Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

39. Sunday

Sunday

“Are you and Frank all right?” asks yesterday’s bride, as we stand shoulder to shoulder at the sink facing a landslide of washing-up.

I wonder what Nina means. It could be anything. When we finally got to bed around three this morning, Frank fell asleep straightaway. Several hours later, when he rose to milk the cows, I was so exhausted I didn’t hear him leave. We have not had a chance to speak since the wedding, but last night I caught him watching me across the tent from time to time. He looked so sad. And it eats away at me, that sadness. It’s rare for a person to be purely good. I’m not. Gabriel isn’t. Nor Jimmy or probably even Nina, not all the time. But Frank has kindness running through him. Injuring him feels doubly cruel, like torture.

And all the while, my mind is a rash of conflicting thoughts. I love Gabriel, I won’t leave Frank. I love Frank, what am I going to do about Gabriel? No, Nina, we are not all right.

“I said to Jimmy last night, it was selfish of us to choose Elvis for our wedding dance. You were crying, weren’t you? I saw you.”

“Oh,” I say, although the “oh” is more a gasp of pain as Bobby swims into the room.

Bobby. In some ways so present, but mostly, just horribly absent. The ache of missing him never really goes. Not for long.

“Shit,” Nina says, curving a soapy hand around my neck, pulling me close. “And now I’ve made you sad.”

I can feel the cool strip of her new wedding ring on the back of my neck.

“Just the hangover,” I say.

“God, this hangover. Why did we drink so much?” When Nina laughs a beam of light catches her eyes, turning them from green to gold.

The day fills with villagers coming to collect their things, then staying to help. Cups of tea and slices of wedding cake. Stories from the night before. Helen’s husband woke up fully clad in his suit and tie, even his boots. Someone else reversed their back wheels into a ditch and abandoned the car. The violinist who played “Ave Maria” during the ceremony hitched a ride home in a Land Rover and stood, head and shoulders through the open sunroof, serenading the lanes with “Hey Jude.” I wish I had seen that.

There is talk of inappropriate kissing and at this my heart slows, although I am sure no one saw Gabriel and me leaving the tent, nor returning to it a short while later.

All afternoon, beneath the gossip and laughter, that kiss hums through my blood, a secret that sustains me, confuses me, makes me long for more.