldnât have minded talking about it.
âBut itâs different with me and Blake. Heâs so sweet, but . . .â Hannah paused, chewed her nails, stared out at the pines passing by. âBesides the physical, we have very little in common. Donât get me wrong. The physical gets you pretty far. With Blake, believe me, almost the whole way. If it was the only important thing, weâd be in great shape. But aside from that, what do we have? All the things I like, he couldnât care less about, and all the things he likes I donât get at all.â
âBlakeâs so into you. He likes everything youâre into.â
âWhat do I care about junk hauling, or building things, or helping old people, or fixing band saws? Or fishing? And what does he care about Paris and museums, and classic literature, and pretty clothes?â
âThere are other things . . .â
âYes, weâve done them.â Hannah sighed dramatically. âDo you think that boy will ever live away from his dad? He still helps him into the boat, for Godâs sake. He wants to write a book so he can start a junk business. I mean, what am I going to do with someone like that?â Hannah waved in dismissal. âMe, I want to travel the world. I want to learn three languages. I want to live in a big city, not in this tiny crossroads in the middle of nowhere. It canât end with Blake any other way but this way.â
âBut thatâs the thing,â Chloe said, keeping her gaze on the road. âItâs not ending. If you ended it with him, thatâd be one thing. But youâre not.â
Hannah turned to Chloe, a frown on her displeased face. âHow do I do that? And then what? What do I do with us ?â She made a large air circle, embodying by the broad sweep not just herself and Blake, but Chloe and Mason, too. âWe are all four of us together every day. We have one life. If I break up with him, what happens to the four of us? Do you even think before you speak? I mean, could you break up with Mason?â
âI donât want to.â
âBut if you did?â
They didnât talk for a while. The road was narrow, the pines tall, the ride long, what was there to say? What a hypocrite Chloe was, what a deceiver. She decided she would tell Hannah about college on the way home, her heart falling through her abdomen at the thought of it.
Chloe underestimated the open and public heartbreak a man near retirement age could display on the walkways of Orono, near the river on the University of Maine campus, when his eighteen-year-old lover told him it had to end.
Chloe stayed as far back as possible. She couldnât believe Hannah would do this on the avenue where students and faculty strolled on a warm May evening. But his reaction was so extreme that perhaps this was why Hannah had chosen the public square for his flogging; she had hoped he would keep it together. At first they walked arm in arm, overlooking the flowing waters, the mountains beyond. They made quite a picturesque couple against the backdrop of the snowcapped Appalachians.
Hannah spoke. He stopped walking. He took his arm away. She gestured, in her subtle elegant way, and he stood, a pillar of incomprehension. Then he started to weep. Hannah stroked him, embraced him, talked and talked, a filibuster of consolation. Nothing helped the gray man become less stooped. It was as if Chloe had caught them in a different sort of clinch. She became embarrassed, for herself, for him, for the passersby who slowed down, concerned at his distraught exhortations. He grabbed his chest, as if in the middle of heart failure.
After an hour he was still crying! And Hannah was still rubbing him, talking to him, gesturing far and wide.
Chloe understood nothing of this kind of emotion. Nothing. It