Page 39 of The Night We Lost Him

“No. The other woman.”

“Morgan is the other woman,” he says.

I look at him confused. “I’m not following.”

“I was with someone else for a long time before Morgan and I started dating. Taylor, that was her name. Is her name. We broke up about nine months ago…”

“What happened?”

“She apparently had doubts about whether I could commit.”

“So you got engaged to Morgan to prove that you could commit?”

“Well, when you say it that way…”

I know he’s trying to make light of this, but I can see that he doesn’t feel light. I don’t, either. I feel heavy. All these questions about my father are gnawing at me in the way things tend to gnaw at you right before you figure out that they’re worse than you thought.

Sam opens another beer, hands it to me. I take a long sip.

“Dad said that you’re getting married too?”

“I am.”

“And you’re happy about it?”

“Very,” I say.

It relaxes me, how instinctively my answer shoots out of me. I shouldn’t need it to relax me, but it’s a nice reminder that my inherent certainty about Jack is holding steady.

“Whatever happened to the guy you were with before? The one with a kid. He was a veterinarian, wasn’t he?”

“A pediatric cardiologist.”

“Dogs, kids. Both close to the ground.”

I give him a smile.

“Elliot, right? He seemed… proud of himself.”

They had met once. Accidentally. Sam walking into my father’s apartment as Elliot and I were walking out.

“Why the questions about him?”

“He called while you were in the shower.” He holds up two fingers. “Twice.”

“It’s not what you think.”

He shrugs. “All I think is that he called twice.”

I don’t want to think about Elliot calling twice. I don’t want to lean into what I know to be true: Elliot shouldn’t be calling me, and certainly not the way he’s been calling me, at all. I move the food out of the way so I can sit down on the edge of the table, his side of the table. So I can meet him at eye level.

“Sam, it’s really not my business,” I say. “Your relationship with Morgan. But nine months is pretty short to be dating, engaged, and moving to Brooklyn.”

“What’s that expression? When you know, you know.”

“Do you know? Because I’m pretty sure you just said the opposite.”

“What I said is you probably shouldn’t pick up the phone,” he says. Then he clears his throat and takes another sip of his beer. “But, for the record, I wouldn’t mind if you did…”

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