The Things We Cherished (2 page)

He waited for her to speak, then filled the silence when she did not. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Your secretary let me in.”

She did not, Charlotte reminded herself, have a secretary. He must have been referring to Doreen, the office admin. Doreen was usually too busy updating her Facebook page to help visitors, but it was easy to see how Brian might have charmed her into unlocking the office and letting him wait. She studied him again. There was a paunch that bespoke too many overpriced steakhouse dinners, missed visits to the racquet club he once frequented daily. But he still had that appeal that had sucked her in almost a decade ago—that had gotten her in trouble in the first place.

She took a deep breath, centered herself. “What are you doing here?”

His expression changed as he processed the new rules of the game: pleasantries were to be dispensed with, business stated. “I’m in town for work and I was hoping to talk to you about something.”

You’ve left Danielle, she thought suddenly. Realized after all these years that you made a fatal mistake, that I was the one. The scenario rushed through her head: his profuse apologies and tears, her eventual gracious acceptance and forgiveness. It would be messy, of course. There was the divorce, the question of whether to reside here or in New York. “About a case I’m working on,” he added.

The vision evaporated, a raindrop on a warm, humid day, so quickly gone she might have imagined it. So this isn’t about us after all, she thought, feeling very foolish. Brian wanted something, but it wasn’t her.

“Let me buy you lunch?” he asked.

She shook her head. Thirty seconds around Brian and he was already toying with her mind. She needed to get as far away from him as possible. “I can’t. I’m due back in court in half an hour.”

“Of course. Dinner then. Does six work?” She could see him calculating the time that the meal might take, whether he could make the nine o’clock train back to Manhattan. Back to Danielle. Her stomach twisted, the bile undiluted by the years.

For a second she considered taking back an ounce of the control that had been stolen from her all those years ago and declining his last-minute invitation. She might have plans after all. Usually they consisted of nothing more than Thai takeout in front of the television, a hot night of
CSI
reruns with her cat, Mitzi, but he didn’t have to know that. Her curiosity was piqued, though. Did Brian really have business in Philadelphia or had he come all this way just to see her? And what on earth could it be about?

“All right,” she replied, trying to sound casual.

“Buddakan?” The choice was an obvious out-of-towner selection, one of the pricey Stephen Starr restaurants that received national attention and spawned a clone of the venue in New York. The furthest thing possible from the quiet BYOBs she loved, like the Northern Italian one in Greenwich Village they had frequented as students, its name faded with the years.

She considered suggesting an alternative venue like Santori’s, a Greek trattoria in her neighborhood, with its gorgeous hummus plate and complimentary ouzo shot at the end of the meal. But this
was not a social call and she didn’t need Brian invading that part of her world. “Fine.”

“I’ll let you work then,” he said, walking from the office, not looking back. That was Brian. He treated life like a movie set—when he left a scene, the lights went out and it simply ceased to exist.

It was not until the door closed behind him that she sank to the chair, trying not to shake.

They had met during law school while interning with the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, assisting with the prosecution of genocide in the former Yugoslavia. She could still remember walking into the tiny Dutch bar, and seeing Brian for the first time. He was holding court amidst a semicircle of other interns, mostly female. She’d stood there for several seconds, staring at him in spite of herself. Though she could not hear what he was saying, there was something in the way he spoke that captivated her, a confident manner that seemed larger than life. His head turned in her direction. Embarrassed, she started to look away, but then his gaze caught hers and she was paralyzed, unable to move.

A minute later, he broke from his minions and made his way to Charlotte, holding out a second beer as though he’d been waiting for her. “Brian Warrington.”

“Charlotte Gold,” she managed, trying not to stammer.

“I know. You’re the Root Tilden from NYU, right?” She hesitated, taken aback. She had not expected him to know who she was or that she’d received the prestigious public-interest fellowship. “I’m at Columbia. I think we’re both assigned to the Dukovic case. Your memo on the evidentiary issue was very impressive.” She fought the urge to swoon. “I’d like to get your take on one of my witnesses.” Just then, the jazz band that had been setting up in the corner started to play and the voices around them were raised to a din.
“There’s a little bistro just down the street that’s quieter. Want to go get something to eat?” Too surprised to answer, Charlotte nodded and followed him from the bar, feeling the stares of the other interns behind her.

After that, they were inseparable. They fell in love over Belgian beer and heated debates about the efficacy of the proposed International Criminal Court. When they returned to Manhattan that fall, she abandoned her Greenwich Village dorm room, accepting his invitation to move into his Upper West Side apartment.

Though it had not been obvious from their egalitarian Dutch housing, she quickly realized once back home that Brian was wealthy. She found herself swept along to warm fall weekends in the Hamptons, holidays at his parents’ estate in Chappaqua. She spent less time at school, traveling downtown only for classes. They made plans for after graduation, fellowships with the UN, a short engagement.

Her idyllic world came crashing to a halt in December when she traveled to Philadelphia for what was supposed to be a brief holiday visit with her mother, Winnie, a retired math teacher. The first morning over breakfast, her mother broke the news that she had been keeping until after Charlotte finished final exams: small-cell lung cancer brought on, she suspected, by a smoking habit abandoned years earlier. By the time the persistent cough she’d taken to be allergies had sent her for a chest X-ray it was too late—she was stage four and had just months to live.

Winnie refused to let her take the semester off, so Charlotte commuted back and forth every weekend on Amtrak, watching with disbelief the speed with which her once-strong mother deteriorated. Brian offered to come along, of course, but she always declined, embarrassed to have him see the tiny suburban condo with its dilapidated furniture and yellowed walls. He didn’t fight
her on it but retreated gracefully, glad to be excused from the messiness of a life not his own. The time apart and her constant worry began to take its toll on their relationship and by March, when her mother had been discharged a final time to hospice care, Charlotte returned to New York to find a strange tube of lipstick beneath the vanity in the bathroom. Later she would wonder if perhaps he left it there purposely, a final act of passive-aggressiveness designed to hasten things to their inevitable conclusion.

She had confronted him that gray afternoon, hoping for denial or at least an explanation, ready to forgive. It was a day still damp and chilly enough to be called winter, their breath foggy in front of them as they clutched Styrofoam cups of coffee that neither actually drank. He looked down at the bench in the southeast corner of Washington Square Park that they had shared in happier times, now defiled because it would always be remembered for this. His face seemed a caricature of itself, drawn and weak. As he started to talk, she braced herself for the platitudes, that they had grown apart, it was just one of those things.

“I’ve met someone,” he said bluntly.

A rock slammed into her stomach. “Her name’s Danielle,” he continued. “She went to Harvard, two years ahead of us.” Of course. Because she couldn’t have been someone vacuous and trite. An image flashed through her mind of the holiday party at the firm where Brian was clerking this year. Through the haze of worry and despair over her mother, Charlotte recalled a sleek blond junior associate, a conversation about summer houses to which she could not at all relate.

“I’m sorry,” he finished. There were a thousand questions she wanted to ask about why and when and how. But he was already throwing his cup in the trash and straightening his coat, eager to move on to this new chapter of his life.

Three weeks later, she would learn the rest of the story. She opened the Sunday
Times
over breakfast and saw the engagement announcement, the happy couple staring back at her, Danielle’s smile wider and more perfect than she remembered. She was flooded with disbelief. In the weeks since Brian told her about his new relationship, Charlotte had consoled herself over pints of Häagen-Dazs and bottles of wine, telling herself that it was nothing serious. Danielle was just the rebound until he figured things out. But in that moment, the truth came home to roost: Brian and Danielle were engaged. How long had they been seeing each other behind her back?

Unable to look away, she forced herself to continue reading. And somewhere between learning that Brian’s grandfather had been CEO of a Fortune 250 company and that the bride would be keeping her name, she felt a sudden sense of release, like the air being let out of a balloon. She was relieved to have been excused from a world where she did not belong, a student given permission to change majors or drop a class that was too hard.

Giving up the rest was easy after that, and she turned down the fellowship to The Hague that she had been scheduled to start after graduation. Instead, she applied for and got the public defender position, returning to Philadelphia and slipping into the city like a pair of comfy old shoes.

That night at five minutes to six, Charlotte stepped out of a cab at Third and Chestnut and glanced down the street in both directions. Old City, once the province of Ben Franklin and the Founding Fathers, was now Philadelphia’s version of trendy and she seldom ventured down to the endless rows of hip bars and restaurants that maligned the Federalist architecture of the neighborhood. Two blocks west, laughter spilled over from the throngs of tourists departing Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell as
they boarded their motor coaches for home. A swath of parkland across the street sat in improbable late-day stillness, sunlight slatting through the crisp leaves.

Charlotte paused, wishing she’d been able to override her normal tendencies and arrive casually late. For a minute she considered circling the block, stalling for time to compose herself. But there was no point in delaying the inevitable—the sooner she met with Brian, the sooner she could put him and his devilish green eyes back on that train to New York.

As she approached the restaurant, she studied her reflection in the glass window of an adjacent store, smoothing her shoulder-length brown hair. There hadn’t been time to go home—the modest Queen Village townhouse she’d bought before the neighborhood had become fashionable was a thirty-five-minute walk from the office, pleasant enough on a nice day, but too far in the wrong direction to make it before dinner. So after work she had stopped in Macy’s, the city’s one surviving department store. Resisting the urge to buy a new outfit entirely, she settled instead for a crème silk blouse to replace the knit top she’d worn previously under her suit and some makeup and perfume from samples at the Clinique counter.

Inside, Charlotte lingered uncertainly by the reservation desk, adjusting her eyes to the dimmer lighting. The Asian fusion restaurant was a cavernous sea of tables, walls draped in red silk, a massive gold Buddha statue dominating one side of the room. A dozen or more chefs bustled behind clouds of steam in the open kitchen to the rear. At the bar to the left, young twentysomethings tried to impress one another over brightly colored ten-dollar cocktails.

“Can I help you?” the hostess asked without interest. Charlotte did not answer but scanned the room, spotting Brian at a table to the rear. That was unexpected; early was not his style, the notion of
waiting for others unpalatable to him. As she approached, he stood, hurriedly tucking a BlackBerry into his jacket pocket.

“Thanks for joining me,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

She studied the menu the waitress handed her as she sat, grateful for the reprieve. “Grey Goose martini, up, extra olives,” she said. She did not usually drink hard liquor on a work night, but the circumstances called for an exception.

“Same,” he said, surprising her again. Brian was strictly a beer drinker, or had been anyway.

“So you’re in town for a case?” she asked when the waitress had returned with their drinks and taken their dinner order, a lobster pad thai for her, sesame tuna for him. He did not, she noticed, order an appetizer, further evidence of his hurry to get back to New York and Danielle. Pain stabbed at her stomach as she relived the rejection of a decade ago all over again. But she had not asked for this meeting, she reminded herself; he wanted to see her. “Depositions?” She was suddenly aware of her own Philadelphia accent, the way she seemed to have gone vocally native again in the years since she had returned.

“Just passing through,” he replied, his own pronunciation devoid of geographical markings. “I had a meeting in Washington this morning.” He was usually so precise, but there was a vagueness now to his words that made her wonder if he was telling the truth. Had he come down from New York just to speak with her?

“How have you been?” he asked, and if the question was just a pleasantry, a necessary step to get where he wanted to go, he gave no indication—his face and voice conveyed genuine curiosity. He had always had the ability to make anyone think he was on their side, sincerely concerned with their best interests—which was exactly what made him so dangerous. She had not suspected anything
was wrong, until the very moment he told her he was leaving for someone else.

“Great,” she replied, a beat too quickly. She suddenly felt naked, exposed. “I’m working with juveniles …” She almost tuned herself out as she rattled on, wearing her job like a cloak. But the work, about which she was usually so passionate, sounded provincial, unsophisticated. “And you?”