Page 110 (1/2)

"Here we are on a date," she said "Right back where we started fro bite She waited while he chewed and sed, curious to knohat he felt had changed

"Truck’s got a different engine," he finally observed

She sed too much of the icy milkshake and an ache seized her throat "That’s it?" she asked, when the pain passed "Eleven years of ine?"

He retreated into his lunch She stole soh the blur Like a cataract Rushing water, a blindness Her father hadn’t lived long enough to be old, but he’d had cataracts, brought on by some trauma she’d never quite understood

"So," she said "Are we just never going to talk about the other stuff?"

"What other stuff?"

"Any of it Why we did this That poor little baby"

"What for? It’s gone"

"It is not gone Not like so that never existed It was, Cub"

"But then it wasn’t Anye had e in the density of the rain now gave a vague visibility to certain shapes: the red rectangle of the Dairy Prince sign, a dark green Dumpster She considered what her fatherwithout seeing

"They’re not bygone," she said "Everything changed, and that’s still here"

"What do you , Cub We should have used a condo back Look at what’s in your life A house, a wife, Preston and Cordie All because we accidentally gotlike ouldn’t have got married"

She blinked her eyes "Cub, seriously? Were you, like, thinking of popping the question? Before that happened?"

He looked away from her, toward the shapes that caine the inner structure of her husband’s world, in which events confires were It had co up I do," she said "I had no family, and then all of a sudden I had your fa We were headed in different directions You can’t tell ainst the inside corners of his eyes, and his breathing grew ragged, and she felt terrible and cruel, as if she were prodding him with a stick She should just let him be It’s what she had always done, let hie," she said in a low, flat voice "You’d find soirl and settle down How come we can’t say what’s true?"

"We love each other now," he said "That’s what matters"

"I know People say that We do You can make yourself love a person, we’ve done a fair job of that But there’s other stuff, Cub"