Falling Together (26 page)

Jason had e-mailed Samantha Denham-Drew’s number to Will and Pen (not from the Glad2behere address, which was apparently a dummy account Jason had set up to fool Will and Pen into thinking he was Cat, a username choice that Pen called “such a clear case of wishful thinking it makes you want to throw up or cry,” but from CoolTaxDude, which Will found equally wishful, if considerably less poignant), and they had flipped a coin to decide which one of them had to call her. Actually, Pen had flipped a coin while the two of them were talking on the phone and had given a short victory cheer that went something like, “I won I won I won,” after which she had put Amelie (“friend, business partner, coin-flip witness, hot blonde”) on the phone.

“I really am hot,” said Amelie. “And she really did win.”

“You’d lie for her,” said Will. “Admit it.”

“All day long.” Amelie’s voice shifted from snappy to buttery. “But you should be the one to call anyway. You have a great voice. Very commanding. Very persuasive. Any woman on the other end of the line from you would be putty in your hands.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Will. “Putty. As you and Pen are demonstrating.”

“Abundantly,” corrected Amelie. “Abundantly demonstrating.”

So he had called.

Sam answered the phone by exhaling smoke and saying, “This is Sam.”

“Hi, Sam,” said Will. “This is Will Wadsworth. You don’t actually know me, but—”

Sam cut him off. “If you’re calling on Joe’s behalf, forget it. Joe’s a sonofabitch.”

“I’m not calling on Joe’s behalf.”

“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Inhale. Will watched a little brown bird with a tail like a tongue depressor take a brief but entire bath in the birdbath Will’s mother had put up in his backyard. Exhale. “Tell that to your friend Joe.”

“I don’t know Joe.”

“I don’t know you, and you don’t know Joe. Is that your story?”

Inhale.

“I guess it is.”

Exhale.

“Fine. I’ll play along. So if you know neither me nor your sonofabitch friend Joe, how did you get my number?”

“From a guy named Jason Rogers.”

“Aha. Jason.” Inhale. “There’s another sonofabitch.” Exhale. Will smiled. It would take more than a colossal lungful of smoke to keep Samantha Denham-Drew from calling Jason a sonofabitch.

“I agree,” said Will. “Not that I know the guy all that well.”

“If you’re agreeing that he’s a sonofabitch, I’d say you know all there is to know,” said Sam. “So why are you calling me?”

“I’m an old friend of Jason’s wife, Cat.”

Inhale, quickly followed by a hairball cough. “Hold on. What did you say your name was?”

“Will Wadsworth.”

“You are so egregiously full of crap.”

Will laughed. “Sometimes. But not right now.”

“Will Wadsworth.” Sam’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Mother Mary.”

“So you’ve, uh, heard of me?”

“You? Of course! You’re a living legend.”

“You’re not thinking of the poet, are you?”

“What poet? I’ve never heard of a poet named Will Wadsworth.”

“Well, yeah, there’s not one, but—”

“You’re Will Wadsworth, the friend! College Will! Philly Will! The Pen-and-Will Will!”

Will smiled. “That’s the one.”

“And you got my number from
Jason
? I thought you and Pen hated Jason.”

Will flashed back to Jason standing outside the chapel, his hands open, hollow-eyed under the moon. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘hate.’”

“‘Despise.’ ‘Despise’ was Cat’s word. Although she also said you beat the shit out of him the first time you met him, which sounds a little hotter under the collar than—what’s the noun form of ‘despise’? Despisery?”

“I don’t think so, but nothing else really springs to mind,” Will said.

“Huh! I thought you were English majors, you, Pen, and Cat.”

Will laughed. “Anyway, it was a long time ago, when I did that.”

“You’ve cooled off, you’re saying?”

“Yes, and I shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. So how did Jason come to give you my number?”

Will gave her a condensed version of the story, after which she was silent, except for the sounds of smoking.

Finally she said, “Question: Why? Are you and Pen looking for her for you and Pen or for Jason?”

Will puzzled over this. “I don’t know. We were worried about Cat because Jason said he was worried about Cat, and he was pretty convincing. But Pen and I haven’t really discussed why, even though we talk about finding her all the time.”

He thought for a while more, aware of the lengthening phone silence and wishing he had a cigarette to fill it. “So I don’t know, but knowing me and Pen, it’s for us, not Jason. Or it’s for Cat. Cat’s dad died. She was distraught. She took off. I guess we didn’t discuss why we were looking for her because it just seemed like the only thing to do. If that makes sense.”

Will heard sniffles.

“Are you—crying?” he asked nervously. He stood up as though to make a getaway.

More sniffles, one gulp, and then, tearfully: “That just has to be one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard. So sweet and
so
you
!”

“You don’t actually know me,” Will reminded Sam.

“I know,” she said. A bout of unusually staccato smoking followed. Puff puff puff. When it was over, Sam was calm and snarky again. “Sorry. I’m prone to emotional outbursts, having only recently broken up with my lying, cheating boyfriend.” Will sat back down.

“Joe,” supplied Will. “The sonofabitch.”

“See? You do know him.” Sam laughed. “Cat would love it that the two of you are looking for her. She’d be over the moon.”

“You think?”

“But she’d be jealous as hell that you guys are back together without her.”

“Do you,” said Will slowly, “know where she is?”

“I knew where she was going. I know that she got there. Which isn’t the same as knowing where she is at this precise moment. And then there’s the matter of how she is, which I also don’t know. Although not so good would be my guess.”

“Where she was going is a start, though. Will you tell me? I would really appreciate it.”

More smoking. Unless Sam’s cigarettes were a foot long, she’d lit another one without Will’s noticing, although Will doubted that a woman who smoked like Sam was capable of soundless cigarette-lighting. He would have imagined a big snapping Zippo or the loud, luscious cinematic
scrape-whoosh
of a match.

“On one condition,” said Sam.

“Okay. What?”

“I tell you in person. How could I pass up a chance to meet the famous Will in the flesh?”

“Seriously? I live in Asheville, North Carolina, and you’re outside of Cincinnati. That’s got to be at least six hours, one way.”

“You’d do it, though. You’d make the trip. For Cat,” cajoled Sam. “You know you would. You know you would.”

Will groaned. “Fine.”

“Ha! I knew you’d do it. Cat would love that, too,” she said. “But look, I don’t have a lot going on right now, to tell you the truth. A long drive could be therapeutic. How about we do a little Mapquest magic, pick a spot, and meet halfway?”

“How about you tell me where Cat is now, and you and I will plan a get-together for another time?”

“Ha! Nope.”

“All right, all right. I’ll meet you halfway.”

“You think there’s any chance Pen could come, too?”

For one clear instant, Will pictured Pen in the passenger seat next to him, reaching with one long golden-brown arm to close the air-conditioning vent. “I doubt it. She has a five-year-old daughter.”

“What?” shrieked Sam. “Is Pen married? Are
you
married? Oh my God, you’re not married to
each other
?”

“Maybe,” said Will. “Maybe not.”

“You’re not telling me? Are you kidding?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you,” said Will coolly.

“Ah. Payback.”

“Not payback. Insurance,” said Will. “Three hours each way is a long way to drive just to see me in the flesh. As enticing as I am.”

“Modesty! Sarcasm!” Will heard a sound that might have been Sam slapping the table in front of her. “That is just so
you
of you! Can I tell you how excited I am at how you you are?”

“Well, thanks. I’m sure you’re very you, too.”

“Oh, I am,” said Sam. “I totally, totally am.”

T
HE NEXT DAY, AS HE HEADED OFF TO
J
ELLICO
, T
ENNESSEE, TO MEET
Sam, Will found himself remembering the conversation he had had with his mother on the day he got home from the reunion. After he’d walked through his front door, but before he had closed it behind him, the phone had started ringing.

“Welcome back, sweetheart,” she’d said.

“What do you have?” Will had said. “Spies staking out my house?”

“Intuition,” said his mother.

“You’re deeply, deeply creepy,” said Will. “I just want to go on record with that.”

“Done,” said his mother. She got down to business: “Now, tell me, did you see her?”

“Yes,” Will had said. “I mean, no.”

He had told her the whole story. It was the fourth time that day he had told it, since Philip, Gray, and his Asheville friend and former boss Jack, all of whom apparently lacked either his mother’s patience or intuition or both, had called him while he was on the road coming home. Unlike the other three, his mother didn’t punctuate his telling with “No fucking way,” or “Holy shit,” or similar expressions of surprise. Unlike the other three, she didn’t ask him if Pen was still hot. In fact, his mother had stayed almost perfectly quiet, and when Will had finished, the first thing she said was, “Isn’t it interesting how, in the years you’ve been apart, all three of you have lost a father?”

Will was caught off guard by this and didn’t say anything.

“Sad, of course,” his mother went on, “but there’s also something beautiful there, something synchronous. Maybe you’re coming back into each other’s lives to help each other heal.”

Will had thought about pointing out that his own father wasn’t actually dead, unless you counted his heart and soul, or that you had to first have a father in order to lose one, or that his father’s exit from his life had left nothing that required healing. But Will suspected that even though his mother respected Will’s right to think these things about his dad, it bothered her to hear them. His mother, who had been more despised, more broken by Randall Wadsworth than anyone, had forgiven him.

Once, four years ago, Will had asked her how she had accomplished this. She had reached out to cup the side of his head in her hand, her eyes full of tears, and said, “Oh, my darling, compared to forgiving myself, it was easy.”

“How, though?” Will had persisted.

“I did for your dad what I did for me,” she’d said. “I didn’t decide that his behavior wasn’t that bad or erase the memory of it from my mind, but I threw away the idea that he was a monster. I acknowledged his humanness. There’s a light inside every human being; I chose to honor his inner light.”

“When?” asked Will. “How long did it take?”

His mother had given him a crooked smile and said, “When? Every morning when I get up and every night before I go to bed. Same as I do for myself.”

“Like brushing your teeth.”

“Yep.”

“I’m a long way from that,” said Will. “Probably, I won’t get there.”

“Maybe you won’t, and that’s okay,” said his mother. “But I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. After all, you forgave me.”

She believed that he had forgiven her because she had asked him, once, and he had said yes, which he had been glad about because the answer had made her so happy (nothing he had ever done or said in his entire life had ever made anyone even close to that happy), but, in truth, he didn’t know if
forgiveness
was the right word for what had changed between himself and his mother after she’d stopped drinking. He hadn’t deliberately forgiven her. He had never thought the word
forgive.
Instead, gradually, without really meaning to, he had turned himself over to her, had begun to love her without wariness or sorrow.

“Oh, come on,” Will had said. “Dad is—. You don’t need to hear what I think Dad is, but I’ll tell you what: he’s not you.”

“Okay,” said his mother, “but for your sake, if not for his, I hope you’ll forgive him one of these days.”

“I might.” Will had shifted uncomfortably, then. “Whether I do or don’t, though, I figured something out.”

“What’s that?”

“I need him gone,” Will had told her, looking her straight in the eye. “For good. No seeing him. No more phone calls or e-mails. Nothing.”

He had braced himself.

“Good,” said his mother firmly. “Cut him out.”

“Really? I thought you’d be upset.”

“Of course not,” said his mother. “Whatever you need to do to take care of yourself, do it. And good riddance.”